May 1^st-Living

 

            If you’re reading this, you’re almost certainly aware of the fact that I haven’t written a journal entry in a long time.  How long exactly?  I don’t know.  Check the Website…this Website…and see when the last entry was.  Now, just because I haven’t been writing journal entries, it doesn’t mean that nothing’s happening over here.  It also doesn’t mean that I don’t want to tell you what’s going on or how things are.  It just means that I’m busy.  It also means that many events in my day-to-day life are pretty similar to things that happen on other days, and I don’t really see the point in delving into those things each time I write a journal entry.  So, since this is my first time in a while writing a journal entry, I’m going to do things a little bit differently this time.  You’re going to find some poetry here, some funny little stories, some nice moments in time I’ve been able to enjoy…moments that, through my description, I hope will give you a better idea of what things are like here and what it’s like to be me these days.  Of course this journal entry will include the more traditional description of some things that have been going on too…the kinds of things that would ordinarily appear as main features in an ordinary journal entry.  Ok, I can tell that I’m already drifting off topic, so I’m going to set the scene and then I’ll jump right into things.  Right now, I’m sitting in my room, it’s 9:20pm on a Thursday night, I have my headphones on and I’m listening to an Ayumi Hamasaki CD.  I just had chicken, pasta, and rice for dinner.  I’m a little distracted because I’m exchanging e-mails about this weekend with my new friends Ai and Ayami on my phone.  I just got a couple e-mails from them so I gotta check….I’ll be right back.  Ok, that’s fine.   You know what I hate?  I hate it when people send me e-mails with a million kanji (Japanese characters that the Japanese stole a few of each time they invaded China).  If there are a few kanji that I don’t understand, I don’t mind if I have my Kanji dictionary with me because then I can look them up and I can learn them and next time I see them, hopefully I’ll be able to understand them!  Ok, I’ll get to it now….

            I’m going to start off this journal entry with a poem that I wrote last week.  No, I haven’t gotten artistic all of a sudden; it was an assignment in O.C.C. (English) class.  We read a poem in class called “I am”…I don’t know if it’s famous, but we were supposed to write our own poem based on it.  After I decided what to write my poem about, I didn’t have too much trouble with the English.  So, I was done really quickly and all the other kids were still struggling on the first lines of their poems or hadn’t started at all.  Then one of the three teachers came over to me and asked me if I could translate my poem into Japanese.  I hadn’t written it with the intention of it going into Japanese.  And I told him, “Ummm…I really don’t think I can.”  And he was like, “Please try.”  And I was like, “Well Ok!  I’ll see what I can do!”  I took the next three periods of the day working on the translation.  When I was finished I gave it to Matsuki-sensei to correct my Japanese.  At the end of the day I was supposed to talk to Hidaka-sensei and Kawasaki-sensei about an unrelated matter.  At the meeting Kawasaki-sensei gave me a photocopied version of the poem I’d written that day.  Naturally I was very confused.  I looked on the paper and there were only a few mistakes.  I was quite puzzled, so after the meeting I went to Matsuki-sensei and asked her if she’d actually corrected my work and she said she had and that she was so pleased with what I’d done that she made copies of it and gave it to all the teachers!  Below is my poem.  The segments in red needed to be corrected.  The reason I’m doing this is because I was just so shocked that I’d made so few mistakes.  I was really just making it up as I went along!

 

I Am

私は

 

I am an explorer

私は探検家

I think about the places I’ve been and the places I may go

私は行った場所と行くかも知れない場所について考える

I hear countless things I don’t understand

私は無数の分からない物を聞く

I see things most of my peers will never dream of

私は大部分の友達が夢の中で全然見られない物を見る

I want to find my heading

私の方向が分かりたい

I am driftwood on the open ocean

私は広々としたの海の流木

I ask myself questions with no answers

私自身に答えがない質問を聞く

I begin to realize my place

私の生活の目的を悟り始める

I try to experience new wonders

私は全てのものを経験し試す

I cry for my journey’s conclusion

私の旅の終わりが悲しい

I need to constantly adjust

私はいつも調節しなければならない

I am a pioneer of my generation

私は私の世代の開拓者を一人

I say things I never thought I could understand

私は全然分からないと思っていた言葉と言う

I know something, but in the end, it is nothing

私は何か知っているけど遂に何も知らない

I will always be able to find something new in this world

私はこの世界でいつも新しい物を見つけられる

I can sense the pulse of life and humanity all around me

私は人類と人生の精力を至るところで感じれる

I am an alien on my home planet

私は自分の惑星によそ者

 

Like I said, I was very impressed with myself.  I guess I just never knew I had it in me.  Matsuki-sensei wanted me to show my poem to my host family, so I did and they were impressed to.  She said that she wanted to show my poem to the other teachers because apparently some teachers don’t think my Japanese is any good (I don’t know who, but I’ll have to beat them up), and she wanted to show them that I am a capable guy.  I like Matsuki-sensei; she’s really nice.  Her English pronunciation is pretty appalling, but she can’t help that.  At least she has some sense and when we’re practicing pronunciation in class she has me come to the front of the room and say the words on the vocabulary list twice slowly so everyone can here.  She tells people to look at my mouth and my tongue hahahaha. 

