May 26th-40 Days and 40 Nights
Today would be Monday…yes….Monday. Well, let’s start writing this journal entry somewhere back…ummmm…maybe a few days ago. We really should include the weekend in this one—and today too….yeah. Ummm…well, let’s see. Friday? I’m not really sure what I should say about Friday, so let’s just go to Saturday, yeah, that’s a fine place to start. So, we had this boat competition coming up on Sunday (yesterday) so on Saturday our practice started extra early…wonderful. My alarm on my cell phone went off at 5:50am…on a Saturday. Now that’s just wrong! I don’t care what country you’re from, that’s just wrong! Like…to get up earlier on a weekend than you do during the week? That should be a crime. Some things I’ve noticed about these Japanese people—they don’t understand or appreciate the weekend or “The Day of Rest.” Well, anyway, I got out of bed around 6am or a little after, took a shower, didn’t have time for breakfast, and headed out the door on my bike to get to the train station by 7:15am. When I got there I had enough time to buy some snacks to take with me since I hadn’t had time to eat anything at home or on the way either. I ate some little doughnuts in Tanba-sensei’s car and some juice. The practice was supposed to last under the evening like the last all-day practice we had….that bloody practice…well…I won’t think about that now, I might lose my composure. I was prepared to stay the day and had resigned myself to another entirely wasted Saturday when I talked to Tanba-sensei about the practice. He told me that since I wasn’t going to be doing the singles (I row in doubles) that I didn’t have to stay after noon because that’s when the singles practice was and I would have nothing to do. I also told him that I had some plan with my host family to add on an extra little excuse and to make him feel better about letting me leave early when everyone else was leaving today in the evening. By the way, I should just cut in here and tell you that there was an earthquake about 30 minutes ago in Tohoku (northern Japan but still on Honshu—south of Hokkaido of course…if you don’t know where those places are, don’t be a loser and get a map). It was a 6 on the Richter scale and shook things up pretty well. They have some nice footage on the breaking news now of some things shaking around. I just thought you should know that. Well, anyway, what was I saying about practice? I got in some decent practice with Ippei in the singles. They even had the buoys set afloat on the water to mark out the course. That was rather entertaining because we got to hit some of the buoys and splashed water all over ourselves and it was quite amusing to see just how horribly we were off-course hahahahahah…good stuff. By the way, Anne Hathaway’s hair product commercial is playing on TV now….it’s a small world. Ok, it’s time to put food inside myself so I’ll get back soon. Ok, that was good. Well, it wasn’t my favorite food, but I feel better now because I was really hungry before. Let’s see…what did I eat…a couple bowls of white rice, some cubes of grilled tofu, a few slices of beef, a few chunks of pork, some sautéed bean sprouts, some gyoza (dumplings), some other things that I couldn’t identify, C.C. Lemon soda, and vanilla ice cream. Mmmm…Well, anyway, I’m sitting on the couch now and my lower back hurts…I want a massage, and Eri is eating ice cream and Mom is munching on some crunchy things and Ryoichi is lying on the floor, and Dad is just sitting and talking to everyone and everyone is watching TV. They’re watching “Conan.” No, not the Arnold Schwazenneger (sp?) movie…that would be entertaining at least. It’s an animated detective TV show. The main character is a little dorky-looking kid with big glasses named Conan. He’s in the second grade in elementary school (about 8 years old) and he goes around solving crimes. Of course! Why didn’t I think of that!? Well, it’s a TV show that came from the manga (little comic books that are VERY popular in this country). Of course it’s really boring like most Japanese TV, but they get lucky sometimes and actually come out with something entertaining. I’ll talk about TV later, let’s get the rest of the weekend. So when practice was oven Tanba-sensei took me and Manami Miyoshi (3rd grade girl on the team) to the train station so we could go back to Miyazaki. We waited for the train for about 30 minutes and talked about random things and I talked to my mom on the phone for about 10 minutes to pass the time. I wanted Manami to talk to my Mom on the phone in English (that would have been entertaining) but she practically ran out of the train station when I even mentioned the prospect. She’s nice and very patient, so it’s cool. When I got back to Miyazaki I tried to go to a bank so I could exchange some travelers checks because I don’t have any more money in my wallet. I discovered that all the banks were closed. I also tried a number of ATM machines to see if I could get my money out. Much to my disgust and frustration, none of the ATM machines would take my card or give me any money. On my way home I went to Mos Burger to get lunch since I hadn’t eaten anything yet. After Mos Burger, I went to the ATM machine that had worked for me before. A month ago I was able to take my money out with no problem. This time when I went, I tried about 10 times and it wouldn’t let me take out any money. So, I guess I can’t get any money out of the bank with my ATM card….great. Well, I’ve still got my traveler’s checks. The only problem is is that banks are closed on weekends. During the week, they’re open from 9am until 3pm. So, in effect, time for me to go to a bank to exchange the traveler’s checks does not exist. I would have to skip school to go. How stupid is that!? When I got home I took a shower and then went out with Dad to get my haircut. My hair’s gotten curly and I don’t like that. Besides, if my hair is shorter I look thinner, so that’s another reason to get it cut. Of course I didn’t have enough money to get my hair cut, so dad lent me the money. He dropped me off there and paid the bill before I got the cut. I had brought my digital camera so I could show the people in the place what my hair looks like at a good length. I showed them the picture of me in my school uniform that we took on the first day that I was in Miyazaki. They did a pretty nice job of cutting my hair and they even washed my hair as part of the cost of just getting the cut so that was nice of them, but it wasn’t for me, it’s just what they do here. After I got the hair cut, Mom came to pick me up and she took me to a couple of other ATMs but I had no luck at all.
By this time it had started raining…quite seriously actually. It stopped a few hours later. On Saturday night we all headed over to a neighbor’s house for a BBQ. It ended up being all the same crowd that came to our BBQ a month or so ago whenever it was. At first we were eating things like yakiniku (grilled meats that are really tasty) and there was some sashimi too. Then it started raining again so we all moved inside. There was one new character there. It was Brian. He’s in his 20s, from Houston, Texas, and he’s in Japan for a couple weeks to learn something about Japanese cooking. He works at a really fancy restaurant in Houston and he said he’s responsible for about 40% of what goes on there. He was a nice guy and I think he was relieved to be able to talk to someone who actually speaks English. Well, his Japanese is pretty thoroughly horrible. I think he knows maybe 10 words. His host father (my host father’s friend) can speak decent English as well as my host father and the other father who was there. We ended up speaking a lot of English and I said things in English that I could have said in Japanese so Brian wouldn’t feel as left out. He and I spoke a lot about a lot of different things and it was entertaining. At one point we wanted to talk about something that we didn’t want the fathers to understand so I suggested we speak Spanish (he speaks Spanish). It didn’t go too well….at all….because every time I tried to say something in Spanish it just came out in Japanese. And if it didn’t come out in Japanese it came out in German. I really had to think for a long time to come out with the most basic and mundane sentences in Spanish. It was sad, but I explained why I was having trouble and he understood. The Spanish is still up there in my head but it’s the Japanese that is just MUCH more at the forefront of things now. So, he just spoke to me in Spanish and I would answer him in English. I don’t think it really mattered anyway since it was really noisy and no one was really listening to us. He’s going to be in Miyazaki until next Friday and then he’s going to Tokyo for a few days and then it’s off to Okinawa for a week to visit his brother who’s a Marine stationed there. As soon as we got home from the little gathering around 11:30pm I went right to sleep because I had to get up at 5:50am again the next morning for the boat race. Just before I went to sleep, I heard the skies open up outside and down came a torrential downpour.
