(no subject)
i can say i'm both sad and excited to be returning to the states. i'll be sad to leave the other ryuugakusei though i do think there is a very good chance of seeing at least a couple of them again. we all seem to be the travelling and studying abroad type after willingly spending a year in japan. i've grown accustomed to living here, even though it is completely different than america. i find myself bowing constantly and holding my plate to my face while eating on the floor. and i also like it.
i bought 'ochugen' for kurihara-san the other day. ochugen is a gift you give in early july to people who have treated you nicely for the past couple months. the grocery stores have huge displays of gift packages of beer, towels, fish eggs, you name it. japanese people go and select gifts for different people and offer them as a way of saying "thank you for the time being, lets continue our good relationship." a man of kurihara-san's status will recieve easily 300 gifts of ochugen in the month of july, ranging in price from 20 dollars to a couple hundred dollars. most of it he will not need, nor use, but if he didn't recieve ochugen from say, his business partner, it would be taken as a personal offense. so i went out to the grocery store and fretted over what to buy that maybe his wife would use. i ended up getting fed up since i was in a hurry, and bought some type of clear gelatinous desert that you put into a hollow box and press out in long shoe-string like strands into a bowl to be eaten. i have no idea what it was, really, but it looked like when you put playdoh in the plastic head toy and squeeze out pink hair. so i bought the ochugen and presented it to him on monday. he was very surprised that i gave him ochugen, being a foreigner, and seemed happy and a bit embarassed. he said 'sumimasen' several times, a japanese reply when they recieve a gift which translates as 'sorry' or 'excuse me.' and although he might not remember which ochugen i gave him, let alone open it up to see what it was, i was happy to do it. i think its a nice tradition.
i've been thinking about these things a lot lately. our last lesson theme in basic japanese class was about 'giri' and 'on', or feelings of obligation toward someone else. we talked about how in the west, if someone does you a favor or takes you out to eat, you say thank you probably once, and leave it at that. however, in japan it would be rude to not thank that person practically every time you saw them (unless they were a close friend). there are set phrases/ways/gifts to say thank you in japan for every occasion, from thanking your child's teacher for educating to literally saying 'thank you for the time that has passed' when you see someone who did a favor for you a while ago. most of these phrases include 'sumimasen' which, as i said before, means sorry. japanese people apologize anytime you do something for them, as if they're causing you trouble even if you just pick up a paper they drop. every time i go to a house to teach english, i say 'ojama shimasu' translating as 'excuse me for entering/bothering you' as if i'm not being paid and asked to come. everything is please and thank you and excuse me and bow and apologize. i'm going to come back to america so polite you wont know what hit you.
in other exciting news, japan is up in arms about north korea's test missiles. for the past 24+ hours, the tv has been non-stop special reports about the crazy north koreans and flag burning and yelling at the embassies and interviewing korean people who live in japan. it might not be apparent in america, but the koreans and japanese have had a long standing bad relationship and korean or japanese korean children in japan find themselves constantly tortured at school for their heritage. i have a couple friends who have been born and raised in japan, dont even speak korean, but because their parents and grandparents were forced to move to japan during world war 2 from korea, they are branded as an outsider, as a gaijin. they aren't even allowed to carry a japanese passport, they have korean. i watched on the news yesterday an old woman being interviewed about the missiles. she is korean but was born in japan. they asked what she thought about the missiles and, without stopping whatever work she was doing in her shop, she curtly replied that second generation koreans feel the same way as japanese. because they ARE japanese. japan is calling for a UN response. i'm not sure what will happen after that.
otherwise, things have been pretty stable here. i met up with kurihara-san on monday, this time taking along a friend of mine named georgie from australia. we met up at our usual time and place and jumped in a taxi. kurihara-san gave me the most amazing cd.. its this guy named hideki saijo, and he was a famous singer in japan in the 70s. he had a single called somethingsomething roora (which is mine name in japanese). apparently everyone knows that song if they're over the age of 40 and i've had several people mention it to me. the front of the cd has a picture of him in an unbuttoned collared shirt with massive bee-gees inspired hair. i listened to it last night and i must say, his cover of YMCA brought tears to my eyes. anyway, then he gave me my own name cards. last time i saw him he gifted me with kanji for my name, meaning he translated my name into the complicated pictographic characters. my name ended up being the kanji for road and the kanji for net or trap.. not sure what that means. (brendan later looked up kanji for my name in class and came up with prison nudity. that really fits my personality, i think.) anyway, so he gave me kanji, and this time he gave me 50 rectangular name stickers, the same kind the geisha and maiko use when they meet a customer. so now i officialy am a gaijin geisha! they're really cool though and ill post a picture once i get one. he also gave me pictures from last time we met, when he took me to a geisha bar to meet a famous geisha from the 70s and 80s named mametsuru (bean crane).
