I Think I'm Allergic to Japan

Wah, I can't stop sneezing. Maybe Elliot gave me whatever he has, because his eyes were red and sad looking this morning. Or, maybe Ashok gave me swine flu because we've been sharing all of our food and drinks all the time. Thankfully quarantine is over so I won't be ostracized just because my eyes itch like crazy and it looks like I've been crying. Boo, Japan, do not want. Ashok asked me if I missed home today, and upon reflection, I guess I do to some degree. I miss Bubba a lot--speaking of which, I give you this amazing quote copied and pasted from the skype chat with my daddy the other night:

"yes, buba (sic) pee in my computer cause mother board dead, nam have to replace it."

FAIL. I kind of miss my dad too, although we barely speak to each other at home---my family for the most part just lives in the same house. If anything, I talk to my dad a whole lot more now that I'm on a different continent. That's probably the thing I miss most here actually---just talking to people. It's tough going through most of the morning with the Nihongo Dake Rule (Japanese only on the 4th and 5th floors, i.e., the floors where our classrooms are), and then going home only a short while later where my already minimal speaking habits disappear altogether.

Don't get me wrong, I really love conversing with my okaasan and with Yoshihisa (my sister, Mina, is usually at work) in my bad Japanese, but even ignoring my grammatical failings, I can only talk about so much.Yoshihisa and I have a thing going where he talks to me in English and I answer in Japanese, which is a lot of fun at least. I probably like him the best because I kind of a have a preference for males (cue another fruit fly joke from Elliot just because I'm scared of females and a good number of my Yale friends happen to be gay males). Plus, he's only 4 years older than I am, and the language barrier isn't as big of a problem since he knows English. Anyway, he's really great and I kind of love him =). We spent a good two hours or so listening to his records today, because he asked me to explain the lyrics to him. Sadly, his Jamaican reggae is incredibly difficult to translate so I wasn't much help other than the few songs I managed to google (and translate) lyrics for. We had fun going through my itunes library afterward and comparing equally shared bad taste in bad hip hop/rap artists (Eminem for the win, woo! Maji, you'd love that).

As for extended conversation with my other host family members, I have to say that my Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten (Nintendo DS dictionary rom) is absolutely PRICELESS. There's always rapid typing (or sketching) away on my DS or on Yoshihisa or Mina's SEIKO dictionary, as we all look up words to explain things. I had to grab my DS from my room the other night after dinner to try and explain what the English phrase "it's complicated" meant in words other than "ちょっと難しい"to Mina and my okaasan, both of whom started cracking up because the Japanese equivalent on my DS was apparently hilarious. Yeah, I didn't really get the joke for that one...

Sad to say, my homestay family probably knows more about my not-very-interesting life than my actual parents do. I showed them pictures of various relatives and friends off my computer and facebook---my okaasan saw my senior prom pictures and though Denno was "very handsome," haha. They all pretty much told me that all of my stories, extracurricular activities, and pictures were "すごい!" The part that really amused me was hearing my okaasan repeat to her relatives who live next door everything I'd told her in my garbled Japanese in actually grammatically correct, understandable Japanese as she told them about me. Anyway, she (and her relatives) have now suffered through explanations of the Classics major, my foreign language capabilites (fail), Texas weather, dormitory life, American eating habits, my mom's gardening (they were really excited that we had a persimmon tree), soccer, running the 800 m for track in high school, boys (yeah, apparently it's quite common for Japanese people to interrogate you about your love life), my dog, marching band (woo!), etc.

Hmm, I guess I did a decent amount of talking with my homestay family then, between telling my okaasan my life story and discussing music with Yoshihisa. It seems I have to rely a lot on overly exaggerated facial expressions or on an ambiguous "Mm" all the time too, since my language capabilites aren't enough relay my feelings. I miss speaking English. Or, I miss speaking with people. As awesome as my host family is, I can't really talk to them, you know? Now that quarantine is over, the HIF students are scattered all over town (and some not even in the same town), so that's not exactly an option either, although Victor (the really cool, really nice Chinese grad student from Harvard) has internet at his homestay, so we talk a decent amount via the internets. He's in Intermediate 1B with me, and he's probably my favorite person to partner up with in class--he's really patient whenever I ask for the bajillionth time, "すみません、X - って、どう言う意味ですか？" Heck, he even goes into charades for me to explain things a lot. Seriously, really freaking awesome guy.

Yeah, I realize this post wasn't terribly descriptive about anything in particular and I kavetch a lot, sorry. I miss Bubba. I miss America (the person, not the place). I miss speaking English, and I realling miss talking to people, certain indviduals more than others. Sorry I've been so busy, Maji, I'll shoot you an email soon, I promise, or I'll call you really early one morning and make you skype me =). I'm really glad David's online so frequently, because being able to skype and videochat him and speak English with somebody is so unbelievably nice, and probably necessary for my sanity.

Anyway, my apologies didn't intend for this post to sound so sad---I'm really not. Japan is SO amazing and the people here are awesome, as is my homestay. I'm just a bit overwhelmed at the moment and getting accustomed to everything, so I may sound mildly stressed although everybody says it gets better, and I can see that since this week is definitely an improvement from last week. Still, shoot me an email or letter or postcard or skype or something because I miss all you lovely people and hearing from you might just be the thing to get me through another day of hell---I mean class. Also, I don't know if you read this or not, but @Matt Altonji---sorry I haven't returned your emails/been able to chat! A response of some sort is imminent, I promise, although it may come a little late...

And to work now. Blah. Do not want.