I awoke around 3am and looked outside to see it was still pouring. When my alarm went off at 5:50pm and it was still raining like it was the great flood all over again I took a moment to see if the arc had left without me or not. I saw some cows, elephants, zebras, and some other assorted beasts swimming by past my window but no boat in sight. I thought for a few minutes and could not figure out HOW they could run the race in that kind of weather. It was really windy and the rain was ridiculously hard. I thought back to the first practice we had at Tonda Hama Koen and how those conditions were MUCH better than Saturday morning’s but were still too bad to actually go out in the boats. So, I e-mailed a couple of people on the team and as far as they knew the race was still on. It was really unbelievable. I prayed that I would get an e-mail from Tanba-sensei saying that it was cancelled. There was no way I wanted to be on my bicycle riding through the deluge before 7am on a Sunday morning with no money to buy any food on my way to a race that I was going to lose and last all day. Then, I got the e-mail from heaven. No, not from Tanba, but from Ippei. He said that Tanba had said that if I don’t think I can row in this kind of rain then I don’t have to come to the race. That was all I needed to hear. I got out of bed and went downstairs to tell mom that I wasn’t going to the race and then I went upstairs and sent a few more e-mails to Ippei and Yuka. I did feel sorry for them…I mean…they were off to sit in the cold rain all day and almost drown and I was going to go back to sleep in my warm little bed and just look at the rain through the window. I explained to them that I wasn’t going to come to the race because, unlike the rest of the Japanese population, I wasn’t self-destructive. As far as I’m concerned, if they are ridiculous and completely lack common sense like it appears that they do and they want to go out in the floor all day and pretend to try and have a race all day, then they deserve to get drenched and half drowned. Maybe they’ll even learn something from it…perhaps something along the lines of…. “This rain storm is of biblical proportions…to run a boat race in a typhoon would be nearly suicidal…maybe it’d be better if we didn’t carry through with our plan…especially because it’s pointless anyway.” NEAH!! They wouldn’t make all those connections. I think somewhere in that model lies the difference between American and Japanese ways of thinking. So, instead of being masochistic (that word wasn’t in my dictionary…grrrr) I went back to sleep until around 12:30pm, finished my book while lying in bed, got up, ate some ramen and rice balls, went back upstairs, and spent the day researching some things on the Net and watching movies on my computer. It wasn’t an ideal way to spend the day because I didn’t get to go anywhere. It was probably better though because I finally got to get some rest from things and managed to get in some sleep.
Any finally before I clear out of this journal entry and see if I can’t post it tonight, I’ll get to today. Of course this morning, like last night, and the day before, it was raining like crazy. I’ve really started to sincerely ask questions like, “Where is all this water coming from?” “Where are all these clouds coming from?” “Will the house float?” and “Does my exchange program insurance plan cover drowning?” These questions and more surfaced when I also made the decision this morning to ride my bike to school instead of having Mom give me a ride as she said she would if I wanted it. I decided not to because I didn’t know my schedule for the afternoon. I really needed to try and get the money situation straightened out a bit. I also wanted to try and find some running shoes so I can start running more. All I have is my sneakers and they are getting worn out pretty quickly. On my way to school it was raining pretty thoroughly, but when I was about half way there it started to let up so when I actually got to school I had managed to air out a bit and it wasn’t that bad. Of course I’d worn my entire rain suite. I took off the hood after a few minutes because I could barely see anything with it on and I decided it was more valuable to not get hit by a car because I couldn’t see than to keep from getting wet. My head did get soaked, but I just toweled myself off when I got to school. The one fun thing that happened during school today happened during 5th period when I went to 38 homeroom. I had been told in the morning that I would give a talk on environmental problems to the whole class. This wasn’t a total shock to me since the teacher had told me about it briefly before. In fact, I even wrote 4 pages basically outlining what I could talk to the class about. She read it, liked it, and lost it. It was probably better that way because if I had just read what I’d written, the class wouldn’t have understood at all. Instead I made a whole lecture out of it! I really had fun up there. I was a little nervous at first and I wasn’t sure where to go with my ideas. Then I started making lists on the board and drawing arrows to connect ideas. When I’d talk on something I’d point to the key words on the board so the kids would have an easier time following. At first they weren’t listening so well, but once I got started they were very quiet and attentive. There were just a few kids who got distracted. One girl in the front row turned around and started saying something to her friend, so I leaned over and said in loud enough in Japanese so the whole class could hear, “Hey, the black board is this way!” The only other problem was when Vadim (Uajimu) the Russian exchange student came into the room. I don’t know where he was, but he came in about 10 minutes late. When he came in there was a flurry of talking and then things calmed down again except for Vadim. He was talking to his friend in the back of the class. Luckily, his timing COULDN’T have been better. At the time I was talking about the potential dangers associated with using nuclear power. I said in a loud voice, “Uajimu, the worst nuclear accident in history happened in RUSSIA, so you should probably stop talking and pay attention to what I’m saying.” I don’t know how well he understood, but he was quiet after that hahahahhahaha. Ahhhh…I crack myself up. The class liked the lecture and the teachers were quite pleased to. The point was to give them an introduction into a project that they have to do on the environment. I’m supposed to give the same talk to another class tomorrow. I’ll see if I can improve it at all.
