Where I am now...

Sunset in downtown Kanazawa, in front of the Kohrinbo Atrio shopping mall near Katamachi.


There's a reason why I elected to spend an entire year in Japan. I became fascinated by Japanese culture, and now that I'm actually here I feel only more excited by it. It was difficult to believe it for a very long time, but now it finally feels like the pieces are falling into place in my life, and everything really IS going to work out in the end. I went through some very difficult times, but I've come through it, and I'm doing better than ever. I love my life here.

So why did I come to Japan? To "better" myself, to approach some ideal, to figure out my life? No. A friend of mine from Australia reminded me yesterday of what I'm doing here. Simply put, I came to Japan because I knew it was a good idea. I knew it would be a good thing for me to do. That's it!

Yesterday I overheard a conversation about how giving people more control over their lives will increase happiness and life expectancy. Writing, talking, music, friends--these are my means of control, of introspection, of finding meaning in the wonder of life. The only thing that's really giving me anxiety right now is my studies--it's very important to me, but there are so many other things going on here! I'm still adjusting to life here in that way.

Pico Iyer has written a very insightful article about his impressions as a foreigner having lived in Japan for a number of years. I highly recommend it; I think that many of his ideas about the form and structure in Japanese society are very astute.


So what am I DOING in Japan??
- Jōdō - every Friday I practice "the way of the staff"
- Karatedō - every Tuesday I practice "the way of the open hand"
- Shodō - every Wednesday I practice the art of Japanese calligraphy
- Melo Melo A Cappella - every Friday I attend A Cappella Circle meetings on campus
- KUMAKUMA!! - a new band that I have formed with a Japanese friend and an Australian friend
- Japanese B - language class four times a week
- Kanji B - once per week (supplement to regular language class)
- Japanese Anthropology - every Monday
- Special Russian Independent Study course - every Monday, I meet with a grad student from Russia who speaks fluent English and Japanese as well. I read Pushkin and Dostoevsky in the original Russian for the class, and we discuss culture.
- Trip to Nagoya - next Thursday, I'm going to Nagoya with a couple of friends. I'm going to see an awesome concert, and thanks to the awesome drummer from MAE, I'm on the guest list. I'm SO STOKED for this!
- JUSCO (big nearby department store) / shopping
- Food happens all the time
- Organized cultural experiences: tea ceremony, ikebana
- Dinner, nightlife - restaurants, clubs, karaoke
- Helping Japanese friends with English
- Comparing cultures - Class meets on Tuesday, and we analyze cultural differences. I'm in a group scheduled to discuss Mythology, with an emphasis on Japanese mythology of course.

Last week, U2 broadcasted their live show from the Rose Bowl in LA, and I happened to watch it live. I'm not a huge fan of U2, but it was awesome.

Calendar of cultural events

Interesting article about Japanese names



Individually wrapped bananas!

Super cool Japanese girl!

Traditional style Japanese house.

I cooked my dad's recipe for fried chicken with country gravy, and made it with rice and corn, just the way I like it back in California. I also made a salad with 1000 Island dressing, and there were many American style drinks to go with it, including milk for dipping Oreos after dinner. I invited about eight guests, and they were all from non-English-speaking countries, as I planned, so that I could show people that American food is more than just McDonald's hamburgers. It was a delicious feast!


A photo of me was featured in this article from the Hokkoku Shimbun. The article is about how a group of us international students are participating in this program to learn about Japanese culture, and so we were learning to make soba noodles. In other words, I was in the newspaper because I was making noodles. YES!

Article from the Hokuriku Chunichi Shimbun about us, too.

The Germans!
The Finns!


There's a sushi place in Kanazawa called Matsurizushi (Festival Sushi), where you pay by the plate. In other words, you sit down at the bar, and various plates roll past you with different kinds of foods (or drinks) on them. You take what you want, stack up the plates as you eat, and pay ¥100 per plate when you're finished. Not satisfied? In front of your seat is a touch-screen monitor that displays various food options. Choose what you want, and depending on what it is, your selection will either be wheeled out on a card by a friendly waitress, or will roll up right in front of you on a Shinkansen-styled food train. Now THAT is a dining experience I can believe in.



People love holidays in Japan, and Christmas is no exception by any means. It's an excuse to decorate! To give gifts! To shop! And Christmas in Japan is known to be a couples' holiday, rather than a family holiday as it is in America, or as a more religious holiday in other parts of the world. So what is religion in Japan? There is a saying that Japanese are born Shinto, marry Christian, and die Buddhist. What does that mean? Japanese people do not categorize themselves by religion as Americans and much of the Western world so often does. Everyone knows the traditions and customs and mixes and matches them in whatever way seems to fit, so as Ayer mentioned in the above article, certain combination that seem to defy "Western sensibility" (as if there is such a thing) are common everywhere in Japanese society. As a result, because people like Christmas, Christmas is popular.


Finally, here's a clip from TV Kanazawa, featuring some familiar faces. The translation of my broken Japanese is "I like to cook myself, so this is really fun!"