I leave you with this beauty:

Roman Cathoric Church for the win! Located right near HIF too, woo.

"Dude, I keep situree-ing left and right..."

I think this is the happiest I've ever been that it's the weekend and I don't have class. Seriously, class this week has been tough, although coming home to my awesome host family every night makes everything okay at the end of the day =). Anyway, hopefully since things have slowed down a bit now (...a comprehensive test on Chpt 1-6, plus 12 chapters-worth of Kanji on our 3rd day?!?), things'll get better. Anyway, to finish my homestay family description: Yoshihisa is actually a DJ (reggae!) and has an event/show tonight:

Top left: My badass brother, Yoshihisa. He buzzed his his dreadlocks so his head is just really fuzzy and now and I'm always dying to not creepily rub it.

As for my okaasan (host-mom), she's really extremely sweet and always offering me invitations of some sort...I get a lot of どこ/なに/いつ　でも。。。's from her telling me to pretty much do as I please. She also vacillates between telling me to eat as much as I want and telling me that I shouldn't eat anything I don't like or if I'm full. It's a bit of a dilemma trying to decide how much of a stereotypically rude 外人 I can be w/o actually offending my family, especially since she keeps encouraging me to be rude o_O. I also have to resist the urge to cross my legs Indian-style whenever I'm in the living room watching tv on the couch. She also keeps encouragin me to use this mini-fridge stuffed with drinks, or she always comes to my room laden with grapefruit juice (OMD I LOVE GRAPEFRUIT JUICE) and iced coffee (I know, I know, I'm not supposed to drink coffee anymore---but it's decaf) because she knows my tastes now, haha. She even brought me a little container full of snacks "to eat while I studied," including delicious cookies from "Ishiya Patisserie"--apparently patisseries are as big of a deal as Absolute Boyfriend implied.

White chocolate filled "Siroi Koibito"---om nom nom!

The first night of homestay (Wednesday), she, Yoshihisa, and I went to a sushi place with conveyor belts of food that go around the restaurant. Ashok, Yiwen, Thanu, and I had gone to a similar sushi place just a few days earlier actually, where the plates are color/design-coded to indicate prices. My okaasan was very surprised to see that I ate natto (fermented soybeans), but I definitely feel that natto-sushi is easier on the stomach than really raw, really fresh Hakodate fish. I'm actually okay with the fish part, but that particular place put wasabi in their sushi and I'm not a big fan >.<. Also, I swear, I won't always write about food---I'm turning into Nick, haha. Anyway, as I said before, my house is located right behind 五稜郭公園. Ashok, Yiwen, and I all went there last Sunday after doing some minor shopping at a bookstore and Daiso (comparable to a dollar store in America). We all had fun reading (and successfully translating) a children's book about a white-bear-airplane, aka しろくまひこうき!

Ashok proudly holds up the most amazing book in the world: Sirokumahikooki, takaku, takaku!
(White-bear-airplane, higher, higher!)

The three of us wandered about the 五稜郭 area in search of Book Off and a Hard Off (don't tell me you didn't snicker at that, because everybody does) which Adam had told us about the previous night (he was this Harvard grad who'd gotten locked out of his hotel room and decided to chill in our room since he'd heard us speaking English). We got directions from a bunch of locals (including this middle school aged schoolgirl who looked really comically perturbed about why the weird 外人 were speaking to her), but we think they may have all given us different directions (there are about 5 Book Off's in Hakodate, apparently) and didn't help. However, Thursday night, I actually saw the stores in question while driving to some restaurant for dinner with my homestay family and relatives. I'll definitely have to go back and get a picture of the Hard Off sign because I'm just that mature.

Speaking of Thursday night, it seems that I have an aunt, uncle, cousins, and grandparents who live right next to us, woo! The cousins are adorable--Aoi and...Shiyori (I'm sure I spelled her name wrong), both elementary school age, although Aoi may be in middle school. Dinner was amazing and I tried all manners of food, including "Tori Osiri" which means "Chicken Butt." Not even kidding. I also had takoyaki (octopus balls!) and squid (Ika!) and all manners of food. Squid is kind of Hakodate's thing, if you hadn't noticed---Chris, Ashok, and I actually had delicious squid ink ice cream the other day (see: YPMBAsia)--but enough with the food already.

We all sang happy birthday (in English!!! And not just because i was there either, I don't think-crazy!) to my oziisan (grandfather) and had some of the delicious cake that my okaasan had brought. Afterwards, she whips another cake out of her bag in the shape of a bear (cookies for ears and everything!) with icing that read "Yokoso, Taain!" (Welcome, Thanh!) and says "Surprise!" (no, NOT supplies, you racists). Did I mention how much I love my homestay family? It was sooooo good too, especially the delicious chocolate and whipped cream inside, om nom nom. I gave my oziisan the Texas snowglobe omiyage that I had brought for him (Mina had mentioned it was his birthday in an email earlier this summer) and everybody seemed really fascinated by the glittery "snow" and spent some time talking about cowboys and armadillos. Yeah, they're kind of wonderful =). I wish I'd remembered my camera, although I may ask Mina to email me the pictures she took. While on the topic of omiyage, apparently as a return present, my oziisan left with my okaasan this gold pocket watch and the ritualistic message that it was just "つまらない物," i.e., pretty much the exact same phrase that I used when I gave my host family their omiyage. They were pretty much the perfect gift recipients too, oohing and ahhing at everything. Yoshihisa was really excited about the Texas cap, since he pretty much wears a cap ALL the time like I used to, and he laughed a lot about the shot glass, although I'm not sure he drinks. I've only ever see him drink "cora" and tea. And, my omiyage, yay:

It's got a map of Japan on it too! すごい!