so our taxi ride took us into the heart of kamishiken, a lesser known geisha area than gion but the oldest in kyoto. i'd never been there before and it kind of popped up out of nowhere by nijo street. we were dropped off at a beer garden.. there were a lot of men and some women with geisha and maiko sitting at outside tables with lanterns and lots of beer. georgie, kurihara-san and i sat down only to be immediately joined by a very pretty maiko.. and tv cameras. apparently they were filming something and also taking still photographs for a book about kamishiken. kurihara-san said if we end up being in the book, he will send me a copy. anyway, we ordered a lot of appetizer type food and beer and sake and were joined through out the night by various geisha and maiko. i think maybe we met 7 women in all. one geisha, whose name i unfortunately don't remember, was really lively and funny.. a lot more boisterous than most other geisha i've encountered. once she heard georgie was from australia, she immediately started talking about wallets are made out of kangaroo testicles for good luck and that she has one at home. what the japanese wont do for a little luck. georgie and i had a fantastic time. she had never met a geisha before so she was really happy and amazed to be there, as was i. we got kind of silly when my chopsticks malfunctioned and i dropped an entire sausage that i then kicked under the table, and she accidentally ate a huge amount of wasabi mustard. it was fun having her there to share that experience and to talk and joke when kurihara-san started talking with other people. we stayed there for a couple of hours enjoying conversation and having kurihara-san take a million pictures of us with everyone we met.
after a while kurihara-san decided he wanted to hear some music, so we headed into higashi-gion and ended up at a piano lounge. georgie and i sat down and i turned to her and said "are we in a hostess bar!?" in case you don't know, a hostess bar is a purely japanese institution. it's a bar where men, single and not, go for company. women work there wearing ornate gowns and jewelry and basically sit around listening to the men talk, laughing at their jokes, lighting their cigarettes and capping off their whiskey (which costs easily 50 bucks a drink). many of these places have bad reputations, as they're often controlled by the japanese mafia indirectly, and sometimes (not all, mind you) have links to irreputable dealings and behavior. so as soon as we sat down at our table in the tiny lounge, 4 women in sparkly gowns and heels joined our table, laying our pistachios cherries chocolate and whiskey. the man in charge of the piano of course played "georgia on my mind" for me and georgie and i spent most of the night gossiping and singing a little karaoke for the salarymen who came in later while kurihara-san spoke with the owner. the salarymen were a group of maybe 20 men out on a after work group drinking excursion. one of the men passed out as soon as he sat down with his mouth open, and through out the night the senior men would make a couple of the younger workers to kiss him. crazy salarymen. at 11:00 we finally threw in the towel and went home. my next meeting with kurihara-san will be the night of my birthday to be dressed in kimono, wig and full face makeup as a maiko. pictures of course, will follow. i've no doubt that i'll probably be the weirdest looking maiko in town that night.
the gion matsuri has started up downtown. its a festival that lasts the month of july and is one of the three most important in japan. the night of the 16th everyone will gather downtown to view each neighborhoods floats and the day of the 17th the entire city will be there to help them in the procession to yasaka shrine at the foot of gion. it'll be hot but i think it'll be really fun and i'm quite excited for another big matsuri. other than that, i'm just preparing to pack up and say goodbye to everyone and japan. i'm glad im leaving the day after the other americans, i have a feeling i'll want to be alone on the plane. the 4th of july made me quite sad to have such a big holiday in the states pass here without a mention (not that i expected one), and i think im mentally getting ready to return. emy leaves the 19th and alvaro the 25th so two of my closest friends will be gone early. i've been working on gathering presents for everyone back home and a couple things for my close friends here. last night i started throwing out stuff i wont need in my apartment so i can properly assess how the heck im going to bring everything home. ill probably have to pick up another suitcase soon.
