I bought a ticket to Korea for the week between the end of classes and my plane ride back home. I don't really know what's there except for kim chee, the DMZ, lots of plastic surgery, lots of churches, and fashionable youths. But isn't that really enough? If anyone reading has suggestions on what to do, please inform me. Otherwise I'll be forced to consult some guide book and end up in some cheesy tourist trap, like a kim chee museum or something. Actually, if there is a kim chee museum that might be the first place i'd go! Or useful Korean phrases might help, like: "Do you speak Japanese?" and "Where can I find a kim chee refrigerator?"
I put some new pictures up on flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mdove/), so please enjoy. I am going to the train station a bit later to try and score an overnight bus ticket to Tokyo for the weekend after classes end. Otherwise i'll be forced to spend more money and glide down Honshu on a sweet Shinkansen ride. Damned if i pay more than i have to.
Did i mention i'm in charge of making the school yearbook? I wonder how i got myself into yet another position of authority and responsibility. Perhaps it is due to my constant flitting around from place to place--i never stay anywhere long enough for people to understand properly just how poor a leader i am. Although my resume might say the opposite, i am inept at leading groups, and usually find myself playing the role of disgruntled worker dissatisfied with the leadership of the captain and the direction of the project. So i often think it fit to try out the leader role myself, since i always have so many great ideas when i'm a bystander. Unfortunately, the leader role always enervates me of my passion and reduces me to a groveling cooperation zealot who reprimands the workers for wanting orders, and encourages creative thought like it's the road to salvation. But some people just don't like being creative, and they'd rather be given commands and pushed this way and that, anything to just get the hell out of there and be done with the task at hand. Yes, these are the people who act as the glue for our society, the ones who do not resist nor complain in the tides of injustice and tyranny, and prefer to escape down their rabbit holes when the flood has retreated. I hate ordering these bunnies around! Regardless, i need to have a finished product by next week and i am worrying about how i'll get it done with nearly no material. Something will be figured out. As my theory goes, that has yet to be unproven: everything gets itself done.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
time is winding down, yet again
It seems that whenever i am on an excursion to a foreign land, however long it may be, there are three stages.
1. shock--bewilderment--stupefaction--wonder--awe--glee--daydreaming about spending my life there
2. easing into the routine--feeling the effects of some kind of assimilation--getting used to being stared at by natives--starting to do all the things i thought i'd do in the beginning
3. jadedness sinking in--pining for the familiarity of home--feeling guilty for all the pining--feeling as though i really learned something--just starting to make real friends--daydreaming about the plane-ride home--thinking of how i'll feel all nostalgic after i return home
In Madagascar, all the others and i could talk about was what we'd eat when we got home. The detail of these discussions would have surprised even the most culinary-minded connoisseurs. We have yet to establish a running theme for talk of home here in Hakodate, nor actually talk much about it. It lies in the back of my mind, and knowing that i'll eventually return to a place of familiarity is reassuring. However, unlike Madagascar, i do not feel a deep and passionate longing to be on the plane home, instead a more mild and moderate satisfaction with the fact of returning itself. To know i am indeed from a land where nearly everyone speaks my language and has little trouble understanding me (well, the latter is a lie). I am not saying that my time in Madagascar was tortorous by any means, but the conditions were so different and trying that it made me long for the easy life, however selfish and typical of the spoiled spawn of an industrial nation a thought like that is. What doesn't kill me might really in fact make me stronger, or at least fill me up to bursting with memories that i'll feel the need to relate to others in an explosion akin to an erupting volcano. Prepare yourselves, my friends and family.
1. shock--bewilderment--stupefaction--wonder--awe--glee--daydreaming about spending my life there
2. easing into the routine--feeling the effects of some kind of assimilation--getting used to being stared at by natives--starting to do all the things i thought i'd do in the beginning
3. jadedness sinking in--pining for the familiarity of home--feeling guilty for all the pining--feeling as though i really learned something--just starting to make real friends--daydreaming about the plane-ride home--thinking of how i'll feel all nostalgic after i return home
In Madagascar, all the others and i could talk about was what we'd eat when we got home. The detail of these discussions would have surprised even the most culinary-minded connoisseurs. We have yet to establish a running theme for talk of home here in Hakodate, nor actually talk much about it. It lies in the back of my mind, and knowing that i'll eventually return to a place of familiarity is reassuring. However, unlike Madagascar, i do not feel a deep and passionate longing to be on the plane home, instead a more mild and moderate satisfaction with the fact of returning itself. To know i am indeed from a land where nearly everyone speaks my language and has little trouble understanding me (well, the latter is a lie). I am not saying that my time in Madagascar was tortorous by any means, but the conditions were so different and trying that it made me long for the easy life, however selfish and typical of the spoiled spawn of an industrial nation a thought like that is. What doesn't kill me might really in fact make me stronger, or at least fill me up to bursting with memories that i'll feel the need to relate to others in an explosion akin to an erupting volcano. Prepare yourselves, my friends and family.
