tokyo wa yoru no 7ji...
and "cream cheese pastry" is in my belly.
my room here is about the size of my room in schapiro, and I've already made friends with the yellow jumping spider that is always somehow within my field of vision. I'm afraid to give it a name in case I accidentally kill it, which actually might have just happened. they say there's a weird strain of "african ant" brought to japan by one of the students breeding in the walls here, supposedly they're microscopic and not at all like normal japanese bugs, which tend to be kind of behemoth-y. apparently tinier bugs scare them more. I once watched a whole program on those bugs that live in carpets - it was basically a very frustrating hour of watching this one eensy, translucent, louse look-alike cling for dear life and somehow evade repeated passings of a gigantic vacuum cleaner. trust me, you wanted the guy to die, he looked so gross. the vacuum kept on sucking but it just never happened. I wanted to rip my hair out. tv really is an endless stream of things to worry about. thank god I don't have carpets here. not like I'd really care. anyway the show was hilarious in a hair-ripping way, kind of like how all the commercials in vietnam end up being for instant noodles. I'm not exaggerating, either. two couples on a double date at an amusement park will be whispering sweet nothings in each other's ears in some kind of flirt-competition, then sing a song about how beautiful they think they all are for about 20 seconds, and then, suddenly - they are shoving noodle packets in your face in a blip that only lasts long enough to make the connection between love, beauty and instant noodles a sub-conscious one. two samurai will fight for thirty seconds and then, suddenly - they will call a draw and start slurping instant noodles at a campfire. a little boy will be crying because his foot got sucked into an escalator, his mother grabs his hand and screams, he loses consciousness, the foot's just about to go when a uniformed pack of emergency professionals arrives with - instant noodles. okay I clearly made that last one up. but really it was like that in vietnam, even though i never saw anyone actually eating instant noodles there.
uh.... so tokyo is nice so far. two other girls who got the same scholarship are living in my dorm, and they're pretty cool - one of them is linda (I guess only mandy would know here) from HIF. I opened my door and I was like "I know you." and she was like "oh.. yeah..." and I could see her mind frantically working to remember my face until I gave her a clue. but anyway, she's ever so friendly. we went out to dinner at a tiny ramen/gyouza joint hidden in some side alley by the train station, full of salarymen and students with newspapers. she tends to wear the kind of top that makes even me have to consciously avoid not looking at her breasts. but she put up with all my boring questions about cell phones and bookstores and administrative shit that she had to figure out herself, plus did I mention she's ever so friendly? I might have to delete this later because we might become better friends. hmmm.... hem haw
the gaijin complex I live in turns out to be a truly international one - I never know what language to say sorry in when I bump someone in the elevator. the university program is that way too - we not only have mongolian students and another girl from austin but uzbekistanis. now there's something. at orientation today, everybody except the americans had that kind of shy but off-put demeanor that screams language barrier. except for the japanese girl, who was clearly on another level altogether. she was rigid with the knowledge that everyone would want to be friends with her for language practice. really, we gaijin are like monkeys, howling for japanese conversation from within bars made of 100% titanium averted glance. [note six months later - I'm now great friends with the Japanese girl. she kicks ass, and is my official concert- and school lunch-buddy. I never use her for conversation practice on purpose, but when it does end up happening, she is so nice and patient about it. go figure - first impressions totally suck, or maybe just mine this time.]
I'm so happy that I'm so happy to be back here. on the plane I panicked for a moment and thought I might have lost all interest in japan but I think that was because of the shitty japanese radio and television options on that particular flight. I just wanted to get into japanese-speaking mode ("practice! conversation! yoroshiku! dou shiyou! mata ne! sore de wa oyasuminasai oo-oo-ah-ah [scratches gaijin armpits]"), but who wants to watch a show about the health benefits of eel, watching it fry and dribble its uniquely tempting (and nutritious!) aromatic oils all over the place for 40 minutes when in a little metal capsule above the clouds equipped with mere soggy mini-pizzas and cold, hard rigor-mortis-biscuits? suffice to say that although japanese television can indeed be hilariously freaky and entertaining, for the most part it is insufferably dull - nothing but the kind of depressingly artificial variety shows that, before you know it, make you brood pessimistically about your career goals. and a slew of "educational" programs that tell you all the things you didn't need to know, answering questions such as "how often do eel cooks turn the skewers over the open grill, and for how long? more so on the skin side or the flesh side?" or what were the feelings in the troubled heart of the man in charge of inventing a way to fry chunks of noodles more than two inches thick all the way through so that cup noodle wouldn't have to be manufactured in layers? what about his wife - what was she thinking when he came home for dinner every night full of failed experimental ramen and turned away her home-cooked dishes?" or "which way do you fold the dirty part of your napkin at a french restaurant? under or over?," all for some reason food-related and presented with high drama. apparently only information that superfluous can make japanese people nod and say "naruhodo...", or feel at peace with life at the end of the day. well, at least factoids are kind of harmless and cute compared to american media content. I guess it can't all be pain-threshold demonstrations. when it comes down to it, I still like it.
good news:
1) I'm only two stops from Shibuya - Harajuku in 10, Shinjuku in 20 minutes ain't bad.
