April 10th, 11th, 12th-Finishing the Week
I’ve decided to put three days filled with action, excitement, adventure, discovery, wonder, and triumph into one journal entry for a few reasons. First, I think that might help me to eliminate some of the excess baggage that my journal entries may be carrying. Second, I can’t exactly remember everything that’s happened in the past few days with the same sparkling detail as I could if it had happened today. And finally, I’m glad I’m doing these journal entries, and if I start missing a lot of them then I will be discouraged to start again. So, I just want to get up to date on everything, so I would feel like I’m behind all the time. So, let’s just get started.
I’ll just begin by filling you in on the major events that happened at school….or….shall I say….those events which I remember! On my third day of school, Thursday, we had a welcoming ceremony for new students (first year students). The ceremony ended up lasting two hours! First they read the name of every single person in the entering class (about 300-400 students I would estimate). Then the principal made a really long speech that I understood none of. Then all the teachers when on stage and stood there for a while and came down. And then there were some other teachers standing on the side of the gym whose names were called and they bowed etc etc. To sum it up I’m going to have to draw that same parallel between this assembly and the bar mitzvah….standing, sitting, endless, boring, incomprehensible to those outside the circle. Some of the guys actually fell asleep during the thing. I tried to catch a few Z’s but was unable to. At least this time we all had chairs, so that was cool. After the assembly was over, the band (in the balcony at the back of the gym) played “Sekei ni Hitotsu Dake no Hana” (a very popular song out in Japan now by Smap—download it if you have the urge—it’s good). Then we all cleaned up all the chairs in the gym (which there were about a 1,000….no joke). Many hands make light work though. Of course I was helping, and whenever I would help someone do something, the person I was helping would start shouting my name and giggling and people would pat me on the back or try to shake my hand like I was some kind of politician. The day ended up just being a half-day, so we were done around 12:30 in the afternoon. I wasn’t sure whether to go home with Eri or to do something else at school. I decided I wanted to go to the exercise area in the gym and work out if I could. The facilities are modest, but they’re usable. Before I got anywhere though (out of the parking lot), I started talking to my friends from the previous day that I met. They were all going to karaoke (pronounced like KARA-OK….with your “R” sounding more like an “L.” Americans say CARRY-ohky and it really makes me mad….whatever…I pronounced it wrong before I came to Japan too). They said I should come so I decided to go with them instead of going to the gym that was probably occupied by the orchestra tooting their horns anyway. There ended up being 7 or 8 people there (all girls) in two rooms. I think we sang every song in the place and after about 4 hours of screaming and jumping up and down (not me….them) I was ready to leave when three of them (the three that live in my neighborhood) said they were going home. I had fun though. I got to sing some Ayumi Hamasaki and Chihiro Onitsuka and Morning Musume. I even had a couple of requests like “I Want it That Way” by the Backstreet Boys and “All the Things She Said” by T.A.T.U…..not like I can sing….but they seemed to enjoy it. On the way home I ended up talking to one of the girls the entire way. We were speaking all in Japanese so at one point when she was trying to explain something to me I told her to go for it in English…that didn’t work out too well, but it was nice that the effort was made. I’m sure I made a whole lot of mistakes in the Japanese but she said she understood what I was saying and all that, so that’s what counts….communication.
Before I start on Friday, I’m going to take a little break here and talk about my perception of something. Yeah, that was very general. I’m not really sure how to explain this next topic in a broad sense, so let me just get right into it. It will probably be very confusing and convoluted because it’s a complicated topic that you probably can’t understand unless you actually experience it…which would mean you’re me…or at least someone who’s been in my situation. When I’m with Japanese people (every day now of course), and I ask them to say something in English. Or like…if my head is going to explode and I’ve been speaking Japanese to them the whole time and I just want a few minutes rest for my cranium, I’ll propose we practice speaking English. And even though I know they’re Japanese and that Japanese is their first language, it seems odd to me, in some distant far back part of my brain, that they can’t speak English. Ok, now you’re really confused, so let me explain myself. I’m sure that the only reason I have this perception is because I’m an American and I come from a place where you can see pretty much every nationality and as far as I’m concerned they’re all Americans if they’re living here. And these people that you see in the US speak English (many of them but not all of course). Anyway, the point is that ANY of these people that I see on a daily basis COULD be people that you see in the United States just because you can any kind of person in the United States and you expect them to speak English. But the truth of the matter of course is that they aren’t American or English speaking at all; most of them have never been to the United States; they probably have a skewed or inaccurate impression of what the US is, and they may never go to the US in their entire lives. This is the only world that they really know. And it’s just a weird feeling when I stop to think about all of that. It was especially weird when I was hanging out with Kozue in Tokyo and Hiromi in Osaka because their English actually wasn’t so bad. So, I could actually speak relatively normal English to them and they’d understand. So it was just really foreign (excuse the pun) to me how these people, who were just like any other Japanese person aside from their English abilities, were able to understand and talk to me. Maybe the Japanese people think the same thing when they see this American kid speaking to them in Japanese and seeing him able to understand them when they speak their own language to a foreigner. Ahhh…once you get into it and you’re in the middle of this stuff, you start thinking about these things and it messes with your head. You definitely start asking yourself questions like, “Who am I?” “Who are these people?” “What is humanity and what do we all mean to each other?” “Where are we going and what’s going to happen if/when we get there?” OK OK OK OK OK by now you’re probably beside yourself with boredom and your eyes have probably rolled up into your skull because of the things I’ve been saying, but just take my word for it. Ok, I’ll get back to the journal entry now.
