Knee Vaccinations and Missing Fingers

Wow, I haven't written in forever! There's so much to write about... I don't even know where to start.

Our college has its "Culture Festival" this weekend, so I was lucky enough to have all of my afternoon classes cancelled today, and I don't have class on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, either. It's nice to finally have a bit of a break, but I still have plenty to do (my midterms start on Thursday of next week) so I know I won't be bored!

Speaking of festivals, I went to the culture festival of one of my college's other campuses (the Kobe Sanda Campus) last weekend, so I'll talk a little about that. Basically, the festival is just a way for all of the school's clubs to sell food and put on shows, dances or presentations. I was lucky enough to make friends with a Japanese person who goes to the Sanda campus, and she took me and a couple other exchange students there and showed us around.

First off, the Kobe Sanda Campus is much nicer than the campus I go to. It's about half as busy as my campus, and the scenery is nicer. The campus is on top of a hill, and the whole area is surrounded by mountains, so you get the feeling that you're in the mountains in the countryside. Of course, it is actually pretty close to a massive city, so you're not really in the countryside at all, but it feels like it.

The festival itself was a lot of fun. The clubs all set up little booths to cook and sell food, and to advertise their food they send club members around telling people to come to their club's booth and buy food. The people trying to sell the food especially enjoyed coming up to our group of exchange students and trying to sell to us in English. A lot of the times their English wasn't very good, but I was impressed that they had the courage to speak to random people in a different language. Actually, one thing I noticed about the whole festival was that Japanese people truly become totally different people when they're working some sort of job -- they go from not caring at all about people they don't know to running up to random people and talking to them.

My life at home is going pretty well. I think all of the kids are getting more used to me being here, so I'm not really as much of a novelty anymore, which is nice. Also, now that I spend a lot of time on campus -- either in class, studying, or just talking with friends, I haven't been able to spend a ton of time with them. Still, I think my relationships with the kids are improving as my Japanese improves. Here's a small update on the kids for those wondering.

The youngest (Jion) is doing pretty well. But he's still absolutely crazy. Last time I talked about how he bit a kid in his class, and the other day while we were on our way to drop the kids off preschool, he revealed to his mom (and me) why he bit the other child. Apparently, the child that Jion took a bite out of is "super mean" and "crazy violent." I was glad to hear that Jion at least had reasoning behind his biting, and doesn't just run around biting random people.

I guess Jion also told the teacher that he could speak English. Apparently, Jion thought that since I understand him when he talks to me, he is speaking in English. We had to explain to him that he was still speaking Japanese. I'm still not sure if he understands, but he seems to understand that the words "one, two, three, and four" are pretty much the only English he knows when he doesn't talk to me, so that's a start.

I think this is funny, so I'm going to stick this in here. Last night I was doing homework in my room, when Jion walked in carrying a little plastic briefcase. He plopped down on the floor, opened it, and told me that he was a doctor. Inside of the box there was a little fake stethoscope, some plastic scissors, and a toy syringe. The inside of the briefcase also had a little button that you could press, and then a one of four words would light up: fever, injury, cold, or healthy. After consulting his briefcase, he told me I had a cold and was going to need a vaccination. (Yes, he used the word for vaccination, I think because my host dad just vaccinated our family the other day.) He then proceeded to give me two "shots" in the side of my knee. I couldn't help but think how painful that would have felt in real life. He pressed the button again and informed me that I had an injury -- I wasn't surprised after receiving the knee vaccinations. He then happily told me that he was going to have to cut off one of my fingers. After a little convincing, he agreed that my pinky would be okay, even though he had originally wanted to do away with one of my thumbs. (But even in pretend I didn't want to agree to lose a thumb.) After cutting off my finger, he checked and I had come down with a cold again. This time he decided that he would use the stethoscope to get rid of the cold. He pressed it to a couple places on my leg, and said I was cured. Then he packed his briefcase up and left. I was pretty impressed. 

Aoi's a little bit crazy, too. She has her funny moments, like Jion, but she can be really cranky sometimes, too. Girls. Today her preschool class took a walk across the city, so I'll have to ask her how that was tonight and get back to you.

Here's a random story kind of about Aoi. Yesterday during dinner Aoi decided to go to the bathroom.  At the same time, Jion decided he was going to get up and run around the house. After a couple minutes of Jion running and Aoi being in the bathroom, Jion must have hust himself somehow because he started crying. My host mom, who was busy taking care of the kids plates, asked if it was Aoi or Jion who was crying. I couldn't help but  laugh. I mean, if Aoi had been the one crying, something was probably seriously wrong. I mean, who goes to the bathroom and starts crying? Actually, quite the opposite: when Aoi is in the bathroom she normally sings. Random things. Well, now that I think about it, she sings random things all of the time. 