Anyway, I'm kind of rambling on again even though I feel as if I've left out sooo much--I haven't said anything about riding the bus with Julia, class, my failtastic meeting with Asaoka-sensee, the Japanese harp concert, and lots of random details about stuff. To reiterate how awesome my okaasan is one last time though, when I was first shown my room (a tatami no heya aka traditional Japanese room with tatami mats!), I found her laptop sitting on my desk in the corner for me to use all summer, until I told her that I'd brought my own. But seriously, wow. And there's wireless internet! Yaaaay. Enough blogging for today.

Also, if anybody wants postcards, send me your addresses if you haven't already! You can mail me stuff c/o HIF too if you'd like---see the squid ink ice cream YPMBAsia link above if you want the address. But for now---study time =(

(P.S. The title of this post comes from the amazing Chris Brown from lunch Friday. Yeah, he's kind of awesome.)

Hermes likes my Tatami no Heya and super comfy futon =)

おそくなって、すみません！

Ashok, Yiwen (my quarantine roommate), and Me @ Goryokaku Park on Sunday

"Osoku natte, sumimasen!" I think I've said that about a bajillion times today, and it's applicable here too--sorry for the delay in blog updates. School is really intense, and they weren't kidding when they told us we had to study for at least 3 hours everyday, because I've been doing about almost twice that amount. Naturally, this detracts from my sleep schedule rather than what I tell myself is a social life, so I'm getting about 4 hours a night. It's a bit 大変, but しかたがない, ねえ? Actual class updates will come later when I'm in a more agreeable disposition to blog w/o whining about how difficult it is and how dumb I feel all the time.

Erika (aka Hsu-san, from Penn) and I both had a mini-bonding experience in the dining hall yesterday afternoon where we both ranted a bit about how frustrating it was to have so much work, particularly the mindless writing out of a bunch of kanji charts (seriously, we know how to write 123 and the days of the week in Japanese already). I suppose I shouldn't complain since the other half of the ginormous kanji packet of doom contained a bajillion new characters which I hadn't seen before. Anyway, I think that the mindless copying of kanji was the worst part---it's not necessarily difficult, just really time consuming and not very helpful. Charts might work for some people, but when I'm expected to just draw the same kanji a bajillion times and turn it in for a grade, I just scribble away without retaining anything, as has probably been made clear by these quizes and test that I've gotten back and barely passed. And by barely I mean, I was about 1 point away from failing. 失敗 =(. But I'm whining again, sorry sorry, I'll stop.

To discuss a happier subject---homestay!!! It turns out my host-family consists of my mom (Okaasan!) and two of her children (Yoshihisa--but you say it quickly so it's like "Yoshisa"--and Mina). Yeah, turns out they're siblings rather than a married couple like I'd thought, oops. I think I like it better this way though =). Anyway, the only good thing about being exhausted from studying all the time and not getting enough sleep (my terrible sleeping habits at Yale can't even compare) was that I was too tired to worry much about finally meeting them yesterday. Turns out I wouldn't have had to worry anyway, because my host family is SO FREAKING AWESOME. The boldface capital letters don't even come close to emphasizing just how amazing they are.

I'm staying with the Obata family, and they've been very welcoming and sooo kind and I love them to pieces. Yosihisa, my 24-year old "brother" wears caps all the time (like I used to, up until my Yale cap disappeared under David's bed last year and never resurfaced, so I stopped wearing them). He has a really fuzzy haircut/buzz that I'm dying to touch (no, I'm not creepy), likes hip-hop (more specifically, MIA) and reggae, travels (he's been to Jamaica, London, Italy, "New Orins", and Alabama). Also, he knows a decent amount of English and does translations of everything everybody else says to me or whips out his dictionary to translate things if there's a need, although at least 15% of the time I actually understand the Japanese and don't need him to translate, but seems to enjoy practicing his English. He also has a thing for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so I'll definitely be mailing him paraphernalia from the States when I get back =). I have to resist the urge to hug him whenever I see him, he's so friendly and wonderful and completely 100% amazing. He also has a part-time job...somewhere. I'll have to ask him to clarify again later.

Mina, his sister, is 28 years old and from what I understand, works at a game arcade. Her favorite meat is chicken (鳥!!!) and to be honest, I don't know a whole lot more about her. She very kindly rode with me on the tram to HIF today and went all the way back to my bus stop just to ride with me back, which was really really kind of her. Too bad I don't remember the way still and I'll have to ask someone to show me again tomorrow morning. Fail. Their house is literally right behind 五稜郭公園 (where Ashok, Yiwen, and I went this past weekend), which is the main part of Hakodate, I believe. Supposedly whatever young people still live in Hakodate hang out in the 五稜郭 area, where there are a bajillion stores, bars, restaurants, etc. There's a Seven-Eleven conbini (read: convenience store) and a 郵便局 right down the street from my house, woo! Speaking of which, people who want postcards should tell me so I know how many to buy when I go =).

Anyway, it's a bit before 1 am right now, and I'm going to sleep until 4 and resume studying then. Goodnight!

And, a few more picture of 五稜郭公園 :

Intermediate 1B

If I actually blog right now, I'll just end up whining a lot about everything because I'm feeling kind of grumpy regarding certain other non-Japanese related things, so I'll just keep this short and simple.

