May 30th-Dispatching the Troops
As I write
this journal entry my belly is full of beef curry rice, orange, and 麦茶 (mugicha) [barley tea]. Barley tea is my favorite of the many many
many kinds of teas that the Japanese drink.
I made some for my family (the biological family that is) once and it
didn’t go over too well. I guess it’s
one of those things that you have to get used to. I too wasn’t too keen on it for the first three weeks that I
drank it back in July of 2001. Then in
the end it finally grew on me and I couldn’t get enough of it. I remember the first food I ever ate in a
Japanese home. It was the night that I
had arrived in Nanao with my EIL (the Experiment in International Living)
group. I had eaten dinner with my host
family at the fish and chips place directly adjacent to the little meeting hall
where we had all met with our host families the first time. When we got back to the house (my first time
there) we didn’t really do much because I was being picked up by Eric’s host
family to go see a festival. However,
we did have time to sit in the living room for a little bit. What did we eat? Dried octopus, grapes with really thick skin that you had to peel
off, and…mugicha. Well, back to
the topic at hand! At least out of
eating this last meal I just ate (see first line) I learned some new
vocab. No, not from my host
family. I often find myself in
situations where I want to say something, but it’s just something that I never
learned before, so the next chance I get I go to my dictionary and find the
words so the next time I’m in that kind of situation I’ll be able to speak my
mind. What did I learn? When I was eating the orange I really wanted
to discuss two things: the fact that it was sticky, and the issue of peeling
it. I didn’t know the words for
“sticky” or “peel” so I was just quiet and tried to handle the orange without
making too much of a mess. Now, I know
you’re dying to hear how to say those things.
Well, the first one, “to be sticky” is ねばねばする (neba-neba
suru) and the other, “to peel” (as in a fruit), is 皮を剥く (kawa o
muku). I have found that by living in
this nutty country you learn all kinds of things in a couple of months that
would take years and years of study books to learn. Now, I’m not bashing learning languages by books. A lot can be learned if you’ve got a good
book and a good teacher. In fact, at
least from my experience with Japanese, if you learn Japanese from a book, you
will probably speak better (as in more proper and eloquent) Japanese than many
Japanese themselves ordinarily do. This
fact often frustrates me though, because in my present situation it would be
much more valuable to me to be able to speak Japanese as the Japanese actually
do, than be able to speak it as a book does.
I showed the guys at school one of my textbooks and they read one of the
dialogues. They were practically one
the floor with laughter because it sounded so cramped and awkward. The one consolation to me is that their
English textbooks are just as dorky and lame as my Japanese text books
hehehehehe. I’ll give you an easy
example of something that you almost certainly wouldn’t learn from a Japanese
textbook but people expect you to understand when they say it to you.
I was walking in the hallway and someone came up to me and asked me if I was going to play in the competition tomorrow. He said:
大会出らんと？
Taikai deran to?
Translated, that sentence would be
“Competition won’t participate?”
That doesn’t make any sense if you
translate it literally of course. Now
what I’m trying to get at is that if that same sentence appeared in a Japanese
textbook, it would probably appear as:
あなたは大会で出ませんか？
Anata wa taikai de demasen ka?
Translation of this sentence sounds a lot
better: “As for you, won’t you participate at the competition?”
The point I’m getting at is that both of these sentences have the same
meaning, but unless you’ve actually been to Japan and spoke with Japanese
people every day, you would probably never catch on to what the guy from the
first sentence was asking you.
Additionally, the only person who would probably say that second
sentence to you is someone who thinks you really stink at Japanese so they are
going easy on you and are making themselves sound like a textbook on purpose so
you will understand them. When someone
does this to me, using all the polite forms and adding words that are usually
left out because they are simply implied, I respond to them in the exact same
way. I speak really slowly and sound
like a textbook and speak to them as if they don’t know Japanese too well. It usually makes them smile or feel a little
bit embarrassed for treating me like a moron.
