Fitting in

I'm in the writing mood, so you guys get a 2 for 1 bonus! Maybe it is the trance.....note to self, more trance!

So I've been in this country for a long time now, and I would say I am still very far from being an expert on Japan and such, but would also like to think that kinda know my way around Japanese society and such. So the question I want to raise is, how much do you change yourself to fit into a society? How much should I change myself, my habits, and my routine so that I fit into Japanese society. I have to say right now, that in my opinion, no matter what I do I would never be considered a Japanese. Even if I lived here for the rest of my life, naturalized, became fluent, none of that would matter to the Japanese people.

That being said, I have taken some steps to do what I can to fit in. Obviously I don't run around, acting like a fool, trying to get in to trouble, but at the same time some of my patience has been wearing thin recently. One of the things that is starting to aggravate me is having to take off my shoes in lots of different places. When I go to the gym, I have to take off my shoes to walk around inside. At lots of restaurants and stores, you might have to take off your shoes. Now I don't object to this at all when it comes to houses, but honestly, at a restaurant or at the gym, it is pretty ridiculous, especially considering the fact that I've seen some Japanese people NOT obey this rule.

For example, today at the gym, a kid took off his shoes at the entrance way, and instead of....standing on his shoes he just took off, stepping up, on to the level where you can only have sox on, and then picking up his shoes and putting them in a locker, he took his shoes off, stepped to the side, picked them up and put them in a locker (remember at this point he is standing on the same level where you walk with your shoes not your sox) and then proceeded to step up onto the level where you can only wear your socks! So the bottom of his socks touched the same place as the bottom of his shoes!! Isn't he supposed to burn for eternity and his offspring have bad luck for 10,000 years or something? I mean come on, it honestly makes no sense.

The gym...ALL parts of it, not just the place where you can walk with your shoes, is...incredibly dirty. I am really sure no one cleans anything in any of these places, and that is also starting to kind of get on my nerves. In the class rooms, you put your backpack down, grab the stuff you need for class, then class ends and you grab your backpack again, only to find that whichever parts of it touched the ground are now covered in dirt, dust, and grime. Restaurants aren't that dirty, but I still feel uncomfortable having to take off my shoes, that combined with the whole tatami sitting style, where you sit on the ground to eat. It is kind of fun the first 5 times you do it until you realize that it is incredibly uncomfortable to be in that position for longer than 30 minutes.

I'm also getting sick of the foreigner look. I know I am big, and sort of goofy looking, and look like I am angry sometimes, but honestly, some of the looks I get are just disturbing which is surprising because Japanese people try to avoid like, direct eye contact and staring, unless you are ancient, in which case you can just frown and do whatever you want at foreigners. Yeah, that's right, old Japanese women give me the dirtiest looks in the world. Sometimes I want to tell them their shoe is untied or something funny like that when they stare at me for an especially long time, just to try to distract them or something. I mean honestly I am not all that interesting, just buzz off. I guess I should be used to it by now, but on the flip side, can they really be that shallow that they dislike foreigners that much? I mean their entire economy is based on foreign countries buying their goods. They should be thankful I have come to their country and might some day work to better the connection between America and Japan.

This specific topic actually, has been raised by experts who have cited cases where companies have basically said F Japan, they are too unwilling to change and too stubborn and rooted in their old ways, and taken their business to other countries, say for example China. I don't blame them, honestly. In some of the places I have been there has definitely been simply an aura of dislike towards me, and I wouldn't want to do business in that kind of environment.

In the fall I went to a school in a rural area and spent the day with school children in the 8th grade, and it was a lot of fun. I might have another opportunity like that coming up again, but I had a sort of strange thought, possibly one that only I would have. The program would involve me making several short presentations on America, and having lunch with the students. Now this sounds like fun and a good experience and stuff, but I also just had the idea that I was being paraded around the school, like I was some foreign, rare specimen they had found that they were showing the kids.

Of course the kids wouldn't see it that way, and I suppose they do really look forward to meeting people from other countries, but it also just makes me sad that such programs in Japan exists, where they want people from other countries to come and explain their culture and history to the kids. I tried to think back to my school days if we had kids from other countries giving presentations in front of class, and the only thing I could remember was every year in middle school, we had inmates from the nearby prison come and tell us not to do drugs.

Which presentation would you prefer? lol

Hi there!

How often do you say hello during the day? 10 times? 20 times? Do you say hello, good morning, whatever to every single person you see?

When I first started studying Japanese, I never realized how important simple words like good morning, good afternoon, and good evening would be. You see, every time I go to soccer, I use one of these...maybe 15-20 times. You literally have to say it to almost everyone on the team. So let's say there are 30 people on the team, and you arrive after 4 other people, you will have to say 'hello' to each of the next 25 people that come. I guess I don't really have a problem saying hello that many times, but to be honest it is starting to wear on my nerves a little bit. It is definitely one of those group aspects of Japanese society, where you have to greet everyone in the group before anything can happen. I was trying to think back to my high school soccer days, and what it would have been like if I would have said hello to every single person each time I went to practice and I literally just started laughing by myself, at which point several of the other guys gave me funny look.