Classes began today--I got placed into Intermediate 1B, although I had honestly expected to be placed into 1A (the lowest class) after my failtastic oral interview and written exams. Class was kind of intense today, and I'm not sure I should be in there, but I'll just have to がんばりましょう、ねえ?

And I lied about the not whining. I wanna go to bed, wah. Kanji quiz tomorrow with about 40 new kanji I have to learn, not to mention all the old kanji I have to review, plus vocabulary and grammar. Woo.

Also, after quarantine ends on Wednesday, don't expect very many blog updates due to uncertain internet access (I'm mooching wireless from somewhere right now from my hotel room), not to mention this whole school thing. And now, back to our show!

I Climbed Mt. Hakodate (Twice!)

DAY TWO!!!!!
Friday started off to a fantastic start w/ breakfast at the hotel, complete with GRAPEFRUIT JUICE. Anybody who has shamelessly bribed me during the YPMB Scav Hunt knows that I kind of love grapefruit juice. All my flex dollars at school generally go to buying Grapefruit Juice from Durfees. I have to admit I'm not as brave as the others to try the unidentifiable foods offered in the breakfast buffet for fear of upsetting my stomach the rest of the day. Instead, I settled for corn, watermelon, eggs, croissants, and of course, GRAPEFRUIT JUICE. Om nom nom. While on the topic of food, I'm kind of a sucker for "cute" things, which applies to anything from stores, foods, animals, and perhaps even people. In any case, I'm definitely a fan of all the various cutesy Japanese products with their colorful packaging and adorable illustrations. As such, I couldn't resist buying (or taking photos of) the various items:

Yummy mini packaged cupcake-like snacks which looked too cute not to buy. Yeah, I'm going to go broke if I keep buying everything that looks cute in Japan. でも、おいしかったよ！

Melon Cream Soda & Kirin Milk Tea (bought at Yiwen's recommendation). The Milk Tea is really good, and tastes like the coconut milk tea I had in New York when I went w/ Kevin freshmen year.

I have to admit, the sweet One Piece illustration on the Melon Cream Soda may have had something to do with my purchasing it. Hopefully, it'll be delicious too though =)

Lastly, a Fanta ふるふるシェイカー, some sort of jello-like drink which liquifies after you shake it. I actually read about it on Chris' Blog and had to try one. I'll keep you updated on how it tastes after I try it.

Anyway, breakfast was followed by the 10 minute or so walk up the hill to HIF, which was marked by my hearing Lady GaGa's Poker Face playing from one of the shops we passed. WIN. That actually kind of made my day. Upon arriving at HIF, we were given a tour of the building (most of which I couldn't understand, sad pandas) and separated into rooms for the mysterious SPOT Test about which nobody seemed to know anything. Joseph, Chris, and I mused that it was probably all some sort of suspense-inducing ploy by the instructors to test our mettle. The actual test was much much worse. A Japanese audio file was played with sentence after sentence of the fastest Japanese I have ever heard, and we were given sheets with the instructions to fill in the blanks from the tape. The best strategy turned out to be reading the few kana before the blank and listening for them specifically while ignoring everything else, although even then it was rather difficult, and I found that once I missed one blank, I also messed up the next several in my attempts to repeat and think back upon what I had just heard. Fail.

After another short orientation in which the HIF instructors were introduced and instructions for our independent study project were divulged (in Japanese, so I had to get a translation from Thanu later), I joined a group of 10 other HIFers and after wandering about in a rather failed attempt to find a cheap bento shop, we grabbed a quick lunch. I ordered a beer! Legally! And...it was really gross, haha--失敗 (Shippai!). Afterwards, we all decided to brave nature and made the trek to and up Hakodate-Yama. East Rock doesn't even come close to how beautiful the trails up Mt. Hakodate were, not to mention the absolutely amazing view of the island. Pictures:

I love nature. Seriously, I think 函館山 may be my favorite place in the whole world.

I could have sat there for hours and just stared at the sea, it was soooooo pretty.

Like a typical group of 外人, we had to consult the maps frequently, although our fearless leader, Victor (Harvard Grad Student) took excellent care of our little group. Also pictured, my awesome roommate, Yiwen (goes by Yvon).

A lot of these shrines were scattered all over the mountainside. Ashok and I agreed later that if it we weren't worried that it wouldn't be PC, it'd be way cool to do charcoal rubbings of the writing carved into the base of the statues.

Anyway, more pictures can be found on my album on facebook here. N.B., if you ever get a chance to climb the mountain, be sure to bring a jacket because it gets fairly windy and cold at the top. The entire trek took our group about 3 hours, although we spent a fair amount of time taking pictures and enjoying the view. After this epic nature hike, we stopped briefly at the hotel where the Itagaki twins and Helen Gao (other Yalies!) joined our party for dinner at Wara Wara Something Restaurant--I was very amused and somewhat perturbed to hear the Offspring's Pretty Fly for a White Guy playing in the background while we dined. The servings there were somewhat small, but extremely cheap, and we ordered about 25 servings to share amongst the 14 of us, plus dessert and cocktails for some--I actually ordered a Karua Miruku (Kahlua Milk!). They don't seem to put much alcohol in the drinks (which is how I like them) and the Hakodate milk held true to its notoriety for being extremely sweet and delicious, so the entire dining experience was a great success =). Juan Miguel (from Guatemala!) proved to be a human waste disposal and polished off whatever leftovers we had. ごちそうさまでした!