Do you enjoy these little Japanese lessons? Well, I like giving them because I think they make it easier to
understand what things are like here and how so many things can become
frustrating. I want to wash my
face…herrmmmm…well, I’ll take a shower before I go to sleep. Ok, let’s talk about something that actually
has to do with something that’s actually happening and isn’t just floating
around in my head somewhere in never-never land.
So, let’s get to something
that’s VERY present. Right now it’s
rainy ferociously outside. I can easily
hear the wind howling and groaning around the house and through the trees. Ever time I open the window a gust of cool
wet air fills the room and I have to shut it before everything gets wet. Why all the storminess? How ‘bout because…there’s a TYPHOON
landing in Miyazaki in the next 6 hours!
We’ve been hearing about it for the past couple of days. I think it was on Okinawa earlier in the day
and we’re going to get the brunt of it later tonight. There is a chance that the weather might not be so bad tomorrow. Well, I heard mostly cloudy or chance of
rain. Considering what’s going on now
that sounds pretty good. It’s actually
supposed to be sunny on Sunday (makes sense…).
Isn’t that incredible?!?! Well,
I don’t have very much faith in the weather service here. I set my cell phone to automatically send me
weather updates, but those are pretty lame.
What’s so lame about them? The
current weather usually has nothing do to with what the phone says the current
weather is. It’s rather amusing
though. Like when it was sunny for
about an hour the other day I checked my phone and it said it was raining.
Hahhahaha…good stuff. So tomorrow with
this typhoon and whatnot there may be a slight problem. Why?
Well, tomorrow is a special day.
Tomorrow is the start of the 高校総体 (koukousoutai)
[high school conference competition].
My impression of what it is is a meeting of a bunch of high schools in
Miyazaki and there are going to be competitions in all the sports. This thing is being held at 宮崎運動公園 (miyazaki
undou kouen) [Miyazaki Sports Park].
It’s taken me a while to interpret and discern what this thing is
because there’s nothing like this in America that I have any experience with so
it’s been like a mystery. I feel like
Nancy Drew….neahh…too feminine…Sherlock Holmes over here putting all the pieces
together and trying to make sense out of the madness. Well, I’ve finally got it figured out…I think, so that’s
good. We’re ALL (the entire school)
supposed to go to this sports park in Miyazaki that has facilities for all
kinds of events. There is a big opening
ceremony and the people who are going to participate in the sports are going to
march in and carry flags and wear their uniforms and all that jazz. We have to be at this sports park by 8:30am
and the ceremony is supposed to last until around noon. It’s like the Olympics! These people take themselves WAY too
seriously! And I doubt there will be
fireworks or anyone carrying a torch or dancers or acrobats or floats or
music…well…maybe music, but it will be lame music for certain. Today during 5th period we had an
assembly in the gym. All the people who
were going to play at this thing this weekend had donned their uniforms and
lined themselves up by team. I’m not
sure how long this assembly went on. It
was probably only about an hour, but it seemed to take about three times that
long. It was more of the usual: sitting
on the floor by homeroom, listening to one teacher or administrator after
another at the podium talking about everything and saying absolutely nothing. I wonder why they make such a big deal out
of these gatherings and mandatory weekend activities. I guess they are trying to boost unity or school spirit or
something lame like that. I wonder if
the kids are bothered by it as much as I am.
I doubt they are because this is what they’ve lived with their entire lives. Kids in Millburn would never go for that
kind of thing or let it stand. American
kids want to do their own thing and be independent. Well, some kids do. A lot
of kids just conform to something so they will feel a part of something and not
like an outsider. But the degree to
which that happens in Japan is SOOOOO much more extreme than in the US. This entire country is founded on the
principals of teamwork, unity, and assimilation, and it has been standing on
those principals for hundreds of years and I don’t imagine it will change very
soon. The vice principal came to the
podium to speak on behalf of the principal (who’s on a business trip in
Tokyo). The image that came to mind was
of George C. Scott standing before the troops in the opening scene in Patton
delivering a pep talk to get them ready for battle. I was surprised to see that the vice principal wasn’t wearing a
helmet or his medals. I guess he’ll put
those on tomorrow when we’re actually there.