            Ok, that was something a little bit out of the ordinary.  You don’t ordinarily get to read poetry on my little Website.  Now I’ll mix it up a little bit and talk about something a little bit more down-to-earth and straightforward.  This past Monday we had a fieldtrip!  Everyone had been really looking forward to it because…well…I guess they get a kick out of getting to go hang with their friends all day in a park instead of having classes.  See!  Japanese people aren’t so different from Americans!  Oh!  Before I get started, you should know the word for “field trip” in Japanese.  It’s “ensoku” 遠足 and it just means “outing.”  Anyway, the outing was to Heiwadai Koen (Heiwadai Park).  The day started out with everyone arriving at school in their uniforms and then changing into their gym clothes.  After that, everyone gathered on the athletic field and sat in rows according to homeroom and we sat there for about 30 minutes as attendance was taken and the gym teachers yelled rules and stupid reminders at us.  Finally we got to leave…but…we had to leave by homeroom too.  Sometimes this place is like the military.  Of course there were no buses, so we walked…and walked…and walked…in the already blazing sun for about an hour and a half until we got to the park.  The park was nice and there was a really huge tower that was supposed to be a peace tower.  I wanted to take a picture of it, but I didn’t have time really.  Then when we got to the recreational field we sat back down in homerooms.  I guess the Japanese are gluttons for punishment because we ended up sitting in rows like that…cross-legged…. in the fiery presence of the sun for about 2 hours.  First…various people talked about nothing that all…then the principal talked about nothing at all.  And if that wasn’t enough, EVERY SINGLE CLASS IN THE ENTIRE SCHOOL went up in front of the student body individually and introduced themselves!!!  Some classes were nice and brief and just sent two representatives up there to say a few words and sat down.  Other classes went nuts and the entire class (of about 40 or so) went up in front of everyone and sang a song or did a dance.  It was incredibly boring and unnecessary.  After that torturous part was over, my knees were thoroughly roasted and I was hungry and tired.  So, we all had lunch and then there was free time for about an hour or hour and a half or so before we had to go back to school.  During the free time I sat under trees, talked to friends, talked to Sam (the Canadian English teacher here) about Japan and Japanese people, and posed in pictures with random students.  All it really was was a park, but the kids loved it.  They were all going nuts and acting half their age (as they often do) and playing on the swings and jungle gym.  I couple random people, who later revealed themselves as Ai and Ayami started talking to me after I was in their pictures.  They are really nice and cool and I ended up walking with them on the way back to school and talking the whole way.  Since we’d been out and about all day, there wasn’t any boat practice on Monday.  So, I went to Miyazaki station to meet a friend that I thought might be coming to Miyazaki from Osaka, but they never showed up.  It was ok though because I chatted with some random people who were nice!

            On Tuesday (the day after the field trip) it was vacation (Midori no Hi) [Green Day…..no…not the band…] we had boat practice!  Since we had the whole day we went to the park where we can actually get to hop in the boats.  After that was over at 1pm and I was back at Miyazaki station I e-mailed my new friend Ai about hanging out.  It was actually her birthday that day and she turned 18!!!  I had to wait at the station for a while because she failed to respond to my e-mails for some reason.  When we finally got in touch with each other, it turned out she was at Minami Miyazaki station near her house and she was waiting for the train.  We worked it out that I would ride my bike to her instead of her taking the train.  Just as we were making the plans, my phone ran out of juice and started crying to be fed because I’d forgotten to charge it the night before.  I rode really hard and managed to get to the station because Ai gave up and left.  We went back to her house and we hung out with 4 of her other friends.  The afternoon was all right.  I’d say on the whole I had fun and I’m certainly glad I went.  The problem was that it was just kinda boring at times cuz I couldn’t participate in the conversation because I couldn’t follow it.  We ordered some funky Japanese pizza (all Japanese pizza is funky actually) and sat around.  It was nice when I went home because I didn’t have to ride all the way back to Ikimedai (my neighborhood) by myself.  One of Ai’s friends lives in my area and she showed me an awesome short cut that I NEVER EVER EVER would have been able to find on my own.  I like hanging out with just one person because then I can actually make conversation with them and get practice talking.  If there is more than one Japanese person there and me, then I end up getting left behind most of the time because of course they will speak Japanese to each other and I just can’t keep up with that yet.  But when it’s just me and someone else, I am one half of the conversation so I always know what the topic is and what’s going on.  If I don’t understand, the conversation can stop if it’s important until I understand. Ai’s friend was really cool too, so it was nice nice.

            It’s getting late (11:20pm) now so I don’t think I’ll be able to finish this journal entry tonight.  So, I think I’m going to wrap up this journal entry with a bunch of little random things describing some nice moments I’ve had in the past week and a half or so that stuck with me.  I think a lot of them are pretty random, but I think you’ll get the idea.  For some reason, a lot of them happened when I was riding my bike home after school.

 

Holding the handlebars of my bike with one hand while the other searches around in my schoolbag for the next slice of chocopan (bread with chocolate in it…a popular Japanese treat).

 

Looking up at the sky as I ride my bike and not being able to remember the last time I could look at the stars on my way home.

 

Going out in a one-person sculling boat and being on my own in the water for the first time…almost capsizing several times until I got the hang out it…and then gliding over the glittering water while watching fish pop out of the little waves besides my boat.

 

Going over one of the bridges that spans the Oyodo River just after a rain storm…smelling the moisture in the air and all the scents of spring that the rain released from the ground and trees.

 

Lying on the ground outside the Boat practice room with my feet resting on a giant rubber ball as I get ready to do some exercise and having the sun come out from behind the clouds and kiss me on the cheek.

 

Walking to Boat practice after school one day and looking up at the sun sparkling through the leaves of the palm trees and bursting into a rendition of the theme to “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.”

 

 

I think there were more things but that’s all I can remember for now.  I’ll add some more things later of course when I think of them or when more things happen.  There was something else I wanted to talk about too…but…it’s not that important right now so I’ll just save it for another time.  It’s really late and I need to go to sleep.  Good night.

 

-Maikeru