June 19th-A Break from Madness and a Long Awaited Meeting
Although the title of the journal entry indicates that it’s for June 19th, I am really writing this on the night of June 20. Why the discrepancy in the title? Well, I intend to include events from yesterday and conclude with today’s events. I wish I could remember yesterday better…that would make it easier to write this journal entry. Well, as always I’ll do my best. Before we go to yesterday we have to take a little time machine trip back to…Wednesday! Put your time travel caps on! WHEEEE…here we go! Ok, that was lame. So, I think I already mentioned this is the last journal entry, but on Wednesday there was talk of a typhoon coming on Thursday. There was also talk of school being canceled if the wind and rain were too strong, or if the trains were canceled. If the trains are canceled they need to cancel school because I lot of kids take a train to get to school. Well, they take the train to Miyazaki station and then they take their bikes the rest of the way. Ippei and Satoshi do that because they live down by Kodomo no Kuni. Anyhoo, the plan was that if school were going to be canceled we would get a phone call around 5am (yeah…just like American schools on a snow day). Well, the phone call came, but it was a little strange. They said that they hadn’t decided if school should be canceled, so if they called again, there would be school, and if they didn’t call again there was no school. But the ambiguous point of course is: how long do you wait for the second call? We were just supposed to wait until it came. I sent some e-mails to my friends asking them what the deal was and they didn’t know either. So, I started to get dressed getting as far as putting on my socks and then I fell asleep on my bed again with my socks and pajamas on. At 10am my host mother and brother awakened me. My host mother had to do some cleaning so she wanted me to play with Kouki so he wouldn’t be getting in the way while she was trying to work. He dumped all his Power Ranger toys on my floor and I just passed some time with him picking up the different plastic models and asking him about that. I figured that passed for playing as long as he was occupied and not complaining. Around 11am or so he decided he wanted to watch cartoons so we did that for a while and then we had lunch with Mom while looking out the window at the scary weather. It only rained periodically, but the wind was very strong and the trees were being blown all over the place. Then I got some e-mails from my friends saying that we were going to have the last 2 periods of the day (5 and 6) starting at their regular time (1:20pm). If turned out that I was able to get a ride to school from my host father. We put my bike in the back of his truck and he took my to school. As we got close to school it actually started to lighten up and by the time I got into school, the sun had come out! Even though it was warm and pretty humid from all the rain, I was still happy. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen sun or a blue sky. The two classes went by quickly and then we had boat practice. It wasn’t really a tough practice because most people were going to the Kyushu boat conference. We spent some time getting things ready for the trip up to Nagasaki (where the athletic conference is) and then we did a little training. I ended up on the rowing machine for about 20 minutes. I also did some calisthenics with the other people. The first year guys went running. I hadn’t brought my sneakers (because they stink and they’re soaked) so I’m glad that I didn’t have to go running. After practice I had time to go to the post office and mailed a couple of letters. As I got close to home it started to rain lightly but then it stopped again so it was ok. We had curry rice for dinner. It wasn’t as good as my last host mother’s curry rice…but…it’s still curry rice and that means it’s delicious so it was fine. It was just a little bit too spicy and there were a lot of mushrooms in it and that was yucky.
This morning I was awakened at 4:40am not by roosters but by my cell phone. I had been sensible and put it on silent mode. But even when it’s on silent mode, the vibration still goes off and the sound of it vibrating in the little recharge cradle next to my bed woke me up. It was an e-mail from my good friend Oana (in America!) letting me know that we would graduate in a couple of hours. I certainly hope that I graduated too. It would be REALLY REALLY REALLY bad if for some reason they couldn’t give me a diploma and I had to repeat like half of my senior year or something. Well…let’s just assume that’s not the case. At any rate, I fell back asleep and woke up at the regular time when my alarm went off at 6:10am. During breakfast it started raining and then it stopped and then as I was getting dressed it started to rain lightly again. I decided that I would do everything in my power to avoid putting on my rain suit again. I hate that thing so much. It makes me feel absolutely disgusting and it doesn’t even keep the water out!!!! So today I didn’t even bring the bloody thing with me! Instead I went with the umbrella strategy that I haven’t tried before. It was barely raining for almost the entire time so I didn’t even have to deploy the umbrella until I got near to school. It worked pretty well though! I didn’t feel quite as comfortable with just one hand on the handle bars and the other hand on the umbrella, but it was definitely preferable to getting wet with water and sweat. School was all right today. I was mad at myself though because in a short period of time I realized that I had forgotten a number of things. I don’t even want to go into it now. I knew that everything would be ok in the end, but it just made me feel dumb. And then as I was realizing all my follies I couldn’t even find my name tag (that everyone has to wear) that I had seen in my school bag not even 15 minutes earlier. I thought I had lost that too (big problem) but then I found it attached to my t-shirt that I had thrown on the floor when I emptied the contents of my bag to look for the nametag.