And on the topic of Jion hurting himself, I've come to understand that it's just part of who Jion is. The other day we were walking as a family when Jion decided that he would run ahead a little. He immediately triped and fell over. He then got up, checked to make sure he wasn't bleeding, started running, and fell over again. I've honestly never seen a kid so reckless in my life. His reactions to his injuries are extremely unpredicatble, too. Sometimes he'll smash his head into a wall and giggle, or fall flat on his face and get up looking only a little dazed. Other times he'll barely hurt himself and start bawling. I hadn't realized how desensitzed I had become to all of his injuries until the other day when we were at a restaurant and Jion, like he normally does, fell out of his chair and hit his head. My whole host family (including Jion) and I continued to eat like normal, but two of the waiters watching let out little screams and came running over to see if he was okay. (And he was giggling, so I'm assuming that's an okay. Actually, now that I think about it, hitting your head and giggling probably isn't a good sign, right?) But yeah. He's a kind of different. Anyways, on to my Yuta summary.

Yuta came down with the flu last week, so he took 3 days off of school. Actually, there's a pretty crazy story about this. Yuta woke up sick on Sunday and spent the whole day in bed. He was also pretty sick on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday he felt a lot better, but his parents decided he should sleep in on Wednesday morning, and if he still felt good in the afternoon, his dad would take him to the art museum (which he missed out on when the family went on Sunday while he was sick). I thought it was a really cool thing for parents to do because Yuta is always so busy with all of his school work and studying that he deserved a day off of school, and also because he really wanted to go to the art museum. 

When Yuta went back to school on Thursday, he was telling some of his friends about the art museum when the teacher overheard him and yelled at him in front of the class. Apparently, the teacher was disappointed that Yuta would skip school to go to an art museum. Also, the kids in his class had written a note to Yuta telling him to get well, but some of the students stole it back and crossed it out, all during class. And when Yuta's mom went to pick him up, the teacher also scolded her about taking Yuta to the museum.

I felt really bad for the little guy. My host parents told me that the teacher was and extremely traditional Japanese teacher, and that a lot of teachers were like that when the were little. Still, I can't see how it is any of the teacher's business if the parents decide to let the child go to an art museum instead of class. Yuta seemed to take it surprisingly well, though, so I'm sure he'll bounce back right away.

Hmm... there's a lot of other stuff I've done that I didn't write about, so if I get some more time I'll post again later, or at least a couple more times during my break.

That's all for now!

Gahhhhhh~!!!!!!! I just wrote a whole section about all of my classes, then accidentally deleted it when I went to check the spelling of "explanation." And I spelled it right in the first place! ARRRRRGGGGGHH. And the draft didn't autosave because my connection went out! AHHHHH. What a crappy streak of luck. Well, at least I know what I have to write about later. Sigh.

~ Chapter 3: Normal Life ~

Well, not exactly normal, but you get the idea. I don't think I'm able to say I'm settling in anymore because tomorrow will be my 6th week in Japan.

Expect my first post in a long, long time in a couple of hours!

Did You Bite Anyone Today?

I have tons of homework like always, but writing my blogs is too fun to pass up :) So here we go.

I have kind of gotten into the swing of things lately, so it's been nice to start feeling like I have a routine. I would love to add more stuff to my schedule, though, so I'm going to have to start searching out opportunities to do new things. After all, no matter how much I study, there will still be more studying to do, and I can't just study my life away!

Last weekend we went to my host dad's house again. I don't know if I described my first trip there, so I'm going to describe my second trip as well as I can so you know how it went. Because I'm assuming that you want to know how it went. Because you're reading this blog.

My host dad's parents live about half an hour away, in a smaller city in the country. They live in a huge house, especially by Japanese standards. My host dad's dad (I think I might call him my host grandpa from now on) owns the practice/hospital/whatever you want to call it that my dad works for, so he makes a fairly good amount of money. But not too much money. I'm actually writing a report on doctors for my Japanese government class, and I've found that doctors' salaries in Japan are much less than in the US. But back to the story.

My host grandpa's pretty much the typical Japanese grandparent -- loves spoiling the grandchildren and drinking beer. He also loves to give stuff away. He tried about a hundred times to get me to drink beer and wine at dinner. When I left their house, he insisted on giving me $100 just like he gave the rest of the grandchildren. And, like most elderly Japanese people, I can't understand a single. word. he. says. But really, any time I feel like I'm understanding what's going on, he'll say something and I'm completely lost again.

