Week Two

The second week of classes has flown by much more quickly than the first, as we've settled into our schedule. During the week, I'm up at six to shower first (or five, as today, if I have some more homework to finish), we have breakfast as a family at seven, and I'm on the local train to Hakodate by 7:45, along with three or four other 留学生 (ryuugakusei/exchange students). It's a half-hour walk from Hakodate Station to the school through the morning market bustling with vendors peddling freshly caught seafood who always say hello. Up a small hill is HIF, the Hokkaido International Foundation, which shares its building with the Russian University, where Japanese students our age are learning Russian. (We share a dining hall, which has made for some great introductions. In Japanese, of course.) Up some stairs a sign greets students as they go to the fourth floor:

日本語 (Nihongo) means Japanese (the language) and だけ (daké) means 'only': no English is allowed in the school! This is tough, most especially in terms of getting more complicated thoughts and emotions across, but it really has helped me become a little quicker at putting what I want to say in Japanese on the fly. There's no English in the classroom either, which is a challenge when learning new grammar, to say the least, but somehow the teacher makes it work. Speaking of linguistic adventures, I had a funny experience a little while ago with my host family. Because my host mom also works some hours during the week, they have a nice family ritual of going out to dinner every Sunday. On one Sunday my family said we were all going to go バイキング (baikingu) for dinner. I had never heard this word before, but it is obviously a foreign loan-word (it's written in the phonetic 'katakana' alphabet used for sounds and loan-words), and I thought that it meant 'biking', as ジョギング (jyogingu) means 'jogging'. So I went outside to the landing where the 自転車 ('jitensha', literally something like self-turning vehicle) are. I noticed there were only two and asked how we should all get there and why we were heading to the van. Man, did that crack them up! It turns out that バイキング means Viking (the two words sound the same in Japanese since they have no sound for 'v'), which means smorgasbord/buffet style dining. I assumed this was because Vikings are assumed to have enjoyed great spreads of food after pillaging their foes, but the perhaps less-fantastic but still linguistically intriguing truth is that the restaurant Imperial Viking opened the first buffet-style restaurant in Japan in the year 昭和三十三年 (Shōwa 33).

Now, I'm sure you're wondering when the heck Shōwa 33 is. Well, it means 1958 in the Japanese era system, which begins year one upon the ascension of a new emperor to the Chrysanthemum Throne, with succeeding years following the Gregorian calendar. It is still commonly used today, as can be seen on this slip that I fill out on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays when I go to a gym a couple miles from school.

On my way to the gym, I usually try to take a different route every time to see what interesting sights are about. This bench shows an early Western-style music ensemble from the 明治 (Meiji) era when Japan reopened to the west.

On another day, in a local park, a group of adults, possibly retirees, enjoy a game of croquet. Japan has the longest life expectancy in the world, which speaks well of their lifestyle and healthcare, but poses problems for the country's infrastructure, much as the aging of the baby boomers does in the States.

Before moving on, here are a couple of pictures from the week before last. Firstly, a teacher snapped this pic of my first experience playing the 琴 (koto) about which I wrote last week.

I also took my first 剣道 (kendō, Japanese fencing with bamboo swords) class last week, which was a lot of fun. It brought memories of the fencing classes I took when I was ten or eleven; many of the foot motions seem similar. Unfortunately, this Where's Waldo shot is the only one I could find with me in it. If I find the time, I'd like to try it again one of these days.

Finally, the remainder of this past week's pictures come from our class trip to Ōnuma this weekend. It was a lot of fun, partly because we were able to get to know one another a little better while speaking English. Ōnuma is apparently a Quasi-National Park, although I am not sure what that means. It was a beautiful area, and the naturally squid-ink-flavored ice cream was quite delicious. Seriously.


(Michael Chirico, from UPenn)

At our hotel we had a banquet and a talent show. The food was aplenty and delicious.