In the morning it wasn’t raining but the sky was very gray. Then it started to lighten up a little bit and gradually the clouds thinned enough so you could even call it sunny and not be kidding yourself! This alone put me in a good mood. When you get one nice day in a week or two of solid rain…you enjoy it while you can! After I had finished eating lunch, Chie brought me out into the hall. I got the real feeling that she was trying to get my away from all the people. Of course the classroom was filled with people eating their lunches, but there was almost no one in the hallway. She took out a roll of while paper that had a blue ribbon tied around it. She handed it to me and congratulated me on my graduation from high school. I opened it up and saw that she beautifully crafted a diploma for me. It was completely done in Japanese characters that she had painstakingly written using ink and a calligraphy brush. It really is very very nice and certainly suitable for framing. I totally want to hang it in my dorm room! It really made me happy because I had been a little depressed about missing my graduation ceremony while I ate breakfast in my pajamas this morning. I thought quickly though and got Chie to take a picture of me holding me diploma. I told her that that’s what everyone does in America after they get their diploma. So, she took the picture and you can see it on this Website!
Before and after that very pleasant event, the day went by pretty slowly, but I was also apprehensive for the end of the day. You ask why? Well, in order for you to understand this I have to take you back a long time ago…let’s say…5 months about. I’m really not sure how long it was, but I would guess it was about that long. Back about 5 months ago when I heard from my exchange program that I would be living in Miyazaki, I went on America Online and searched for people living in Miyazaki. I wanted to find out something about the town I would be living in for four months. I figured the best way to get information or to get a sense of the place would be to talk to someone who actually lives there. I also though, if I’m lucky, I might be able to make a friend or two before I even get there! Well, I didn’t have that much luck. I ended up just talking to two people online. One person was an entertainer who used to work in Miyazaki and now lives in Hawaii. He absolutely loved Miyazaki and was jealous of me because I was going there and he wasn’t. I figured that was a good sign if he sounded like he’d rather be in Miyazaki than in Hawaii. The other person I talked to was one Yumi Nagashima. I found out right away that she wasn’t even in Miyazaki. In fact, much to my surprise, she was an exchange student living in Harrisburg, PA! As it went, we corresponded quite frequently over the Internet using e-mail or instant messenger. She told me about Miyazaki and what it was like to be an exchange student and about her experiences in America. I told her about how I would be an exchange student in Miyazaki and about my previous experiences in Japan. I wanted her to come to New Jersey, even for a couple days, so I could take her to New York. She had never been and her host family wasn’t planning on taking her either. Her host family said no though because I guess they felt responsible for taking care of her and didn’t want her going off to stay with some strange family (my family) for a couple of days. Of course we were disappointed, but we made plans almost right away to hang out when we were both in Miyazaki. She was coming back to Miyazaki in June and I was staying until the end of July so we knew we had time. Well, Yumi arrived in Tokyo on June 17th and made it back to Miyazaki with her mother the day before yesterday. When she had arrived in Tokyo she sent me some e-mails from her Mom’s phone and decided we could meet on Friday because I didn’t have to go to club practice. I called her last night to make the definite plans. It was the first time we had talked to each other on the phone. We spoke entirely in Japanese because I remembered talking to her about how when she’s back in Japan we should speak Japanese. When she was in the US we spoke to each other almost entirely in English. Well, when I got off the phone I was pretty excited to finally meet her. I’d only been looking forward to it for months and months. For as long as I could remember talking to her I had been thinking about how fantastic it would be to finally meet her…but not just anywhere…meet her in Miyazaki! It was one of the things that I was looking forward to most about coming to Miyazaki (especially since I didn’t really know what to expect from Miyazaki). What made it even a little bit better was that she wouldn’t been in Miyazaki when I got there and yet the chance to meet her was still something I could look forward to after a couple months of waiting.
I was thinking about all of this as I sped along the bike path on the sidewalk after school. We had decided to meet at 4:10pm in front of Miyazaki station and I didn’t want to be late. The sun was shining and it was warm. I had brought a change of clothes though so I didn’t really worry about rushing—even if it made me sweaty. As I was waiting at the traffic light, at the final intersection before the station, I was thinking about how I had waited so long for this moment and that even though it didn’t seem like I’d been waiting that long, when I thought about what it was like when I first thought about meeting Yumi—it seemed like AGES ago. And then I realized, as the light turned green and I started to cross the intersection, that when I got to the other side she would probably be there…and then as I comprehended this…there she was.