Afterwards, we mostly bummed around the hotel and I stopped by Ashok's room to visit and hear about his adventures for the day. Yiwen joined us too and we eventually ended up back in my room to enjoy another feast of green tea, pistachio nuts, orange slices (the gummy candy), and the mini-cupcakes previously described above. Yum! I actually got caught up chatting with a friend on facebook, so after taking care of a few other things, I finally ended up going to bed around 2 am, completely exhausted but really happy =).

DAY THREE!!!!!

Saturday proved to contain equally exhausting ventures. Ashok and I grabbed breakfast (and I met Cuong, who's actually Vietnamese and can talk with me in Viet, yay!) and went for a short run about a half hour later---if by run, you mean jog, and if by jog you mean fail. My sense of direction is slowly improving (taking pictures of everything and staring at all the signs all the time like a tourist while trying to decipher the kana really makes them stick in your memory) and I managed to lead us back to Mt. Hakodate for my second trip up the mountain. Ashok had not yet experienced the amazingness of the mountain having spent the previous day with Elliot and other HIFers at an onsen (public bath!).

I managed to jog to the base of the mountain at least, but the route was already uphill just to get there, and despite running with Bubba and working out all summer, I'm still pretty out of shape. I've never actually gotten over my dislike of hills from cross country (State was ALWAYS that stupid neverending slope/hill at Baylor) either. Anyway, we walked the rest of the way up the mountain and enjoyed the scenery while conversing in our equally poor Japanese for practice. There were actually a few pathways I hadn't seen yet, so we took those and ended up in what may have been a WWII base of sorts, which we both thought was really hardcore. I'll have to take my camera and take more pictures of those areas and head up the mountain a third time. Once we arrived at the top of the mountain, we sat outside for a good while and talked and enjoyed the gorgeous view again (I swear, I could sit there and never leave and be happy) before racing down the mountain as fast as we could to see if we could find the source of this foggy cloud that suddenly had appeared, although that remains a mystery. We did run into some HIF students as we were making our way back to the hotel, and I got a laugh when they saw that I was dressed in running clothes with only my passport in hand. Seriously, you have to take your passport everywhere.

We chatted a bit with the other students and then returned to the hotel, where Ashok and I very skillfully (note the sarcasm yet again) asked the person at the front desk for directions to the nearest スパー. Our pride at successfully conversing with her in Japanese quickly disappeared when we realized that the map we had handed her had a large black dot with bold black letters clearly reading "SUPERMARKET"---FAIL. The supermarket was fairly close by and we bought soumen noodles and an as of yet unidentified spice (neither of us could read the label), plus an ice cream bar which we ate before I could take a picture of it.

Soumen (99 yen) + Spice (108 yen) + Ice Cream (not pictured, 99 yen) = Really yummy, really cheap lunch = WIN

Our cooking enterprise did turn out successfully if I do say so myself though, even if we may have cooked the noodles a little too long. We used the water boiler in my room to cook the noodles, and after draining them, submerged them in cold water which we also drained before adding the mystery spice for great success! However, our lack of dining ware found us eating noodles our lunch out of a shared teacup (very classy) with a single pair of wooden chopsticks, like very civilized individuals (although Ashok pretty much stabbed the roof of my mouth with them while he was feeding me at one point). Anyway, Ashok and I agreed that our cooking success definitely merited photographic commemoration:

OM NOM NOM

We heard some HIF students (the same group from the previous day's Mt. Hakodate adventure) in the hallway as we were washing up and ended up joining them in Victor & Andrew's room to hang out, and epic card games of Spoons and Idiot followed. Idiot was similar to Spoons but involved rules about different levels of "idiots" to whom non-idiots or lower levels could not speak or respond, and although I'm failing at explaining the rules (and not trying very hard to, honestly), it turned out to be a lot of fun. The game was mildly traumatizing though (especially on Steffen), and as we were walking to a nearby ramen place for dinner, I definitely had to pause and think twice before I responded to anything anybody said to me, haha. Post dinner activities were rather similar to that of the previous day and not terribly interesting, although another grad student named Adam knocked on our door because he'd been locked out and had heard English coming from our room, and introduced himself and joined us. We all chatted for a bit and watched some of this Chinese movie about the Three Kingdoms called Red Cliff before crashing for the night--yet another exhausting, but fun filled day full of wonderful people and adventures in Japan, yay!

I'll blog about today's adventures at Goryookaku Park sometime later--time for bed before classes commence tomorrow. Zyaa, mata!

函館 (Hakodate!)

Day 2 in Japan (and Day 1 in Hakodate was really chaotic. Getting up at 4:45 AM, cramming for my placement test with Ashok, and arriving at HIF later than planned and with about 5 minutes to spare before the examinations began was really intense. However, the HIF building is actually shared with Russian University students (whose facilities primarily seem to be located on the 3^rd floor), and I was rather amused to travel all the way to Japan to take Japanese language classes and find this particular poster to greet me upon immediately upon entering the HIF center:

Also, I don't know Michael Willams (NOT Williams) is, but if he = America, DO NOT WANT:

Half of the HIF students were immediately ushered off to take the written test while the remaining students were left biding our time until our individual oral interview was scheduled to occur. I fidgeted for about an hour until my timeslot and then entered the classroom to have an absolutely failtastic conversation in Japanese where I dropped a lot of あの's and えと's. I babbled incoherently about Latin and Greek and my wanting to study Japanese because I wanted to learn a spoken language when the real s*** show occurred after I answered the query about my extracurricular activities by replying that I played soccer. "I don't know anything about soccer, can you tell me the rules?" Also note that she had to repeat that question at least twice more before I understood her request. Epic failure followed with more babbling, and I finally had to resort to "This person....um...there's a ball...um...the person wants to put the ball in the "gooru" (read: goal)....I play defense....I want to stop them..." 失敗。Yeah. Apparently Chris faced similar trouble when he replied that he watched movies in his free time and the last movie he saw was "Taken," at which point he was asked to explain the plot, and Ashok was asked to explain the last book he'd read---some Michael Crichton book about genetics.