2) they govt insures me here for $8 a year. and that means free hospital service anytime. not that I really care that much, of course. I'm not that old yet.
3) my internet connection is so amazingly fast that my computer can hardly handle it - somehow I don't think most of the other students living here know anything about computers or their potentional for sucking your life away - they probably all have category-4 ethernet cables that can't handle the flow, haha - they certainly don't bother with anti-virus protection. I get security threat notices a few times a day. anyway, I feel like the king of the river when I can download at 1mbps from practically anywhere.
4) I finally have money again after spending it all at the dollar store in harajuku (I bought 47 items), having to eat ramen against my will that night, and then borrowing money for the train to the scholarship office to beg for reimbursement. god I can't believe I did that. I really need to watch it.
5) they have really weird big-brotherly announcements every once in a while over a dorm-wide PA here, where a surly guard will come on after a short ringtone and scold individuals for not returning VCRs in this delightfully robotic monotone - or randomly notify residents that free food has suddenly become available. why don't they have PAs in US dorms? I guess this isn't really a dorm. I don't know what this place is. it's weird.
6) I hung some noren in my doorway to block the offensively unnecessary genkan/foyer from view. with this little space I have no patience for culturally-enforced foyers.
bad news:
1) I can't have visitors overnight. sorry mandy and nancy. I would totally risk it were it not for the creepy big-brother factor and the fact that they claim you will get kicked out at once if caught. the chihuahua inside me quivers at that prospect.
note to self and possibly others - try not to arrive in narita within two hours of rush hour, because the bus to tokyo will take three hours and those waiting for you will be angry and you will be too tired to care until the next morning when they won't smile at you. I listened to My Morning Jacket over and over but it was the only way I could keep the screams inside. I kept thinking, if someone told me I had to swim back to austin and then go through this trip all over again right now, I would just get to it without a word. it was that horrible. or maybe I just desperately wanted a bath. god this is getting long, sorry.
my room here is about the size of my room in schapiro, and I've already made friends with the yellow jumping spider that is always somehow within my field of vision. I'm afraid to give it a name in case I accidentally kill it, which actually might have just happened. they say there's a weird strain of "african ant" brought to japan by one of the students breeding in the walls here, supposedly they're microscopic and not at all like normal japanese bugs, which tend to be kind of behemoth-y. apparently tinier bugs scare them more. I once watched a whole program on those bugs that live in carpets - it was basically a very frustrating hour of watching this one eensy, translucent, louse look-alike cling for dear life and somehow evade repeated passings of a gigantic vacuum cleaner. trust me, you wanted the guy to die, he looked so gross. the vacuum kept on sucking but it just never happened. I wanted to rip my hair out. tv really is an endless stream of things to worry about. thank god I don't have carpets here. not like I'd really care. anyway the show was hilarious in a hair-ripping way, kind of like how all the commercials in vietnam end up being for instant noodles. I'm not exaggerating, either. two couples on a double date at an amusement park will be whispering sweet nothings in each other's ears in some kind of flirt-competition, then sing a song about how beautiful they think they all are for about 20 seconds, and then, suddenly - they are shoving noodle packets in your face in a blip that only lasts long enough to make the connection between love, beauty and instant noodles a sub-conscious one. two samurai will fight for thirty seconds and then, suddenly - they will call a draw and start slurping instant noodles at a campfire. a little boy will be crying because his foot got sucked into an escalator, his mother grabs his hand and screams, he loses consciousness, the foot's just about to go when a uniformed pack of emergency professionals arrives with - instant noodles. okay I clearly made that last one up. but really it was like that in vietnam, even though i never saw anyone actually eating instant noodles there.