Last, and best of all, I had my as of yet most purely cross-cultural experience on Saturday afternoon. I was passing around a soccer ball in a field at the park with two friends, one of whom plays soccer for her university, when a young team of six graders came. We decided to go over and ask them if we could play with them. Some other 留学生 came and pretty soon we had a game going! The kids weren't bad: they outscored us 5-3 and we 'won' on the last goal, so everyone went away happy after a group picture. It was a singular event (and probably the first time I had played soccer in four years). It was great to hear them yelling 中！中！ (Naka! Naka! Center! Center!)

またね！(Mata ne!)

Week One

The first week of class has wrapped up, and I've changed my mind and decided to blog about my time here after all. There's just so much happening that it would be a shame not to share it somehow! It's been a week and a half already, so I have some catching up to do: in lieu of a rote record I'd like to relate some experiences I've had of particular interest; I've been taking a lot of of pictures so I'll use some of them to organize my thoughts.


Picture #1: This was taken from my room at the hotel we stayed at in Tokyo before flying to Hokkaido. Hakodate is a much smaller city and the pace of life seems slower (and HIF's presence in the city is probably a bigger deal than it would be otherwise, as the presence of several local notables at the opening ceremony might have attested to), but it's also large enough to be an exciting place to be. Last week, before we moved in with our host families, I went for a run around the hotel in the afternoon, and it was funny to see the little kids staring and talking about me. They're young enough not to have learned to hide some of their feelings as is culturally de rigueur.

Picture #2: I volunteered to try to play the koto after the short koto concert at the hotel and managed to pick out 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" which the instructor made sound much more complete with an accompanying pattern. I've never tried a koto before, that I can remember anyway, and it made for a fun new experience. I've always liked traditional Japanese music. (Many thanks to Vinson Young for snapping the picture!)




Picture #3: My host family. They're wonderful, and seem to be relatively straight-forward in their expectations, letting me know by what time I should return in the evening, etc. They also don't really speak English at all which makes it easier to practice my Japanese without falling back to my vernacular, as it were, although it does mean many instances of double checking words on the Eiwajiten (English-Japanese Dictionary) and Waeijiten on my cell phone. My host parent's both work, and my host dad started his own building firm last August. Shouta, my host brother, practices volleyball every day for his school team, even though they have no games till the fall. It seems pretty intense. Did I mention they're all very nice?


Picture #4: This is the first concrete electricity pole in Japan. It is still being used today. I think that speaks for itself.


Picture #5: I walked to a small bridge above the highway a mile or so from my host family's house the other night to watch the sunset. It was gorgeous. When I told my host mom, she was shocked that I had walked so far down the road. (She thought it was neat in the end, though.) The same reaction was elicited when I told her I'm walking a couple miles after class some days during the week to go to a gym. My host dad also drives to his office which is very close to the house. I see this as a cultural/status issue, the idea being that if one is well-to-do enough to have a car one should use it. I've noticed similar feelings in the Philippines when visiting my family there.














Picture #6: This beach is just a couple blocks from my host family's house. I asked about tsunamis, and they said there hasn't been one for many years, since before they lived in their current house.


Picture #7: Today I went to mass with my host parents (we're all Catholic) at a Trappist monastery that dates from the turn of last century and my host mother and I ended up bringing up the host during mass! This shot is courtesy of my host father, who was very excited to have been able to take a picture. About thirty people attended the service. The monastery land is beautiful. Apparently someone just tried to put a shinkansen (bullet train) through there, but, luckily, since the Catholic Church owns the land it had to be rerouted elsewhere.


Picture #8: After mass we visited my host dad's hometown and his family's land. It's much more rural than where they live now. Their old house is gone, but he and his brother's have designed a beautifully manicured garden on their property, which includes small shrine.

Other notes: Class is good, and I like the teacher, though the daily vocabulary/kanji quizzes are on the overwhelming side. I also am really enjoying meeting all the other ryuugakusei.

Till next time!