My host grandma seems to be a pretty strong lady. She has a pretty big personality from what I can tell, and she is used to taking care of everyone in the family. She's very nice, but I get the feeling that it's more of a politeness than a genuine niceness. I mean, she's definitely a good person, she's just one of those people that while you know they always have good intentions, you're still a little scared of them. Also, to support my claims, my host mom told me that my host dad's older brother had a falling out with the mom and that they don't really communicate that much anymore. 

But anyways, we went there this weekend and saw a festival. This festival was a lot bigger than the one I went to in Nishinomiya, and the people were a lot more drunk. Sorry, but it's the truth. Instead of one shrine, this time four smaller shrines were carried around. I guess there's a slight competition to see who does the "best" job carrying the shrine, but really it's not about the competition; it's about being together.

My host parents explained to me that festivals like these are starting to disappear because people live in cities where they tend not to be close to their neighbors, don't really feel attached to the area, etc. For example, at the festival, my host grandma seemed to know and talk to pretty much everyone, and after the festival a few neighbors came over and helped cook dinner at my host grandparents' house. My host dad explained to me that traditionally families would cluster together and tend to help eachother get by, and that his family is in this way a very traditional family. 

But for all of the Japaneseness (did I just make that word up? yes.) of my family, I think there are some things that every family, no matter where they're from, goes through. For example, here's a conversation from the dinner table tonight:

Host mom: "Jion, did you remember our promise?"

Jion: "Yep."

Host mom: "And did you bite anyone at daycare today?"

Jion: "Nope!"

(Backstory: Jion bit a kid at daycare the other day and the teacher scolded my host parents for a couple minutes  when they went to pick him up. When they told me the story, I thought it was cute that my host dad closed it by saying (in English) "We try to make him behave, but for now we love him just the way he is.")

So yeah, I guess I'm just trying to say that there are both differences and similarities between what I've experienced in Japan and what I see in the States, but there are definitely more similarities than differences. Make sense? I hope so.

Also, here's a story I can't help but laugh about every time I think of it. It's probably one of those "you had to be there" types, but I'm going to tell it anyways.

Yuta is in charge of taking the dog for its nightly walk. I go with him a lot of the time because if I'm with him, he likes to ride his skateboard-like thing  (picture somewhere around here  -- you can't miss it) while I hold Louie's leash. Last night I thought it would be a good idea to give Yuta the leash and let Louie pull him. You know, like Cesar Millan. And at first, it worked just like it does for Cesar. Louie took off at a pretty good paced jog, and pulled Yuta at a pretty good pace behind him. But unlike Cesar's dogs, Louie is not trained. So when Louie saw another dog a couple hundred feet ahead, he took off running. 

So Yuta was flying crazily behind Louie, who was running at full speed. Got the image in your head? Good. Yuta spent a couple seconds screaming, but luckily he's Japanese, and the little bit of ninja in him came to the surface (or at least that's what I like to think). Somehow, Yuta jumped off of the board and managed to land and run behind Louie without falling, then he slowed Louie down. It was pretty cool.

And yeah, that's all I have to write for today. I just skimmed a little bit of what I wrote and noticed that my vocabulary today is completely AWESOME, and for that, I apologize. But even with all of the "I think" and "I guess" and "yeah" crap, I hope you enjoyed it!

Until next time!

There Was, Of Course, Much Confusion

I actually wrote this post yesterday, but it seems that I forgot to actually post it. It's not super exciting, but here you go:

Two of my classes this morning were cancelled because of the typhoon, so that was a plus. On the downside, I had to spend the whole morning working on homework anyways, so it's not like I got to relax too much.

There was, of course, much confusion because there are the strangest rules for when/how classes get cancelled. Even though we were all sent a form telling us how they will cancel the classes, the form was pretty much gibberish in both English and Japanese, so it didn't help. Another thing that didn't help was the fact that the international office texted everyone this morning telling them the wrong information. But I figured it out eventually, so it's all good.

Yesterday I went to a giant electronics store to get a camera, dictionary, and possibly a new phone. I looked at both the cameras and the dictionaries, but there were about a million and a half of them and I really had no idea what I was looking for other than the very basics, so I gave up on trying to buy them. There were some cameras that looked just like others, but they were about $100 more. It probably would have helped if I would have done research before I went and/or if I understood Japanese. Oh well.