Friday, July 20, 2007
in the Hot Web Cafe, blasting away at the keyboard
The music is slammin' in the Hot Web Cafe just outside Hakodate Station. The toilet in the Hot Web Cafe, like those in most other modernized establishments, is decked out with the latest toilet gizmos. The one here, the Inax Toilet Shower, is equipped with a boudet (steady and strong stream of warm water aimed directly at the sitter's anus), an electrically-warmed toilet seat, and even a humility button that when pressed, produces an electronic toilet-flushing sound to cover the shameful sound of a huge ripping fart. I've seen more mysterious whiteys here in the past hour than i've seen in the past month around town. What is it with white people and their vicious addiction to the internet? Don't ask me, i'm Ashkanazi. Those "white people" are as much a mystery to me as they are to you, dear reader.
Climbed Hakodate mountain today with all the HIF kids and most of their families. Had a blast hiking through some semi-wilderness again, despite the sad fact that the whole mountain is nearly devoid of wildlife besides some urban birds. The reason--the whole mountain was a huge army base during the Russian-Japanese war of the late 1800s, and it was all dug out to build secret control rooms into the hillsides. There were even huge anti-vessel guns operated by hand-pulled gears that protruded from the mountain top. I know all this because a friend's host dad took me and another kid from my class up to the top to see the secret military base entrances, which have now been overgrown and now look like abandoned mine tunnels. When everyone got to the top we played some corny games like Red Rover (during which whenever someone's name was called they usually ran headfirst into the intertwined grips of a small Japanese child and a skinny girl, or a skinny Japanese girl and a small Japanese child, thereby insuring a safe capture; needless to say, both defenders would have fear written on their faces, the grips usually dropped before each collision) and the game in which one person races on their hands while their partner holds their feet. Fun for the whole family!
Otosan and Okaasan are taking me to an onsen (hot spring) tomorrow, and i am bubbling over with excitement. I've never been anywhere with them before, save orientation day when they brought me home. I can say this much--i appreciate everything they do with me that much more because it so rarely happens. What a splendid way to live one's life--instead of constant endulgeance, scattered and infrequent activites that are infused with much more meaning. After all, i was never one for large showy events and unchecked hedonism. Side note, a skinny Japanese girl was wearing a tee shirt today that said naught but "Hedonism" printed across the chest. I told a friend that i must have a shirt like that, and he said, "But the meaning would be lost if it wasn't worn by a Japanese person." True or untrue, i cannot say, but Japanese youth are definitely more comfortable with their hedonistic culture than us American hedonists are. They feel much more at ease celebrating it than we do.
Only three weeks to go and then I am done with school, and off to start my week or so of free time before my flight to the Big Apple. What to do? Leaving the country would be too expensive (it's O-bon season, the holiday where everyone's ancestors come out of the ground to do some kind of spiritual dance, and all the living dance too, and people eat street food and sing, weee!), but buying a hyper-cheap O-bon season rail pass for young people is tantalizing. We'll see how this all pans out.
Climbed Hakodate mountain today with all the HIF kids and most of their families. Had a blast hiking through some semi-wilderness again, despite the sad fact that the whole mountain is nearly devoid of wildlife besides some urban birds. The reason--the whole mountain was a huge army base during the Russian-Japanese war of the late 1800s, and it was all dug out to build secret control rooms into the hillsides. There were even huge anti-vessel guns operated by hand-pulled gears that protruded from the mountain top. I know all this because a friend's host dad took me and another kid from my class up to the top to see the secret military base entrances, which have now been overgrown and now look like abandoned mine tunnels. When everyone got to the top we played some corny games like Red Rover (during which whenever someone's name was called they usually ran headfirst into the intertwined grips of a small Japanese child and a skinny girl, or a skinny Japanese girl and a small Japanese child, thereby insuring a safe capture; needless to say, both defenders would have fear written on their faces, the grips usually dropped before each collision) and the game in which one person races on their hands while their partner holds their feet. Fun for the whole family!