Lunch was provided after my oral interview of epic fail which we enjoyed in the HIF lounge, and then Chris, Ashok, and I sat in the hallway in our last minute attempts to cram as much kanji as we could remember. Unfortunately, the kanji section of the written portion turned out to be the easy part. Reading the blogs of previous Light Fellows who participated in the HIF summer program, I have to agree that Yale Japanese students (or at least first-years like me) are sure to be thrown off by the examined material and structure of the test, given the style of the JSL textbooks we use and the way our classes are run. However, keeping in mind that students of all levels take the same placement test made me feel somewhat less troubled by the number of blanks which I left (you aren’t supposed to guess on stuff you haven’t been taught).

A short orientation followed and then one of the staff members led us all back to the hotel which would be our home for another week, due to our whole “quarantine” situation. The Hakodate Kokusai Hotel is an extremely short distance from HIF (10-15 minute walk, tops), and I snapped the following pictures of this wonderful town in rural Japan:

The port city of Hakodate, located on Hokkaido, my home for the next 2 months.

Hakodate is famous for its seafood, and most especially for its SQUID, woo!

Don’t mess, the first concrete electricity pole in Japan is kind of a big deal.

We received our room keys (Room 331!) and I met my roommate, Yiwen (who goes by/ pronounces her name like Yvon), a grad student from Stanford who studies history. She’s only had a year of Japanese, but Ashok and I both agree---日本語がとても上手です! She’s really awesome and extremely kind and even helps me with my Japanese rather frequently, and I’m really happy that we were assigned to be “quarantine” roommates. She also lapses into semi-random history stories (kind of similar to how Justin and I lapse into nerdy Classics discussion), which I enjoy very much. I later met Thanu (waaay cool that our names look so alike) and the three of us explored the surround area and bought some べんとう and snacks for later at some random shops before grabbing dinner at this cheap but yummy ramen place. The しおラメン here is a specialty そうです, and it’s delicious---packaged ramen can’t compare at all. Afterwards, we wandered about some more before making our way back to the hotel and I crashed after some interwebs surfing. To be honest, I think it’s time I crashed now---making the trek up Mt. Hakodate twice in two days is kind of exhausting—but I’ll blog about that later =).

The Real Slim Shady

...where by "Slim Shady" I actually mean "Day One." So here’s an actual legit rundown of my actual first day in Japan, so ignore the previous post I made. This one actually isn’t terribly interesting, not gonna lie, but I wanted to document everything about this summer so I can look back and remember things fondly (hopefully) someday.

I’m really really glad I signed up for the group travel plan. I was actually really stressed out about the whole going to a foreign country by myself where I can barely string two words together, and Monday after puzzling through the poor Engrish on the cell phone rental application for PuPuRu (special discount for HIF), Maji and I faxed it in and then we looked at dresses nearby where I shamelessly pulled the whole “I’m-leaving-for-Japan-tomorrow-and-won’t-see-you-for-months-please-try-on-this-dress-and-make-me-happy” card at Maji’s expense. Yay! Much indecision and arguing about where to go found us at Starbucks shortly afterwards, and then we crashed my house for a bit. It was really good to see her one last time as well as to get my mind of Japan for a little while. Anyway, the whole group travel plan thing definitely made everything a lot easier for me, which is good seeing as I apparently even fail at operating public telephones....in Chicago.

Tuesday morning, I left my house at 4 AM and with just half an hour of sleep, flew through ANA Airways from San Antonio to Chicago and Chicago to Narita Airport in Tokyo, and I was dead asleep on every flight before the plane had even taken off. My flight to Japan was actually full of a large number of Vietnamese people upon whose conversations (in Vietnamese and Japanese) I eavesdropped shamelessly to see if I could understand what everybody was saying. Although I’ve no prior experience with international flights , I must say that ANA has great service. I had 3+ meals, and I even asked the attendant "あのう、オレンジジュスがありますか？" and was mildly pleased with myself for that epic bit of Japanese on my part. Other than "ありがとうございます" and "すみません！", I can't seem to string very many Japanese words together to effectively communicate with people.

Another awesome thing about ANA Airways? The ANA Sky Channel! I contemplating watching either Valkyrie or Swordfish, but opting for studying for my placement exam while listening to music instead. One of the audio channels offered actually played so-called popular songs of the western world, and I definitely listened to Taylor Swift's "Love Song" a bajillion times and even gave Eminem's "We Made You" a listen, if only because Maji would want me to. Getting through Quarantine, Immigration, and Customs was fun. It took maybe an hour, mostly because I fail at reading instructions (English or Japanese), but security really didn't seem all that tight, which I thought was odd. There were a ridiculous amount of mask-donning individuals who looked very alarmed if you so much as looked at them for fear that they might catch swine flu. Anyway, I arrived in Terminal 1 and found the HIF counter w/o any further issues where I ran into Ashok! They passed out limousine shuttle bus tickets to our hotel but the lady took back Ashok's ticket a little after handing him his and told him to wait, so we parted ways only moments after our tearful reunion. So sad. Chris Brown (yes, like the rapper :P) showed up at the HIF counter only moments later, so at least Ashok didn't get too lonely.