On a positive (for me, but maybe not for my parents) note, I ended up getting an iPhone. It's probably going to end up being a lot more expensive than my other phone, but it can access the internet, and has a GPS/train schedule app so I will have to try really hard now if I want to get lost. Just pointing out, too, that the iPhone was one of the cheapest phones they offered with a plan, so it's not like I tried to buy the most expensive phone.

The house has been kind of crazy since my house dad is gone all week. With three little kids, it seems like all they do is argue all of the time, but I guess that's what kids do. I've been trying to help out, but the college isn't helping me with the crapload of homework I have. And now I bet we're going to get a ton tomorrow since the two classes that were cancelled today were my two Japanese classes.

On the topic of Japanese, I can't really tell if I'm getting better at speaking/writing Japanese, but the one benefit I have noticed is after only one week of my kanji class my ability to read things written on signs, etc. has about doubled. If I keep up with the homework, I'm hoping that I'll start to understand a lot more of the written language, which would be awesome. 

Alright, lunchtime!

Luckily, I Knew How to Gallop

I don't really have that much to write about today, but I'm trying to avoid studying so I'm going to post something anyways. I thought that I'd just kind of jump around and talk about random stuff that I haven't written much about yet. So if this is too random, my bad. I'm going to start with this past Saturday. Here we go.

Slight background info:  The youngest boy (Jion) and the middle girl (Aoi) of my host family attend the same pre-school (that's actually a part of the whole KGU system). On Saturday I went to their school event that is similar to Field Day in the States. The main difference between the Japanese "undoukai" and the US "Field Day" is... well, there are a lot of differences, actually. The main differences, though, are 1) the students spend a lot of time preparing for undoukai, and 2) tons of people come and watch. From now on I think I'm just going to call it field day, but keep those facts in mind.

I got up early on Saturday even though I was extremely tired because I really wanted to go and see the kids at their field day. Actually, I don't know if I've talked about this yet, but a couple weeks ago I went to some random field day at a school near where my host dad grew up. We ate lunch, I broke a folding chair, and Jion ran around like a maniac. It was fun. But I wanted to see Jion and Aoi at their own field day because they had been talking about it for quite a while, and I got the impression that Aoi wanted me to come. (I don't think Jion cared if I came or not, because he didn't really want to go himself.)

The whole thing was a lot of fun. One thing I didn't know was that a lot of the activities included the parents, which was really entertaining to watch. Notice that I said watch. 

Jion's "events" were pretty much all at the beginning. He had a mini race (which he won, though they really don't place emphasis on winning when the kids are this young), some marching, and some dancing to a song while waving pom-poms. I guess Jion especially hated the pom-pom song (I can't blame him, honestly) but he did his best because his mom was watching.

When Jion wasn't involved in one of the activities, he was always sitting in the teacher's lap. I guess he's quite the troublemaker at daycare, which surprises me because he's usually pretty well behaved -- for a 3 year old -- at home.

In contrast, Aoi, who can be quite the devil at home sometimes, seems to be one of the best behaved students in her class. She did all of her activites quite well, and she seemed like she was having a lot of fun. 

The oldest kid, Yuta, also came to the field day even though he was supposed to be at school. I still don't exactly understand, but I guess since his school's field day is coming up, they have school on Saturday. But he really wanted to go to see Jion and Aoi, so his mom called in and said that he was having problems with his asthma.

After all of Jion's events were done, he came and sat with me and my host mom while Aoi was doing her events. It was about this time when my host mom handed me a red scarf that I thought was Jion's, but it turns out it was for me. Yuta helped me tie it around my head, and I got to participate in one of the events. The event was really weird. They had a giant beach ball, and it was basically a relay race down to the end and back while holding the giant ball and galloping the whole way. Luckily, I knew how to gallop so I didn't make a complete fool of myself.

After the field day we went and had some really good food, then headed home.

Yesterday I spent the whole morning doing my crapload of homework, and in the afternoon I headed to the Osaka History Museum with my family. Side note, I'm super lucky that my family is so active. I mean, I know they're doing a lot of this stuff for me, but I get the feeling from the way the kids act and from all the places they say they've been that my family likes to be out-and-about. End side note. The museum was pretty interesting. 

I learned that somewhere around the year 750, Osaka was the capital of Japan. I guess a long time ago, the capital used to move a lot, so even though Osaka was the capital, it didn't stay the capital for very long, and therefore it's not widely known that it used to be the capital. There was also tons of other information on Osaka and an awesome traveling exhibit of treasures from the Ise Shrine. I'll try to explain the Ise Shrine a little, but everything I say probably won't be 100% correct, so I apologize. Basically, the Ise Shrine is related to the main god of Shintoism, Amaterasu. People go and visit the Shrine to pray to this god, and since she's the main god, it's a very important and famous shrine. I guess it's one of those "you should go once in a lifetime things." There also is the tradition that the emperor visits the Shrine once a year, if I'm not mistaken. Or at least it used to be a tradition.