uh.... so tokyo is nice so far. two other girls who got the same scholarship are living in my dorm, and they're pretty cool - one of them is linda (I guess only mandy would know here) from HIF. I opened my door and I was like "I know you." and she was like "oh.. yeah..." and I could see her mind frantically working to remember my face until I gave her a clue. but anyway, she's ever so friendly. we went out to dinner at a tiny ramen/gyouza joint hidden in some side alley by the train station, full of salarymen and students with newspapers. she tends to wear the kind of top that makes even me have to consciously avoid not looking at her breasts. but she put up with all my boring questions about cell phones and bookstores and administrative shit that she had to figure out herself, plus did I mention she's ever so friendly? I might have to delete this later because we might become better friends. hmmm.... hem haw
the gaijin complex I live in turns out to be a truly international one - I never know what language to say sorry in when I bump someone in the elevator. the university program is that way too - we not only have mongolian students and another girl from austin but uzbekistanis. now there's something. at orientation today, everybody except the americans had that kind of shy but off-put demeanor that screams language barrier. except for the japanese girl, who was clearly on another level altogether. she was rigid with the knowledge that everyone would want to be friends with her for language practice. really, we gaijin are like monkeys, howling for japanese conversation from within bars made of 100% titanium averted glance. [note six months later - I'm now great friends with the Japanese girl. she kicks ass, and is my official concert- and school lunch-buddy. I never use her for conversation practice on purpose, but when it does end up happening, she is so nice and patient about it. go figure - first impressions totally suck, or maybe just mine this time.]
I'm so happy that I'm so happy to be back here. on the plane I panicked for a moment and thought I might have lost all interest in japan but I think that was because of the shitty japanese radio and television options on that particular flight. I just wanted to get into japanese-speaking mode ("practice! conversation! yoroshiku! dou shiyou! mata ne! sore de wa oyasuminasai oo-oo-ah-ah [scratches gaijin armpits]"), but who wants to watch a show about the health benefits of eel, watching it fry and dribble its uniquely tempting (and nutritious!) aromatic oils all over the place for 40 minutes when in a little metal capsule above the clouds equipped with mere soggy mini-pizzas and cold, hard rigor-mortis-biscuits? suffice to say that although japanese television can indeed be hilariously freaky and entertaining, for the most part it is insufferably dull - nothing but the kind of depressingly artificial variety shows that, before you know it, make you brood pessimistically about your career goals. and a slew of "educational" programs that tell you all the things you didn't need to know, answering questions such as "how often do eel cooks turn the skewers over the open grill, and for how long? more so on the skin side or the flesh side?" or what were the feelings in the troubled heart of the man in charge of inventing a way to fry chunks of noodles more than two inches thick all the way through so that cup noodle wouldn't have to be manufactured in layers? what about his wife - what was she thinking when he came home for dinner every night full of failed experimental ramen and turned away her home-cooked dishes?" or "which way do you fold the dirty part of your napkin at a french restaurant? under or over?," all for some reason food-related and presented with high drama. apparently only information that superfluous can make japanese people nod and say "naruhodo...", or feel at peace with life at the end of the day. well, at least factoids are kind of harmless and cute compared to american media content. I guess it can't all be pain-threshold demonstrations. when it comes down to it, I still like it.
good news:
1) I'm only two stops from Shibuya - Harajuku in 10, Shinjuku in 20 minutes ain't bad.
2) they govt insures me here for $8 a year. and that means free hospital service anytime. not that I really care that much, of course. I'm not that old yet.
3) my internet connection is so amazingly fast that my computer can hardly handle it - somehow I don't think most of the other students living here know anything about computers or their potentional for sucking your life away - they probably all have category-4 ethernet cables that can't handle the flow, haha - they certainly don't bother with anti-virus protection. I get security threat notices a few times a day. anyway, I feel like the king of the river when I can download at 1mbps from practically anywhere.
4) I finally have money again after spending it all at the dollar store in harajuku (I bought 47 items), having to eat ramen against my will that night, and then borrowing money for the train to the scholarship office to beg for reimbursement. god I can't believe I did that. I really need to watch it.
5) they have really weird big-brotherly announcements every once in a while over a dorm-wide PA here, where a surly guard will come on after a short ringtone and scold individuals for not returning VCRs in this delightfully robotic monotone - or randomly notify residents that free food has suddenly become available. why don't they have PAs in US dorms? I guess this isn't really a dorm. I don't know what this place is. it's weird.
6) I hung some noren in my doorway to block the offensively unnecessary genkan/foyer from view. with this little space I have no patience for culturally-enforced foyers.
bad news:
1) I can't have visitors overnight. sorry mandy and nancy. I would totally risk it were it not for the creepy big-brother factor and the fact that they claim you will get kicked out at once if caught. the chihuahua inside me quivers at that prospect.
note to self and possibly others - try not to arrive in narita within two hours of rush hour, because the bus to tokyo will take three hours and those waiting for you will be angry and you will be too tired to care until the next morning when they won't smile at you. I listened to My Morning Jacket over and over but it was the only way I could keep the screams inside. I kept thinking, if someone told me I had to swim back to austin and then go through this trip all over again right now, I would just get to it without a word. it was that horrible. or maybe I just desperately wanted a bath. god this is getting long, sorry.