Otosan and Okaasan are taking me to an onsen (hot spring) tomorrow, and i am bubbling over with excitement. I've never been anywhere with them before, save orientation day when they brought me home. I can say this much--i appreciate everything they do with me that much more because it so rarely happens. What a splendid way to live one's life--instead of constant endulgeance, scattered and infrequent activites that are infused with much more meaning. After all, i was never one for large showy events and unchecked hedonism. Side note, a skinny Japanese girl was wearing a tee shirt today that said naught but "Hedonism" printed across the chest. I told a friend that i must have a shirt like that, and he said, "But the meaning would be lost if it wasn't worn by a Japanese person." True or untrue, i cannot say, but Japanese youth are definitely more comfortable with their hedonistic culture than us American hedonists are. They feel much more at ease celebrating it than we do.
Only three weeks to go and then I am done with school, and off to start my week or so of free time before my flight to the Big Apple. What to do? Leaving the country would be too expensive (it's O-bon season, the holiday where everyone's ancestors come out of the ground to do some kind of spiritual dance, and all the living dance too, and people eat street food and sing, weee!), but buying a hyper-cheap O-bon season rail pass for young people is tantalizing. We'll see how this all pans out.
Monday, July 16, 2007
to Sapporo to visit Mike Donohue
Speech went off without a hitch, midterm test was like a summer breeze off Mount Hakodate, and my trip to Sapporo was an unmeasurable success despite some faulty travel planning. My initial plan was to stick it to the Man and try to ride the train for free using my expired Tohoku rail pass. Unfortunately, the good men at Sapporo Station actually check dubious passes flashed at them by disembarking gaijin youngsters, and as soon as the attendent took my pass for a second look, i knew that all was lost. He gave it to his superior, who gazed over it while making discomforted faces, and ultimately tried to explain to me a number of things wrong with using said pass:
1. It covered the Tohoku area, which is not Hokkaido. Wrong island.
2. It was about one week expired.
3. There was pretty much no sensible way i could've been confused enough to think it was usable.
I desperately came up with a dumb story about how i mixed up the Japanese year 17 with the date, which was July 2nd, but he didn't buy it. Neither did the English-speaking staff who was sent for to aid in the appropriation of my money. She was quite pushy and told me repeatedly to "pay now," pointing to the paper upon which was written the exorbitant sum of 8800 yen. I had no choice but to pay, giving them all sour looks but secretly thanking the god of business prosperity, Ebisu-sama, for saving me from a night in jail. I mean, i suppose it was slightly criminal, but since it worked before in the boons of Tohoku, where i used that limited pass time and time again even though it should've been used up, i thought it would work here too, in the sprawling metropolis of Sapporo. Think again, bandit! A lesson for anyone looking to cheat the Japanese Railways company--they will eventually catch you and make you pay the proper fare for a one-way ticket, and send you off feeling ashamed and dishonored, which in Japan is worse than paying 8800 yen.
The purpose of the trip was to visit Mike Donohue, a jolly good friend from Duke who is currently engrossed in planning his ambitious master's project concerning agricultural tourism in Hokkaido, apparently a booming financial frontier. He currently resides with his lovely and animated girlfriend Tomoko, who is a woman of many faces, literally. Well, she only has one face, but she manages to contort it into a variety of expressions, all perfectly fitting for the situation at hand. The time spent with them was nonstop fun. We went to the beach and played soccer and volleyball and a sandcastle game with Tomoko's friends, we went to the Sapporo Bier Garten and ate off a grill and drank ridiculously large glasses of beer, we ate at an eel restaurant that served the eel's heart in a salty soup, Mike and I did a two-man karaoke session that was more fun than most four-man sessions i've had, we had a scallop eating fest with delivered microbrew beer at their apartment with friends, but the most memorable moments were spent playing the New Mario Brothers on DS while Mike played Warcraft as sumo blasted on his tv. Man can those Mongolian guys sumo!
I am back in Hakodate now and classes have begun again. We "learned" about how a law gets made in Japan and the structure of the Japanese government today. I put that in quotes because i must have blacked out five times during class from a combination of sheer boredom, complete lack of understanding, and the sheer number of long vocabulary words. I mean, i can't even explain that stuff in English, about my own country! Semester two, here i come!