But seriously, it is something that happens every single practice, every single day.

I had a good time this past Monday night as well. After my 4 hour Japanese zemi class, we all went out for a drink to a place called Tapa. I'm not sure if the name of the bar/restaurant has any significance, but it was actually my second time going to the place. We ordered the, all you can drink all you can eat 2 hour deal, sat down, and waited for our drinks to come. The system at this place was if you have 13 people, you can order 13 dishes, and when you finish one, you can order one more.

Now when I first came to this place with the soccer team, I think there were 10-15 starving guys, so we developed a pretty good system. As soon as the waiter came and put down the first plate or bowl of food, say for instance 5 hot wings, we would instantly grab all 5 of them, start eating them, give the waiter the plate back, and order another dish, thus maximizing the amount of food we could order.

It was a good system, but this place was still super slow. This past Monday, we sat down at 6:30, ordered, got our drinks within 5 minutes, but our first round of food didn't come until 6:50, and a bunch of our food never even came at all. We ordered 4 orders of karage, or basically fried chicken ball appetizers, that come in a single bowl, with one bowl holding 4 chicken balls. At 6:50, a waitress came up the stairs (we were on the second floor), with 1 single bowl of karage, that had 4 pieces of fried chicken in it. As soon as she left we were all discussing just what the f happened. Where were the other 3 orders of the karage? One of the other guys suggested that we ordered 4 orders of karage, and that since the bowl had 4 pieces of chicken in it, supposedly the place had filled our order of karage.

I quickly objected, pointing to the picture of a bowl of karage on the menu, saying that there is no way an order is a single piece of fried chicken. Then pointing to the picture above that of a bowl packed with fries, I asked 'What if we order fries? If we order 4 orders of fries are we going to only get literally 4 fries?' This actually made everyone laugh (including the professor), and I don't like to brag about my jokes because 99% of the time they are horrible anyway, but there are very few opportunities where my language and cultural Japanese abilities align with a situation where I can really get a good joke in. I have to admit I am super proud of this one.

Spring is in the air..

Hanami is the word that literally means looking at flowers, hana = flower and mi = to look, but to the Japanese people it is so much more. They have a tradition in the spring that when the cherry blossoms begin to bloom, everyone packs a basket of food, and they go and have a picnic under the cherry trees. This is a really cool tradition and stuff, but for me it was really surprising to find out that when they do this, they also drink like mad. So over the last couple of days, we have actually have blooming cherry blossoms, that noon or two in the middle of the day, you will just see a group of like business men and their wives, completely hammered, trying to stumble their way back to their homes or to the train station. Pretty funny.

Note: Next little bit has a bad word...
So I'm taking this class about 'women who have changed our world' and it's a pretty interesting class, and there are several Japanese kids in my class. Now these HUSTEP classes are in English, but Japanese students can take them as well if they have a high enough language ability. I would like to share one of the conversations I had with another one of the Japanese kids in the class. We had just read a reading selection on Jane Goodall, and we were supposed to discuss what we thought of her. So when we got done, I asked this guy next to me, 'what do you think of Jane Goodall?'

He sits there and things for a minute, then he says "she is fucking women!" I kind of sat there laughing and almost crying for about 2 minutes because just the way he said it was hilarious. I had no idea what he was actually trying to say, and he just sat there with this confused look on his face, wondering what he had just said. Man I was dying...After I finally had control of myself I asked him what he really meant and he said sugoi in Japanese which basically means great, so I think he was trying to say that she was great or something, and be cool at the same time so he decided to throw the f bomb in there just for kicks...but man was it funny.

Back to Japanese language. The kanji system is basically drawings that represent ideas, things, or places and such. So like 鳥　means bird, and 牛 means cow. One day we were in Kanji class and the sensei is trying to pronounce this Chinese guy's name, so she asks him what character he uses to write his name. Well the guy is a bit heavier than your average Chinese male, and he replied with "buta" 豚 which means pig. The sensei was doing everything she could to not laugh, and so were half the students. I felt really bad for the guy, but apparently not very many people choose to name their kids after pigs and such, but man it was pretty funny. The sensei's face was getting super red and she kept having to just look down and facepalm.

Also the Kanji for women is 女 and it is read onna, so I don't know much about the history of Kanji and all but I am pretty sure it was invented by guys because the Kanji for loud and annoying, is written by putting 3 女 figures together...thus the idea is that 3 women are loud and annoying lol.

Spring is in the air

Well, after the winter that lasted forever, then traveling to Honshu and enjoying spring there, only to have to return to a cold and barren Hokkaido, spring has finally reached campus. And oh was it worth the wait. The last few days have been absolutely gorgeous, and although I've had the last couple days off, we've had a couple of scrimmages. Here are a couple of quick pictures:


I tell ya, it's pretty hard to beat playing soccer in 70 degree weather, with a slight breeze, with snow capped mountains in the background.