Update: My room!

I've been so busy with various activities, I haven't had time for an update. I don't even have time now, but here are some quick pictures of my room! I'll make a real update when I can. Really quickly, life is amazing here and I'm basically having the time of my life. But now I must study Japanese, because it is difficult and requires much studying!

My kitchen! Fridge/freezer on the left. That's my new rice cooker in the middle, my pride and joy. I love having my own kitchen!

View looking the other way. Pantry and such.

The bathroom is a combined toilet and shower. And they said that multitasking doesn't happen in Japanese society!

Looking more into the main part of the room. The bed is quite comfortable actually, with a futon top and a strange pillow that seems to be made of beans. That's my new guitar over there in the corner, obtained two days before I left the US. I've been very happy with it! More on that later. Two maps of Japan are taped to the wall there, one in English (free at the Japan Tourism Center in LA!) and one in Japanese (only ¥100, about $1!). Currently, the top shelf of that metal thing is inhabited by my Jōdō (杖道："the way of the staff") gi (the uniform for it), as well as a karate gi, and my nice camera.

View looking a bit to the left (instead of a bit to the right), where you can see my Bashō print, my dehumidifier, and some of my desk.

The Desk! Somehow I managed to finagle United Airlines into letting me bring all those books without any fees at all. Nice. That's my New Japanese Cell Phone From The Future, on the right.

View the other way.


And in the daytime, my balcony.

My Excellent Panda, and my Boss Coffee poster that I got for free. I don't know if you knew this, but Suntory Boss is the Boss of them All.

NOW MUST STUDY

はじめまして

hajimemashite = Nice to meet you!


After roughly 25 hours of travel (though it also seems I slept through most of it), PLUS a 16-hour time change, I'm in my own room at the International House at Kanazawa University. In Japan. With all of my stuff, plus some welcome gifts and stipend money. Such a welcome! We arrived here at the university after midnight, but now...I'm here! The other students in the program seem to be really awesome and diverse--a couple of guys from Egypt, a girl from Russia (I'll get to practice Russian!), two students from Sheffield, England, a Chinese guy, a guy from Finland...the list goes on, and everyone is really nice and excited to be here. I just realized that I haven't slept in a bed since...well, it's the day before yesterday now, so I'm looking forward to getting in that super comfortable-looking bed. I haven't seen much Japan yet, since I slept most of the way here from Kansai International Airport and it's dark, but the view from my balcony is pretty cool. YES I HAVE MY OWN BALCONY! The room is really ridiculously nice--there's an awesome balcony overlooking what seems to be a field in the middle of campus (I'm on the second floor), a heater, dehumidifier, air conditioner, internet access, vacuum, refrigerator, induction heating plate, closet wardrobe, shower/toilet/washroom, kitchen sink, and a bed that looks to be amazingly comfortable.
So with that said I'm going to bed!

Благодаря Виталию!

Thanks to Vitaly!

Aboard one of the tall ships at the regatta, a week and a half ago.

It's been over a week now since I last updated, but I'm sitting now blogging from some great luck! A very kind and awesome gentleman who works in the university building where we have class has lent me his computer, so in a glorious cascade of good luck, I am blogging from a computer that looks, feels, and acts like my own--but isn't. Thanks to Vitaly! As for my own computer, after extensive testing, I've concluded that it is 99.99% a failing motherboard, whatever that means specifically, which means I'll have to find a way to get a new computer when I return to California. It's annoying, but it's not the end of the world.

So, there's a ton of stuff I could talk about, but I'll go with some pictures.

Here is a typical dinner scene at my host mother's place. Usually, it so happens that the other student living there and I eat dinner at different times, though last night we ate together. Sveta, my host mother, often stays around and talks to me while I eat, or sometimes puts the radio on (though I understand little of the radio-voice). There's always plenty of food--this particular meal was on Saturday, I believe, and as you can see there's some tea, hot dog sort of thing, potatoes, cucumbers and tomatoes, white table bread, apple-water, and a cookie. Last night we had chicken with rice and potatoes, cucumbers and tomatoes, black bread, and a cookie.