1. It covered the Tohoku area, which is not Hokkaido. Wrong island.
2. It was about one week expired.
3. There was pretty much no sensible way i could've been confused enough to think it was usable.
I desperately came up with a dumb story about how i mixed up the Japanese year 17 with the date, which was July 2nd, but he didn't buy it. Neither did the English-speaking staff who was sent for to aid in the appropriation of my money. She was quite pushy and told me repeatedly to "pay now," pointing to the paper upon which was written the exorbitant sum of 8800 yen. I had no choice but to pay, giving them all sour looks but secretly thanking the god of business prosperity, Ebisu-sama, for saving me from a night in jail. I mean, i suppose it was slightly criminal, but since it worked before in the boons of Tohoku, where i used that limited pass time and time again even though it should've been used up, i thought it would work here too, in the sprawling metropolis of Sapporo. Think again, bandit! A lesson for anyone looking to cheat the Japanese Railways company--they will eventually catch you and make you pay the proper fare for a one-way ticket, and send you off feeling ashamed and dishonored, which in Japan is worse than paying 8800 yen.
The purpose of the trip was to visit Mike Donohue, a jolly good friend from Duke who is currently engrossed in planning his ambitious master's project concerning agricultural tourism in Hokkaido, apparently a booming financial frontier. He currently resides with his lovely and animated girlfriend Tomoko, who is a woman of many faces, literally. Well, she only has one face, but she manages to contort it into a variety of expressions, all perfectly fitting for the situation at hand. The time spent with them was nonstop fun. We went to the beach and played soccer and volleyball and a sandcastle game with Tomoko's friends, we went to the Sapporo Bier Garten and ate off a grill and drank ridiculously large glasses of beer, we ate at an eel restaurant that served the eel's heart in a salty soup, Mike and I did a two-man karaoke session that was more fun than most four-man sessions i've had, we had a scallop eating fest with delivered microbrew beer at their apartment with friends, but the most memorable moments were spent playing the New Mario Brothers on DS while Mike played Warcraft as sumo blasted on his tv. Man can those Mongolian guys sumo!
I am back in Hakodate now and classes have begun again. We "learned" about how a law gets made in Japan and the structure of the Japanese government today. I put that in quotes because i must have blacked out five times during class from a combination of sheer boredom, complete lack of understanding, and the sheer number of long vocabulary words. I mean, i can't even explain that stuff in English, about my own country! Semester two, here i come!
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
new photos up, and speech matters
That's right, on Flickr. Please enjoy.
Speech contest is tomorrow and there is absolutely no hope of memorizing my monster of a speech. I could barely read some of the kanji while reading it to Otosan. But it'll be great to speak about whaling in front of an audience, especially in Japan. The gist of my speech is this: "Whaling is an issue worthy of our concern, but when compared to the damage being done to global fisheries by overfishing, trawling, and other destructive consumptive practices, the taking of whales by a few countries is negligible, regardless of our culture's view that whales are cute and therefore should never be killed. It's ironic that a country who once whaled its way all the way to Japan in order to open its borders to trade now wants to stop the practice altogether. Whaling can be ecologically sound if proper management is implemented and laws are abided by. After all, if prolific species are taken instead of imperiled ones, what's the big deal? Let's focus instead on the larger marine problems that plague our day." In much less dignified language, but with complexity enough to ensure my stumbling come presentation time, my speech was written. Wish me luck!
Speech contest is tomorrow and there is absolutely no hope of memorizing my monster of a speech. I could barely read some of the kanji while reading it to Otosan. But it'll be great to speak about whaling in front of an audience, especially in Japan. The gist of my speech is this: "Whaling is an issue worthy of our concern, but when compared to the damage being done to global fisheries by overfishing, trawling, and other destructive consumptive practices, the taking of whales by a few countries is negligible, regardless of our culture's view that whales are cute and therefore should never be killed. It's ironic that a country who once whaled its way all the way to Japan in order to open its borders to trade now wants to stop the practice altogether. Whaling can be ecologically sound if proper management is implemented and laws are abided by. After all, if prolific species are taken instead of imperiled ones, what's the big deal? Let's focus instead on the larger marine problems that plague our day." In much less dignified language, but with complexity enough to ensure my stumbling come presentation time, my speech was written. Wish me luck!