but as soon as i set foot in my house in north carolina, im picking up the phone and ordering a pizza. that, i can guarantee.
i bought 'ochugen' for kurihara-san the other day. ochugen is a gift you give in early july to people who have treated you nicely for the past couple months. the grocery stores have huge displays of gift packages of beer, towels, fish eggs, you name it. japanese people go and select gifts for different people and offer them as a way of saying "thank you for the time being, lets continue our good relationship." a man of kurihara-san's status will recieve easily 300 gifts of ochugen in the month of july, ranging in price from 20 dollars to a couple hundred dollars. most of it he will not need, nor use, but if he didn't recieve ochugen from say, his business partner, it would be taken as a personal offense. so i went out to the grocery store and fretted over what to buy that maybe his wife would use. i ended up getting fed up since i was in a hurry, and bought some type of clear gelatinous desert that you put into a hollow box and press out in long shoe-string like strands into a bowl to be eaten. i have no idea what it was, really, but it looked like when you put playdoh in the plastic head toy and squeeze out pink hair. so i bought the ochugen and presented it to him on monday. he was very surprised that i gave him ochugen, being a foreigner, and seemed happy and a bit embarassed. he said 'sumimasen' several times, a japanese reply when they recieve a gift which translates as 'sorry' or 'excuse me.' and although he might not remember which ochugen i gave him, let alone open it up to see what it was, i was happy to do it. i think its a nice tradition.
i've been thinking about these things a lot lately. our last lesson theme in basic japanese class was about 'giri' and 'on', or feelings of obligation toward someone else. we talked about how in the west, if someone does you a favor or takes you out to eat, you say thank you probably once, and leave it at that. however, in japan it would be rude to not thank that person practically every time you saw them (unless they were a close friend). there are set phrases/ways/gifts to say thank you in japan for every occasion, from thanking your child's teacher for educating to literally saying 'thank you for the time that has passed' when you see someone who did a favor for you a while ago. most of these phrases include 'sumimasen' which, as i said before, means sorry. japanese people apologize anytime you do something for them, as if they're causing you trouble even if you just pick up a paper they drop. every time i go to a house to teach english, i say 'ojama shimasu' translating as 'excuse me for entering/bothering you' as if i'm not being paid and asked to come. everything is please and thank you and excuse me and bow and apologize. i'm going to come back to america so polite you wont know what hit you.
in other exciting news, japan is up in arms about north korea's test missiles. for the past 24+ hours, the tv has been non-stop special reports about the crazy north koreans and flag burning and yelling at the embassies and interviewing korean people who live in japan. it might not be apparent in america, but the koreans and japanese have had a long standing bad relationship and korean or japanese korean children in japan find themselves constantly tortured at school for their heritage. i have a couple friends who have been born and raised in japan, dont even speak korean, but because their parents and grandparents were forced to move to japan during world war 2 from korea, they are branded as an outsider, as a gaijin. they aren't even allowed to carry a japanese passport, they have korean. i watched on the news yesterday an old woman being interviewed about the missiles. she is korean but was born in japan. they asked what she thought about the missiles and, without stopping whatever work she was doing in her shop, she curtly replied that second generation koreans feel the same way as japanese. because they ARE japanese. japan is calling for a UN response. i'm not sure what will happen after that.
otherwise, things have been pretty stable here. i met up with kurihara-san on monday, this time taking along a friend of mine named georgie from australia. we met up at our usual time and place and jumped in a taxi. kurihara-san gave me the most amazing cd.. its this guy named hideki saijo, and he was a famous singer in japan in the 70s. he had a single called somethingsomething roora (which is mine name in japanese). apparently everyone knows that song if they're over the age of 40 and i've had several people mention it to me. the front of the cd has a picture of him in an unbuttoned collared shirt with massive bee-gees inspired hair. i listened to it last night and i must say, his cover of YMCA brought tears to my eyes. anyway, then he gave me my own name cards. last time i saw him he gifted me with kanji for my name, meaning he translated my name into the complicated pictographic characters. my name ended up being the kanji for road and the kanji for net or trap.. not sure what that means. (brendan later looked up kanji for my name in class and came up with prison nudity. that really fits my personality, i think.) anyway, so he gave me kanji, and this time he gave me 50 rectangular name stickers, the same kind the geisha and maiko use when they meet a customer. so now i officialy am a gaijin geisha! they're really cool though and ill post a picture once i get one. he also gave me pictures from last time we met, when he took me to a geisha bar to meet a famous geisha from the 70s and 80s named mametsuru (bean crane).