The one thing that’s cool about the sports
here as opposed to sports in Millburn is that each team has a unique
uniform. In Millburn everything is just
blue and white. Well, I guess those are
the school colors, but I like how you can have team spirit as well as school
spirit with these uniforms here. The
uniforms are all different, but they all say 宮崎商業 (miyazaki
shougyou) [Miyazaki Commercial] somewhere on them. During the assembly I didn’t sit with the
team because, at first I thought they were going to be doing some marching
around and I don’t know how to do it, and then because I don’t have a uniform
so I would have been embarrassed. Well,
the second and third year students have uniforms that are for the boat
club. It’s like a little warm-up suit
and on the back of the jacket it says something about Miyazaki Shougyou High
School and some boat thing in cool looking kanji characters. The first year students don’t have that but
they wear their regular gym uniform. I
don’t have a gym uniform either. I
really feel left out in the uniform department sometimes. A lot of people assume or think that I just
don’t want one. When I say that I wish
I had one they often laugh or are very surprised. Then when I assert that I really wish I had one, they tell me
that it’s really expensive and that I shouldn’t get one because I am leaving in
a couple of months. I guess there is
some truth to that, but still, I don’t think they appreciate my position. It’s already hard enough sometimes being the
most out of place person in the entire school of about 1200 people (students
plus teachers). And when I don’t have
the clothes that at least will help me fit in a little bit better, that doesn’t
improve the situation at all. Well, I
changed my mind about the gym clothes.
I don’t really care that much about those because no one gives me a
problem about just wearing a t-shirt and my shorts, I’m probably more
comfortable in what I have, and I don’t really have a mind to spend over $100
on some clothes that I’m going to get use out of only two days a week usually
for the next two months. However, I do
want the boat team jacket. It’s not
really a jacket because it’s really light, but it looks cool. I had mentioned it to some people on the
team but hadn’t said anything to Tanba-sensei about it because I was a little
shy. Then the other day someone
mentioned it to him at the end of practice and I sheepishly admitted to my
desires for having the team garb. He
said that he could order me the same one.
He even took some my measurements so he could get the right size. He thought I wanted the pants too, but I
don’t really need them. I figure that
even after I go home I can use the jersey for daily use and it will look really
cool. But…if I have matching pants,
that’s just not cool—I would look like something out of the 80s, and we know I
don’t want that. Besides, if I don’t
order the pants, it costs about half as much!
So go figure! I’m really looking
forward to getting that. I’ll feel
cooler when I’m with the team and when I leave it will make for a great souvenir. Anyway, after the opening ceremony tomorrow
I’m supposed to go with Chie and her family to 子供の国 (kodomo
no kuni) [Children’s Country] to watch Chie dance with her dance
group. She’s been talking about this
for the past month so I figure it’d probably be the right thing for me to go
and watch her. After that I don’t know
what we’re supposed to do. I don’t even
know what time it’s over. I guess I’ll
just have to go find out. One nice
little development that surfaced as I was writing this journal entry was that I
don’t have to ride my bike to the train station tomorrow. I had originally been planning on riding my
bike to the station and getting on a train to the sports park. But now Chie’s family is offering to come
pick me up and take me there. How about
that! Hmmm…that’s a lot more than my
own host family offered to do…oh well.
Ok, I can’t think of much of anything else to say right now so I guess
I’ll go. The rain and wind is still
coming on strong and the window next to me is rattling a little bit. Mom closed the shutters on the other
windows. I guess this window doesn’t
have shutters…oh well…I’m not that concerned about it breaking. That’d be real unfortunate if it did
though. Right now I’m just hoping that
the weather will be decent tomorrow so when I’m standing outside watching
people march around and then watching people dance around I won’t get wet. The wind is really quite impressive now, the
rain drops sounds like sand hitting the window and the wind is whistling
now….coooool. I think the only thing
that would make it cooler is if there were thunder and lighting too. I’d like that. Well, I guess we can’t have everything in this world!
-Maikeru