That reminds me--I haven't actually said much about what I do every day! On weekdays I get up sometime around 8 and take a shower (there's hot water now!), then get dressed and go in for breakfast. My host mother always has hot kasha (hot cereal), milk, tea, and some sort of bread thing for me, though sometimes it's cold cereal, and twice she made bliny (Russian pancakes). There's also some kind of sandwich or breakfast lavash roll sort of thing. Fortunately for me, she's a very good cook most of the time even with limited resources, and I've come to really enjoy breakfast. Dressing for the weather can be difficult here because the mornings were often very chilly during the first month, and it often rains unexpectedly, though the past two weeks have been warm. Then I walk to the institute, which takes about 20-25 minutes, and recently I've felt comfortable listening to my iPod while I walk too. Check out the map a few posts back on my blog if you want to see exactly where I go. Class starts at 10. I've been sleeping better lately, though there's still some lingering congestion from the cold I had two weeks ago, and there have been more mosquitoes recently too. Class is two hour and a half sections, then lunch provided by the café at the institute. At lunch, as with everywhere in the institute building, we must speak "only" Russian, and I can tell you that conversing in Russian is already much easier, and it seems easier and easier to communicate in general. After lunch there's an hour to study or go online or whatever (except on Wednesday, when we have an extra class section for Phonetics practice). At that point, depending on what day it is, there's either an excursion somewhere in the city, a theatre class, or a "choir" class (singing Russian songs). After that, I tend to spend a bit of time on the computer, usually doing email and such. Then I go back home, my host mother gives me dinner, and I may nap or try to do homework right away. Of course, every day is different, and I will often walk around with other students in some area of the city in the afternoon, maybe going to a café or something. I always prefer to eat dinner back at my host-home, because, well, it's free and plentiful.

Yes, the bridges go up every night! Actually, I didn't experience the concept of "night" until my third weekend of being here, because it never got darker than twilight. The river is really beautiful when eveything is all lit up. That's the moon, of course, and the Hermitage is on the left behind the bridge.

Anoher scene from the Tall Ships' Races. The words on the mural translate to "Sea of Possibility"--a really excellent idea! I thoroughly loved the regatta, and I visited the ships all four days that the event was going on. Someday I'd love to be on the crew of a tall ship!

Aboard the Седов, the largest ship at the festival. It's a Russian ship, from Murmansk! And it's awesome--check out the wikipedia page (above), and their official website.

These guys are generals, from the Hall of Generals (don't remember what it's actually called) at the Hermitage. Don't they look like they could be talking to each other, like the magical paintings in Harry Potter?

From Дом Книги (House of Books).

This is one of the strangest places I've encountered in Russia or anywhere. It's a café, not far from the university building where we have class, called Miks Cafeteria. The sign in front there literally translates to "enormous sandwich." So I went there with my friend Susan (she shared my love of the tall ships), and the food and general atmosphere of the place on the INSIDE is far and away more bizarre than its outward appearance. The place has a "Route 66" theme, with interior decor like some sort of American diner from a parallel universe. Their sandwiches are unlike any food I've ever heard of before--a weird amalgam of general ideas from American and Russian cuisine, but it's unlike either one. The sandwiches are square flat white things that contain fillings like potato salad or "hamburger." They have names like Russianized English words (Russianized English is hilarious, by the way--you get words like Biznes-Lahnch (business lunch), Gamburger (hamburger), and Parkovat'sa (to park one's car). The menus at non-Russian restaurants are especially great. Anyway, this Miks Cafeteria was really interesting. They also had milkshakes that can only be described with the word... pastel. Like drinking pure cream, with a bit of flavor and sugar. Quite good though.

Here I am at the Artillery Museum on Saturday. It was fascinating, but some aspects of it were terrifying. They had a lot of missiles on display--I can really only explain this with more pictures:

This is the Red Scare. One of the museum's gigantic halls was filled with about two dozen missile carriers, rockets and missiles, and rocket trucks. This is a diagram of one of the missile's trajectory. It's not labeled, but you get the sense that its destination is some American population center. In that room I began to really get a sense for the fear that the Cold War held on the world.

There was also an exhibit about this guy, Kalashnikov. It's called "The Man, The Weapon, The Legend." He invented the AK-47, literally transforming warfare all over the world. There were literally wall-to-wall assault rifles hanging in that exhibit, with certificates from various militaries and organizations such as the National Rifle Association of America, commending him on his work. It was a very, well... humbling, sort of experience. Yet also frightening.

Dostoevsky's grave. We went to a churchyard/monastery thing yesterday and also saw the grave of Tchaikovsky. What really interested me about the place, though, was reading a Latin inscription on another one of the monuments and realizing that I understood almost all of it. Then a Russian woman asked me whether I understood it, and I started to translate the Latin into Russian for her, but she seemed to lose interest very quickly. Still, it was really exciting for me, and I remembered how much I enjoyed studying and translating Latin, and I thought how curious it is that we don't spend any time on translation in the Russian class here, and I miss that. I'm still reading Notes From Underground and really getting a lot out of it.

Scene from July 3rd. This was the Friday before July 4, of course, and the university café staff wanted to give us a special "American Picnic" sort of lunch. It was great!

Finally, a bit of graffiti I saw yesterday. My experience here, as I have said before, has been up and down in many ways, but I feel that I'm starting to settle into it. It's absolutely true that culture shock is inevitable--at least for me, it hit me in a much more textbook way than I realized at the time. There are many thoughts swirling around my head as I do a lot of growing up, but the future in general for me doesn't worry me so much. So like the graffiti says, it's best to think that everything will be alright. I'm learning so much here. As my brother told me a couple of days ago, it's impossible to imagine beforehand how the experience of actually living abroad will affect every part of your being. He's right.