so our taxi ride took us into the heart of kamishiken, a lesser known geisha area than gion but the oldest in kyoto. i'd never been there before and it kind of popped up out of nowhere by nijo street. we were dropped off at a beer garden.. there were a lot of men and some women with geisha and maiko sitting at outside tables with lanterns and lots of beer. georgie, kurihara-san and i sat down only to be immediately joined by a very pretty maiko.. and tv cameras. apparently they were filming something and also taking still photographs for a book about kamishiken. kurihara-san said if we end up being in the book, he will send me a copy. anyway, we ordered a lot of appetizer type food and beer and sake and were joined through out the night by various geisha and maiko. i think maybe we met 7 women in all. one geisha, whose name i unfortunately don't remember, was really lively and funny.. a lot more boisterous than most other geisha i've encountered. once she heard georgie was from australia, she immediately started talking about wallets are made out of kangaroo testicles for good luck and that she has one at home. what the japanese wont do for a little luck. georgie and i had a fantastic time. she had never met a geisha before so she was really happy and amazed to be there, as was i. we got kind of silly when my chopsticks malfunctioned and i dropped an entire sausage that i then kicked under the table, and she accidentally ate a huge amount of wasabi mustard. it was fun having her there to share that experience and to talk and joke when kurihara-san started talking with other people. we stayed there for a couple of hours enjoying conversation and having kurihara-san take a million pictures of us with everyone we met.
after a while kurihara-san decided he wanted to hear some music, so we headed into higashi-gion and ended up at a piano lounge. georgie and i sat down and i turned to her and said "are we in a hostess bar!?" in case you don't know, a hostess bar is a purely japanese institution. it's a bar where men, single and not, go for company. women work there wearing ornate gowns and jewelry and basically sit around listening to the men talk, laughing at their jokes, lighting their cigarettes and capping off their whiskey (which costs easily 50 bucks a drink). many of these places have bad reputations, as they're often controlled by the japanese mafia indirectly, and sometimes (not all, mind you) have links to irreputable dealings and behavior. so as soon as we sat down at our table in the tiny lounge, 4 women in sparkly gowns and heels joined our table, laying our pistachios cherries chocolate and whiskey. the man in charge of the piano of course played "georgia on my mind" for me and georgie and i spent most of the night gossiping and singing a little karaoke for the salarymen who came in later while kurihara-san spoke with the owner. the salarymen were a group of maybe 20 men out on a after work group drinking excursion. one of the men passed out as soon as he sat down with his mouth open, and through out the night the senior men would make a couple of the younger workers to kiss him. crazy salarymen. at 11:00 we finally threw in the towel and went home. my next meeting with kurihara-san will be the night of my birthday to be dressed in kimono, wig and full face makeup as a maiko. pictures of course, will follow. i've no doubt that i'll probably be the weirdest looking maiko in town that night.
the gion matsuri has started up downtown. its a festival that lasts the month of july and is one of the three most important in japan. the night of the 16th everyone will gather downtown to view each neighborhoods floats and the day of the 17th the entire city will be there to help them in the procession to yasaka shrine at the foot of gion. it'll be hot but i think it'll be really fun and i'm quite excited for another big matsuri. other than that, i'm just preparing to pack up and say goodbye to everyone and japan. i'm glad im leaving the day after the other americans, i have a feeling i'll want to be alone on the plane. the 4th of july made me quite sad to have such a big holiday in the states pass here without a mention (not that i expected one), and i think im mentally getting ready to return. emy leaves the 19th and alvaro the 25th so two of my closest friends will be gone early. i've been working on gathering presents for everyone back home and a couple things for my close friends here. last night i started throwing out stuff i wont need in my apartment so i can properly assess how the heck im going to bring everything home. ill probably have to pick up another suitcase soon.
but as soon as i set foot in my house in north carolina, im picking up the phone and ordering a pizza. that, i can guarantee.