I recognized her almost instantly (I’d seen pictures of her before). As I approached she said, “Hi.” I said hi back to her and then I went into Japanese. I just briefly explained that I was going to go lock up my bike and then I wanted to change my clothes in the train station bathroom because my uniform stank. She said that was fine, so I ran and did those things, came back out, hopped in the car where her mom was waiting behind the wheel and we drove off. Even though this was the first time we had ever met I felt as if I had known her for a long time. We just spoke in Japanese because I wasn’t sure if she wanted to speak English or whether she wanted me to speak Japanese or what, so I just played it safe. There were some silences, but her Mom (who was also looking forward to meeting me) was there too so when she and I didn’t know what to say to each other, she and her mom talked. It makes sense that they might want to talk…I mean…she was gone for a year in America! She didn’t quite look like she did in her pictures. The first picture I saw was of when she was 15 and she’s 17 now. The other pictures I saw were taken at the prom she went to in America. Well, when we got back to her house she changed out of her school uniform (that she’d been where) into regular clothes and she looked more like what I imagined she would look like. So, there we were in her living room just talking about random things with her mom…eating donuts and drinking various things. We were just speaking Japanese and then her mom told me that she wanted to speak English with me. I asked her, in English, if this was true and she just kind of smiled. Then I told her in Japanese that since her mom, who doesn’t speak English, was there too; it’d probably be nice if we just spoke Japanese to be polite. Then she said in English that I was a nice guy. When her mom went into the other room to get something, I asked Yumi in English if she wanted to speak English with me. She said yes because English is “kakkouii.” Do you remember what that means? See the last journal entry if you don’t remember. So we started speaking English and Japanese. I must admit it WAS pretty funny, and I could tell that Yumi was enjoying it too. We decided that it was like a secret code. If we’re in Japan and we don’t want anyone to know what we’re saying, all we have to do is speak in English and no one but us would understand what we’re saying. And of course if we’re in America we should speak in Japanese and then no one will understand us then either! I think she said enjoying speaking English to me because I think she wanted to show off in front of her mom. Like, “Look what I can do, Mom!” It was cute though and I’m glad that she enjoyed it. How was her English? Very fantastic! I was quite impressed. She understood everything I said and I was speaking the same as I would speak to any of my friends in America. I even spoke extra fast sometimes to make sure no one but us would understand and she understood that stuff too. After a little while her friend, who lives across the street, came over. When her friend came over we decided to speak in Japanese so her friend wouldn’t feel left out. Occasionally we went back into English to tell a “secret” or just for fun. She also became very “American” in the year that she spent living in the US. How so? Well, her clothes looked very American compared to what most Japanese wear (the clothes she was wearing she had bought in the US). She also wore her hair up in a ponytail while most Japanese girls leave their hair down. Also, her body language was very American too. For example, when her mom took a couple pictures of us she put her arm around me. Also, when we were back at the station when her mom dropped me back off to get my bike, she gave me a hug to say goodbye. I have can’t remember the last time, if ever, I saw you Japanese people give each other a hug—especially if it’s just two friends. I think one reason I felt very comfortable with her was because she acted American in many ways. We definitely had fun today and we’re sticking with out plan of hanging out as much as we can before I leave. She isn’t going to be going back to school until the summer semester (starting in late July) so she’ll be free most of the time to hang out. We’ve been planning for months to go to the Ocean Dome together so maybe we can do that once it reopens on July 1st. She’s embarrassed though because in America she gained 10kg (about 22 lbs) and she doesn’t want to put on a bathing suit. She’s certainly not fat, but I can see where she put on weight where most Japanese girls don’t have any extra weight. Meanwhile, I’ve lost about 7kg (about 15 lbs) since I got to Japan. See!!! That’s what happens. America makes you get fat and Japan makes you get thinner. I still would like to lose about another 5kg though. Anyway, that’s another topic that I talk about a lot so I won’t get into it again now. Yumi’s mom also liked me a lot because she told me about 3 times to come back soon so I could play with Yumi. I even got an e-mail from her saying that today was a lot of fun and that I should come back any time I want. I’m such a good boy. There is no such thing as a parent that doesn’t like me hahahahahahah…not in American, not in Japan, not in Denmark! Where else have I met parents of girls? Well, it’s getting late so I should probably go to sleep. Tomorrow I’m supposed to go to some big park with a field and some ancient burial mounds with my host mother and my host brother. That should me fun (I’m praying it will be at least all right…) so I should rest up for all of that. Good night.
-Maikeru