I found out from reading the Miyazaki guidebook that I got at town hall that the central post office could exchange foreign currencies. This was quite a nice discovery because they are actually open at human hours…not like the banks… “Out hours of operation are Mondays and Wednesdays 11am to 1pm with an hour and a half for lunch between 11:15am and 12:45pm. Take a number and the line forms outside the door. Thank you.” I told Ippei during lunch that, “I have serious financial problems. When school is over I’m going to go to the bank, solve the problems, and come back to school for practice.” Then he told me that there was some sort of meeting today and he didn’t think I had to come to it. Perfect! So I went after school to the bank, managed to exchange $200 in traveler’s checks. While I was waiting after I took my number an older man (in his late 50s I’d say) sat down next to me and asked me if I spoke English. I didn’t know whether to speak English or Japanese to him so I just started in English since he’d spoken to me in English. He told me that he had learned English when he was in the military but he’s never been to America. We talked for about 10 minutes while we waited. The conversation was just small talk. I ended up speaking to him in Japanese and he to me in English except when he had trouble and then just went into Japanese. He was a nice guy and when he left we said goodbye to each other. When I left the post office I went around to a bunch of sneaker stores inquiring about running shoes. They really didn’t have much of a selection. I tried on some things from Nike that they said were running shoes but it felt like the bottoms of the shoes were made of rock. If I ran any distance in those kinds of things the shin splints with split my shins into splints…so…I decided against it. As I was putting around downtown the rain was steadily getting harder and harder. When I finally started to head towards home it was REALLY coming down….like…no joke. I put on my rain suit; put my school bag inside the big plastic bag that came with the rain suite, snapped all the snaps, and hopped on my bike. The going was tough. The rain was being pounded into the ground by the wind and was being blown in all directions. With in moments I was completely drenched. My vinyl armor kept out a lot of the moisture, but only at first. There was so much wetness and water everywhere that it eventually found ways to get to me. One of the lethal points was my collar. I tried to squeeze my head downwards to make my neck thicker so the water would have a harder time getting in. That had limited effect. Then I began the great debate with myself…. collar folded down…or up? Would putting it up add extra protection? Or would it simply channel all the water, that hit my head, inside my shirt? I tried both but was soaked both ways. After only a few minutes, I completely gave up on being annoyed or negatively affected by the rain. It was just a natural occurrence that decided to occur at the same moment that I decided to go home. In fact after I decided that my one possession that could be damaged by the rain (my cell phone) was safe inside the plastic bag, I was rather enjoying myself in the rain. I was smiling even sang some uplifting songs like the American national anthem and “Row Row Row Your Boat” (a suitable number since I would have been better off in a boat than on a bike). When I’d go by someone who was drenched or standing under something, I’d give them a big smile. By the time I got home I felt like a drowned rat, but my spirits were still high. When I took off my rain suit I actually found a few dry-ish patched of clothing. I was impressed. I don’t think my rain gear is going to do me as much good tomorrow because it’s already soaking wet…and…since it’s been raining on and off tonight, it’s not going to try by tomorrow and might even get more wet…so…when I put it on tomorrow, I’ll be instantly wet. Fannnnntastic! Well, a little water never hurt anyone. Ahhh…but if only it were “a little water” that was my concern. I’ll see if I can borrow a life-jacket from the boat house tomorrow…hmmmm…there’s an idea.
-Maikeru