About an hour later, we arrived at the Hotel Pacific Tokyo, which is by far one of the nicest hotels at which I’ve stayed. My shuttle decided to reconvene in the lobby for the purposes of seeking out dinner, but Elliot magically appeared shortly before we were leaving and I decided to wait with him for his shuttle rather than abandon him as he waited in the lobby for his shuttle. After failtastic attempts to explain to the server that Ashok is a vegetarian and can’t eat meat, we ended up wandering around Tokyo, although our group accidentally split up and Ashok, Chris, Trina, and I wandered around for a bit and even ended up at an Aquadome somehow. The path leading up to it featured a lot of pretty lights and glowing dolphin silhouette things, complete with creepy music playing from speakers along the way. Yeah. Too bad I didn't have my camera on me.

Back at the hotel, Ashok and I got off the elevator on the 17^th floor (see photo below) to find ourselves face to face with none other than JOHN GREENAWALT, holy crap. I’d given him the name of our hotel and my room number earlier via facebook chat, failing any other means of communication, and he decided to show up and say hello which was waaay cool. I also met my roommate for the night, Melissa, who’s this really awesome senior at Columbia. Our third roommate, Meghan, showed up later, although I didn’t get as much of a chance to chat with her. It came as quite a surprise for me when she asked to borrow my laptop to send her husband an email, at which point I found out that she was actually a grad student. Crazy. Anyhow, I pretty much crashed the instant I fell into bed, only to get up at 4:45 AM for our uber early shuttle to Haneda Airport to fly to Hakodate. I’m okay with the waking up and craziness though, because having people tell me what to do and where to go definitely helped make me less stressed and frantic that first day. I guess that facebook quiz was pretty accurate, at least about me if not so much about ethnicity (or racial sensitivity):

Thanh took the What is Your Actual Ethnicity? quiz and the result is European

You're very reserved, you're usually good with whatever comes along. You're quiet, calm, and you don't really have a problem with somebody else making all the rules, in fact, you prefer it.

Umm...what? Fail. Waking up the next morning at 4:45 wasn't fun, but luckily I already have bad life habits which include poor sleeping patterns. The group travel plan provided for a nice boxed lunch consisting of a bottle of water and 5 adorable little sandwiches of various types in a little plastic box. Yum! We rushed to the airport and barely caught our flight. Ashok and I got seats next to each other and proceeded to cram as much of the JSL supplemental material from the ClassesV2 server which the sensees had uploaded, with little success. A short bus ride later with a stop at the hotel found us at HIF awkwardly milling about in the dining hall before our placement exams (written and oral). More to follow later...

And photos:

View from the 17th floor of the Hotel Pacific Tokyo, which Melissa and I thought looked like Paris (not that I've been there or anything)

This was the JR Shinagawa Station in Tokyo by which I'll be doing a lot of traveling post-program. The JR system practically holds a monopoly on the transportation system throughout the mainland of Japan.

Addendum

I stole John Greenawalt's blog entry title for this post, but I do have an addendum to my previous blog entry (also, addendum is the Latin neuter gerund form that translates as "that which must be added"). Technically it's now Friday, and the previous post was from Thursday, so it doesn't quite count as a double post aka Thanh has too much free time and needs to get off the internet.

Anyway, I'm also blogging on the YPMBAsia site with the all the other wonderful Members of who will be in Asia this summer. Jackie, Chris, Tory, and I were discussing it several weeks ago at the End-of-the-Year Squidquet and Jackie was going to start it up. Sadly, she will no longer be joining us overseas so she passed on the task of setting it up to me, and tentatively we have:

JAPAN: John Greenawalt, Elliot, Ming, Colin, Thanh
CHINA: Chris Young, Tory, Tasia, Brittany, Ashley, Ashok (a different Ashok from the one I generally mention here, who's studying Japanese w/ me )
MONGOLIA: John Ela
KOREA: Jae

Being as that I'm somewhat long-winded in my blog posts, I'm trying to include more detailed program-specific (or Japanese study related) descriptions on here and the shorter (and possibly less politically correct) details on the other blog. I promise to be tons of fun here too, even if I may go into detailed explanations about JR passes, etc, and I'll keep the content of each blog unique so I don't repeat myself. Therefore, if you have an overwhelming fascination w/ every minute detail of my life, feel free to read both blogs. If I come across something so overwhelmingly exciting and wonderful it has to be shared w/ everybody, I'll post it on YPMBAsia and post a link to it here.

While I'm on the subject, I did just encounter some rather amusing entries in my electronic dictionary: http://ypmbasia.blogspot.com/2009/06/fail.html.

Enough blogging for one night. Back to figuring out how to use this dictionary.

Necesse est mihi studere =(

I think I horribly offended my host family because although their response to my first, generic "はじめまして！” email was instantaneous, I have yet to receive a reply for my second attempt at correspondence (featuring fewer standard, polite how-are-you phrases because I opted for poorly constructed Japanese to ask about their interests and so forth). Also, I totally had to replace "less" with "fewer" in the previous sentence because I'm now conditioned to hear Justin's voice in my head correcting my grammatical errors, although it seems he hasn't quite cured me of writing in impossibly long (but still grammatically correct) sentences. Win.

