This entry was posted on 2001-04-09
Nikko
Being in Tokyo gives one a sense of importance. It's such a big, busy, vibrant, and powerful city. I've never really felt this way in any other city. But Tokyo's different. Its crowded neon lit streets at night, busy wide shopping avenues by day make Tokyo unlike any city in the world and even unlike any other city in Japan. I think that I've already mentioned that Tokyo has much beauty. Most other Japanese cities (with the exception of Hiroshima) are quite ugly.
I am really glad that I have the opportunity to explore this city on my own for a few days. When I lived in the Kansai area, I never really saw much of Tokyo.
Today I left Tokyo for the day to see Nikko, a national park in the mountains north of here with many shrines and temples.
I spent most of the day hiking the mountains around Nikko, not exploring the shrines and temples. For some reason the shrines and temples seemed too touristy and didn't really excite me (hmmm... could that be because I lived in Kyoto, the city with over 1,000 shrines and temples). And hiking was really good for me. The exercise was much needed and the mountains are amazingly beautiful. Besides, I got far off the beaten path and spent a lot of time talking to Nikko locals. Great Japanese practice and again I saw parts of the area that the average tourists usually misses.
The town of Nikko itself is touristy and unimpressive. I didn't want to spend a long time in town because everything is in English and I felt as if I were wasting my time (if you can't tell by now I am on a mission to practice and drastically improve my Japanese). After about five minutes in town I retreated back to the mountains.
I poked around some amazing Japanese gardens (I have a strange obsession for Japanese gardens. Hmmm... Christiansen influence?), walked in the woods for a while, and wrote a few pages of notes in my journal.
After I had enough aimless wandering, I started to focus on working on my research. I had planned to go to a nearby jizo temple. However I managed to forget the name and when I asked the locals about it either they truly had no clue what I was talking about, or didn't want to point me in the right direction of the "abortion temple." Oh well. I took that as a sign of some force from above not wanting me to work today so I just forgot about seeing the temple. Besides, I know of plenty of such temples in the Kyoto/Nara area.
Besides hiking through some beautiful parts of Japan, today's highlight was beating the Japanese at their own game. In Japan, if you are Caucasian, you are automatically an English speaker. Never mind if you are from a non-English speaking country. The Japanese assume that you speak English. It is also assumed that foreigners can only say a few key phrases in Japanese (if any at all) and can never read or write Japanese because kanji and kana is way too advanced and different. At one of the Japanese gardens that I explored today, after I had asked the attendant a question about the garden in Japanese, she precedes to hand me a pamphlet about the garden in English. I looked at her and told her that I would like a Japanese pamphlet because I do not speak English. I felt bad for a second because she looked really embarrassed. But I managed to get a Japanese pamphlet and more importantly, I think that I got my point across that a) not every foreigner speaks English and b) my Japanese reading knowledge is advanced enough to read a pamphlet about gardens (which it really can because as I mentioned before, my reading comprehension skills are much higher than my listening comprehension skills and my main Japanese teacher is nuts about plants, flowers, and gardening, so she taught me all of the names and kanji for the various plants and flowers that are native to Japan). I think that today's incident taught me that the best way to deal when English is spoken back at me (after I said something in Japanese) is to simply pretend that I do not speak English.
A few days ago I got a disturbing e-mail that I figured I'd "respond" to here. It seems that someone out there finds me snobbish about my travels. The person who wrote the e-mail doesn't understand why I don't just face reality and realize that I am an American and that it is ok for me to speak English when people speak it to me. And this person doesn't think that I should go out of my way to avoid English and only speak Japanese. Obviously this person does not understand what Japanese means to me. For me, learning Japanese is my proudest accomplishment ever. It wasn't easy (and man, it's still not), and it took a looong time for me to get to this point. I am happy that I can really use it over here, and for three weeks I have an amazing opportunity to practice, re-learn, and learn more. Why should I resort to English? It frustrates me to no end when I speak Japanese to people and they feel the need to speak English back to me. It's obvious that I can hold my own in Japanese. And it annoys me that a casual reader of my journal (from the e-mail I could tell that this person has not read many of my entries) would tell me that I'm snotty about my abilities. Anyone out there who has ever studied a foreign language knows how much fun and how great it is to go to another country and practice the language that was taught in a class room. Besides the fact that for me, Japanese is not only just another foreign language that I have studied. It has become my life. I think that the fact that I am about to enter graduate school in East Asian Languages and Cultures proves that. Snotty? No. Excited and eager to practice and learn more? Yes. (there's always more learning to be done when studying a foreign language).
This will make that e-mailer happy. Tomorrow I am doing a touristy thing. I am going to Fujisan (Mt. Fuji). Every time I have tried to see Fujisan it has been too cloudy. So I decided to actually go to Hakone and pray that the weather provides magnificent views of Fujisan. Since JR doesn't go to Hakone, I'd have to take a private line which would cost about 4,000 yen roundtrip. So I decided to do this right. Yes, I am going on a tour. I am taking a bus up to the fifth station of Fuji (It's not climbing season yet so none of the huts are open. I refuse to climb when nothing's open), taking a boat ride in the Hakone/Fuji Five Lakes area, and having lunch at a vista with a lovely view of Fujisan. After all of that, I hope and pray that this time Fuji won't be covered by clouds and that I will get to see the tallest and most sacred mountain in all of Japan.
See, even I sometimes take the beaten path. . . I do hope that the tour is in Japanese (sometimes such typical tourist spot tours in Japan tend to be in English), though. But if not, I can manage for a day (especially if I get to see Fujisan!).
Since I have to get up early tomorrow, I'm not going out to enjoy Tokyo's nightlife. Depending on how I feel tomorrow night, I may try to go out to a retro club near Nipponbashi. We'll see...
Again, I apologize how poorly this entry is written. Tonight (like last night) I am extremely tired and unfocused. I think I have writers block. I hope I can shake it off my tomorrow to write fabulous things about Fujisan.
Mata ashita!