After the museum, we took a boat ride around on the many rivers that run through Osaka. The city is beautiful. We took the boat ride during the sunset and there was also a full moon pretty low in the sky, so it was especially peaceful.

A funny aspect of the boat ride was the overhead commentary. The recorded commentary played in both Japanese and English, but there was a definite Lost in Translation feel to it. By that, I mean that the announcer would speak in Japanese for like 5 minutes, then the English announcer would come on and say like two sentences. But they weren't saying the same thing, either. At one point, the Japanese announcer talked about a festival in the city and then described all of the different types of trees that people came to see bloom in the Spring. The English translation commented on the festival, butsaid not one word about the trees. I felt like they assumed that people who speak English didn't care about that type of stuff. Which doesn't surprise me, because I think a lot of Japanese people are aware that Japan is one of the only countries in the world so deeply interested in viewing the blooming of sakura. I felt slighted. Luckily, I could make a little of what they were saying in Japanese.

After the boat ride, we went out to dinner, then headed home.

Today I've just been hanging around doing nothing, pretty much. I mean, I'm doing homework, but it's all in English, so I'm not super excited about it. I've been trying to help out a little more because starting this morning, my host dad left for the week. My host mom is already crazy busy with the three kids when the dad's there helping out, so I can't imagine what this week is going to be like for her. We'll see.

On a random note, I think this is interesting entertaining so I'm going to post about it.

The other day I was telling my host familiy about how much I dislike writing mini-compositions in Japanese. It's a lot of work for me even though I can't say very much, and I always make a ton of grammatical errors if I try to say something other than "I like food" or the like. My host mom cheered me up a little by showing me one of Yuta's (the oldest, 4th grader) composition homework sheets. Apparently, they signed Yuta up for an extra composition class because he isn't very good at writing (which surprises me because he loves to read). Anyways, the sheet had a section where it told you to imagine that you were going swimming. A sentence read (my host mom translated it for me) "Your feelings as you are about to get into the pool." After that, there was a little blank where you could fit two or three sentences. Yuta had written "Doki doki". That's all. No punctuation or anything. (Doki doki is a onomatopoeia for excitement. I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be the sound of your heart fluttering.) Later, there was a similar-sized blank after a sentence that said "Your feelings as you get out of the pool." Yuta wrote "Tanoshii". Which simply means fun. In present tense. Like getting out of the pool is fun. My host mom found this extremely entertaining (she was laughing the whole time). I also thought it was pretty hilarious. She explained, though, that Yuta had only written like that because he was still mad at them for making him take the class. But in all honesty, my compositions probably aren't much better.

My host parents comment a lot on how much trouble they have getting Yuta to study. He definitely does not like to study, but really, what 4th grader does? But in Japan, entrance exams into middle school and high school are very important, and if you don't study, you won't be able to get into the good schools. This is especially important for Yuta, because he wants to get into the private middle school. The private middle school allows students to wear what they want and become more individually-minded, while the public school is traditional Japanese schooling, complete with strict uniforms. Yuta is quite independent, and he doesn't like being forced to be like everyone else, so he wants to go to the private school. But he hates studying. Kind of a conundrum.

All in all, though I think Yuta is actually really smart, it's just a parent's job in Japan to talk down your child. Well, not really talk down, but to encourage them to keep working -- don't let them get a big head. My host parents showed me Yuta's report card from his cram school the other day and he was ranked top (#1) out of the 48 students in his grade in at least 5 or so of the subjects listed. His parents said they were proud, but that Yuta shouldn't stop working hard because the cram school he goes to isn't one of the best in the area, so he wasn't really doing as well as it seemed. It all seems a little cut-throat for 4th grade to me, but I understand how serious this is for all the younger kids in Japan.

And to end my post, picture time! First, here's a picture (from my iPhone, so it's not the best quality) of the view from my walk to and home from school. It was cloudy that day so you can't see the tops of the mountains, but you get the idea.

Second, a piture of the  traveling shrine  that they carried around in the festival I went to downtown a week or so ago. We were in a park at the time, so as an added bonus you also get to see an extremely rare photo of a Japanese swingset, complete with random child swinging. Lucky you.

Alright, that's all for today!