Monday, July 9, 2007
so i guess everything's okay
I'm dealing with it. In response to a vicious session of mixi.jp (Japanese Facebook) complaining, my good friend Akiko from Duke responded as such: "That's too bad that things aren't working out. Well, gambatte ne! (keep doing your best)!" Such a Japanese answer. And such a perfect one. You see, the typical American response would be, "Man, your host parents sound like tools. Get the hell out of there as fast as you can and have some fun this summer!" But the Japanese love trying hard. And I think that's what I'll do. When in Rome and all that business. After all, day to day it's really not all that bad. Otosan had his birthday a few days ago and we celebrated on Sunday with seafood spaghetti and Okaasan-made cake. I even got to play basketball with my neighbor Oniisan (my host older brother-in-law, married to my host older sister) and my host cousins. I think i just need to get used to living here, and to the rituals of my family and their ins-and-outs. It is still hard sometimes, but what the hell, i'll gambatte like the rest of them! Thank you Akiko for your Japanese ingenuity.
I've been biking to school intermittently, and along part of the way is a staggeringly beautiful view of a port along the sparkling ocean. The ride is mostly flat and not that trying on the muscles, but the way back is up a steep mountain and not pleasurable in most senses, but my legs are getting used to it. As per a speech-writing assignment, I wrote a speech about my views on whaling, and I need to memorize it in about a day to present it to class. It's already gone through two drafts, and today i sat with my teacher after class while she hammered me with demands for quick responses to quick questions, such as how to rephrase a number of sentences, and she transcribed my reponses onto paper as i said them. This was almost too stressful to bear, since i usually blunder through broken sentences to get my point across, and rarely speak in grammatically correct and well-thought-out written prose. Regardless, i need to rewrite the stupid thing and hand it in again tomorrow, and since the presentation is in two days i will have but one day to burn it into my brain. I would also like to mention that this speech contains terms like "endangered species" and "overfishing." Gambarimasu! (present-tense form of gambaru, to try hard in the face of difficulty with the intent of succeding... yes, it's a beautiful language).
Going to Sapporo this weekend to visit Mike Donohue, my friend from Duke. He's doing his Master's Project research on agrotourism in Hokkaido, and i'll be staying with him and his girlfriend, i think. Until next time!
I've been biking to school intermittently, and along part of the way is a staggeringly beautiful view of a port along the sparkling ocean. The ride is mostly flat and not that trying on the muscles, but the way back is up a steep mountain and not pleasurable in most senses, but my legs are getting used to it. As per a speech-writing assignment, I wrote a speech about my views on whaling, and I need to memorize it in about a day to present it to class. It's already gone through two drafts, and today i sat with my teacher after class while she hammered me with demands for quick responses to quick questions, such as how to rephrase a number of sentences, and she transcribed my reponses onto paper as i said them. This was almost too stressful to bear, since i usually blunder through broken sentences to get my point across, and rarely speak in grammatically correct and well-thought-out written prose. Regardless, i need to rewrite the stupid thing and hand it in again tomorrow, and since the presentation is in two days i will have but one day to burn it into my brain. I would also like to mention that this speech contains terms like "endangered species" and "overfishing." Gambarimasu! (present-tense form of gambaru, to try hard in the face of difficulty with the intent of succeding... yes, it's a beautiful language).
Going to Sapporo this weekend to visit Mike Donohue, my friend from Duke. He's doing his Master's Project research on agrotourism in Hokkaido, and i'll be staying with him and his girlfriend, i think. Until next time!
Monday, July 2, 2007
got a lot off my chest
You never know how much Japanese you can speak until your emotions take hold. I made an appointment with Ozawa-san, the flamboyantly gay director of student services, last week to talk today about my abominably boring host family, and I just had a long talk with him. He sat and nodded while I rambled in broken sentences about all the things that bothered me about my host family. Apparently Okaasan is notorious around the office for being annoying and too strict with her host students. Ozawa-san said that they could switch me after school break, which is in a week. I'm pretty happy about this. He also encouraged me to start a fight with them, I suppose in order to fan the flames and justify the switch, but I don't know about that. I told him that I don't feel comfortable arguing in a language I'm not fluent in. He looked skeptical. I then said, "Actually, Okaasan is really scary." And then he nodded understandingly. All I want is some fruitful conversation and an occasional outing with the fams. Not too much to ask. And if my family is too busy to spend time with some American guy, fine, but don't participate in an exchange program then. Regardless, I feel good having gotten that off my chest and onto the chest of Ozawa-san, who must now discuss this matter with the office. My fingers, toes, and eyes are all crossed. Okaasan, in her apron holding a dripping sponge, will probably tell me to uncross my eyes when I get home.
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