I'm done packing! I talked to Elliot last night and we arrived at the mutual agreement that one suitcase and backpack would be optimal, and I did actually manage to fit everything I need (with room to spare!). Now I just have to find something else to do for five days in my rather blatant attempts to procrastinate on studying for the placement test. I finished 1984 (really good book!) and I started Camus' The Plague at David's suggestion. It's surprisingly pretty good---more a remark upon my surprise at David and I agreeing about something for once than a statement about Camus. I'll get around to reviewing for Japanese eventually, a statement which pretty much summarizes my general fail academic habits. (Also, I apply the word "fail" religiously to just about everything in case you didn't notice.)

Anyway, I generally slack off until the last possible moment where I hate life for a few days as I bury myself in my study materials and don't sleep (wait, how is that different from the rest of the time...?) and just cram as much information as I can into my head. It's actually very ironic because I wrote my Human Bio term paper last fall about the neural processes involved in memory and I explained why cramming doesn't work. However, since I still manage to scrape by on my exams in the end, there isn't much incentive for me to reform my terrible ways.

My JR Pass came in the mail today! Yay! I bought a Universal 7-Day pass for my post-program travels to 東近江 to meet/visit my cousins, possibly involving a sightseeing stop in Tokyo beforehand. For the uneducated, that means I have unlimited use of the Japanese Railway (which essentially runs through ALL of Japan) for 7 days. It's a pretty sweet deal, and I highly recommend it for anybody who plans on traveling. Apparently Ashok misunderstood my query about whether or not he had bought a JR Pass and ended up buying several to cover two months of traveling--失敗. If he'd read Yale's really handy SAC guide, he'd have known that the JR passes (or tram passes) which we'll use to commute to school can actually be purchased in Japan, unlike the aforementioned Universal ones which have to be bought overseas. I suppose he still doesn't quite beat my future college roommate on terms of fail though---she called the other morning to tell me about how she showed up for Summer Session at Yale, moved all of her belongings onto the 4th floor of Trumbull, checked her schedule, and realized she was signed up for the July Summer Session. Yeah. I kind of love her.

As I was saying, it'll be pretty epic trying to converse with my dad's side of the family (they immigrated from Equatorial Guinea to Japan, you see) in broken Vietnamese and Japanese, like I did on the phone about two month ago, which was a disaster. I also don't really understand Vietnamese honorifics, where my 30-something year old cousin has to use respectful terms to address me just because my father is older than my uncle. I also hate referring to myself with the honorific terms, so I just end up saying my own name a lot and speaking in the 3rd person. Oh well.

I think I'm going to go for a run, eat a large bowl of coffee ice cream and undo my entire workout, and then study. Promise. At the very least, I'll review the 219 Kanji we covered over the year. You would think that this whole no facebook thing that I have would be conducive to some level of productivity, but that hasn't really worked out so well since I just end up talking to Ashok for hours every night. Kevin would tell me that I lack discipline. Well, actually he'd tell me that I "rack disciprine." And now, Bubba's whining in my face and demanding to be walked again (I'm pretty sure that Kim & Nathan just took him for a walk), so I'm off. Toodle pip cheerio!

時間がない！

Productivity! What is this world coming to? I’m actually getting work done! It’s unfortunate but hand-in-hand w/ productivity comes the renewal of my coffee addiction since Darina isn’t here to pour pepper in my mug and scold me. Anyway, pre-Japan tasks have commenced. Maji and I went to North Star Mall yesterday to buy おみやげ for my homestay family. I actually emailed them earlier and received a reply from 小幡 Yosihasa, the 24-year old guy who’s interested in music and traveling.

Also, I realized that I kind of fail—assuming he and 小幡 Mina (the 28-year old) are married, that would make her my host mother rather than 小幡 Yayoi (the 54-year old), who would be my...host grandmother? Gah, this is making my brain hurt. I’m not really sure how to address any of them, either singularly or collectively, although I think our HIF packet instructs us to use お父さん and お母さん (and お婆さん?). In my 2nd email, I just used みんなさん and 小幡さん a lot. Nick—help?

Anyway, I’m taking a temporary facebook hiatus (yeah, let’s see how long that lasts) to get my shit together before I leave in 9 days—gah, too soon. I’ve been going crazy counting down the days until the program starts and now that it’s drawing closer, I’m panicking. Typical. I still have a list of things to do—an agenda, if you’d like (agenda is the neuter plural Latin gerundive which literally translates to “things needing to be done” by the way :-P). I need to pick up my order of Japanese yen from the bank in 3 days. Other money, transportation, medical insurance, etc details also need to be fleshed out, and I still need to cut my hair—it’s getting waaay too long and it’s always getting in the way even if I almost always wear it up anyway.

For now, I’m going to take a break from Japan preparations and relax a bit, at least as much as all this coffee inside of me will permit. Caffeine kind of makes me absolutely crazy (more so than usual, of course), although Rahul would just accuse me of being inebriated. I’m reading George Orwell’s 1984, which is really good so far--the whole “vaporization” thing is even kind of like a Roman damnatio memoriae. Trust me to find some sort of classical reference in anything and everything. The book actually reminds me a lot of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, although I don’t remember much about it since I read it in 6^th grade? I really should reread that too since I don’t think my juvenile 6^th grade mind appreciated it very much, although whether the current me will is questionable. Otherwise, it’s also somewhat similar to the movie Equilibrium which you all should see, if only because Christian Bale and Taye Diggs are kind of badasses in it.

And...back to my book slash Japanese studies.

[edit] Nick says that the 小幡 Yosihasa’s job, (フリーター) which I couldn’t translate basically means "part time worker" (although I don't know why he just doesn't say アルバイト like it has listed for 小幡 Yayoi's job)