So Friday was my last day of school this week. Some schools in Japan still have Saturday as a school day, but I think many of them are trying to faze that out. In fact, I think that my high school here might have just gotten put that into effect last year. It was raining on Friday, so mom drove Eri and I to school instead of riding out bikes. It was a full day of school, but it still wasn’t entirely normal. First and second periods started out with a test that was supposed to evaluate your personality and tell you what you might be in the future. I was offered the chance to take this test but I didn’t bother because I couldn’t read any of the questions so it was just pointless. Instead, I talked with Sam (Canadian teacher) for a while and we walked around the school a bit and chatted. Then I looked at one of my Japanese books for a while but it was hard to concentrate because I was tired and there were a lot of people walking around the office doing their things. During third period I was back in class for some kind of history class. I believe it’s a financial history class. Surprisingly, I believe I understand the main concepts that the teacher presented. First he started talking about first world countries and economies. Then he went into a history of Japan and was talking about how the end of the second world war affected inflation in Japan and how Japan lost its territories in China, Korea, the Philippines, and all those places and how people were returning to Japan from those areas. I was pretty proud of myself for getting the general idea but of course it’s not like I understand nearly enough to function in the class. Next I had natural science. In this class I actually got my own book at the end of class, so that was cool. We didn’t do anything in the class except fill out these little sheets about ourselves and then we did little introductions to the class introducing the person sitting next to us. I didn’t do so well because I couldn’t read the sheet or read what he had written there so he was whispering what it said and then I would say it. I don’t know why the teacher had me do it…I figured it was pretty obvious that I didn’t know what was going on. It was ok though. The teacher is young though and seems like a nice guy. He speaks every quickly though and I understood less of what he said compared with the last teacher. After lunch, during 5th and 6th periods, I went to the gym to see the presentation for the school clubs. The assembly was just for first year students, but since I might as well be a first year student, they said it was ok for me to go too. The assembly, which lasted two hours, was all about the after school activities and clubs that the school had to offer. Clubs are done differently in Japan than they are in the US. First of all, you can only join 1 club. Second of all, the club could be anything from a sport like baseball, soccer, badminton, volleyball, basketball, archery, karate, or boating, to something cultural like photography, cartooning, flower arranging, orchestra, and marching band. Some of the demonstrations were pretty cool. I’d say I was most impressed with the archery. The two demonstrators wore clothing that looked like it came from the Japanese feudal period, and their bows were about 4 or 5 feet long. They were quite good though and very precise. I almost decided to join that club, but I decided to go with the boat club. The boat club (the same as crew in which they use long slender boats with the sliding seats) seems like fun. The school is right on a river so that makes it easy to practice. The team is small (only 7 people I believe). I’ll probably get in really good shape though because they practice for 2 hours every day. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that much exercise in my entire life, so we’ll see what happens. I can’t say that I’d object to getting in better shape though hehehehe. After the assembly, we had a short homeroom and the day was over around 4pm. After mom picked us up, we were home for a couple of hours and then we headed out to pick up dad and go to a yakitori place to celebrate mom’s birthday. The yakitori wasn’t as good as I imagined it would be. Actually, it had its ups and downs. Some of the normal things (just regular grilled chicken on a stick) was really tasty…while other things….were just gross like the chicken liver (eeeewwww) or the chicken skin. The skin didn’t taste bad or have a bad texture; it was just gross when they told me it was skin. It was fun though and I think we all had a good time.
Today (Saturday) I woke up around 10am. I wasn’t really sure what to do with myself today because I was unable to make plans with anyone the previous night. So, I talked with some people at home online for a while and then I finally got myself to go downstairs. I had breakfast (an interesting mix of scrambled eggs with ketchup, bacon, salad, sweet bread with raisins, and tea). Mom and dad went out shopping for something, Eri had gone to Karaoke with her friend, and Ryoichi was playing next door. I didn’t want to sit at home all day so I decided to go out on my bike and just explore without getting lost. I think my chances for getting lost would have been pretty high had it not been for the fact that I ended up going the one direction that I know….to school. That turned out to be not a bad choice though because there was a lot of stuff going on at school. I watched a good portion of the baseball game between Miyasho and some other school. I was able to see the guys from my homeroom (I think they are all on the team) and they got a kick out of it that I was watching their game. There was also a basketball game going on inside the gym, but that was of limited interest to me because it wasn’t even Miyasho in the game…it was two other schools that I guess were having their game at our school. When it started to get late, I left the game (I think Miyasho was winning at the time), and went to a 100 yen store to get some things like pencils, toothpaste, a toothbrush, t-shirts, a notebook…things like that. Oh!!!! Did I tell you?!?!?! In Japanese high schools, after we have lunch, everyone breaks out their toothbrush and toothpaste and goes to brush their teeth!!!!!! If you think about it, it makes sense, but it was just really weird the first time it happened. The other day I was brushing my teeth and it felt really weird doing it with so many people around in the hallway (sinks are in the hallway), and I felt kind of self conscious. Anyway, when I got home we had dinner and I was really hungry because I hadn’t eaten lunch. After dinner which watched some endless Japanese television that I got absolutely nothing out of. And then I came upstairs to write this journal entry. And now…I’m going to go to sleep because it’s late.
One other last little note…I realized that this is probably the first time in my entire life when I’ve wanted the weekend to be over so I could go back to school. School is so fun now and nothing happens on the weekend. I also can’t wait to get started on the boat team. I don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow. I’ll figure it out though eventually and then you’ll hear about it!
-Maikeru