Take no Ko

Spring visited Japan a good number of weeks ago, and along with it all manner of plants burst into bloom and insects once again appeared in startling number. And 竹の子 (take no ko, or, bamboo shoots) appeared along with the bunch. As a number of you may or may not already know, I house 2 is surrounded by a bamboo forest, and so, naturally, the bamboo shoots made their appearance in our backyard as well.

I’ve always liked bamboo shoots, so when upon returning home from classes the Moritas waved me into their room and gestured to a large bag of bamboo shoots, offering me one, I decided I would do my best to try and cook it. Despite my lack of progress I’ve been trying pretty hard to learn how to cook various dishes throughout the year. The take no ko seemed like a welcome challenge.

So I took the bamboo sprout back to my room and turned to the internet, referencing a number of recipes, blogs and youtube videos, and then set to work. I boiled the take no ko in the white water that comes off rice when you wash it before cooking (this is supposed to take the bitterness out of the bamboo sprouts) and then fried it up in butter and soy sauce the way the Moritas recommended. The result ended up being a very delicious topping for rice, and I was really pleased.

The culinary experiment having succeeded splendidly, on my next trip to the store I went hunting for more take no ko to bring home with me. What I discovered was a selection of small ¥400 take no ko, and several larger ¥120 ones. Now, you may wonder why there’s such a big gap in the price, but the answer is pretty simple. The ¥400 take no ko are produced in Japan, and the ¥120 ones come from China.

If you shop in Japan, you’ll notice pretty quickly that all of the vegetable, fish and meat products are clearly labeled 国内産業 (koku-nai sangyou, referring of course to Japan,) 中産業 (chuu sangyou, referring to China.) There is also a division set up for Korea, but the two I want to talk about are the Japan-produced products and the China-produced products. Now, if you take a closer look at said divided products, you’ll notice that there’s a ridiculously large gap in price (China has got to be lying to the world about the worth of their money.) You may even think, “win!”
But then you’re likely to notice that everyone is buying the expensive, Japan version.

When I asked about this, I found out that there had been quite a number of problems with the Chinese imports from sickness to finding foreign objects inside of meat and fish. As disappointing as it was, I made a note of that and decided to stay away from them.

Of course, take no ko are not meat, and shouldn’t involve much danger. Since I couldn’t be spending ¥400 on something that would amount to little more than a one-time flavoring for my rice, I broke my little rule and went with the Chinese import.

After waiting a few days, I finally cooked the sucker up the same way I did last time, and set up to eat it with rice and gyoza. What I discovered was that completely unlike the first take no ko I made from our back yard, the store bought Chinese version was very sour, and neither the generous amounts of butter I used in cooking it, nor the soy sauce that I added left any mark on the take no ko. Trying not to be picky, I went ahead and tried to eat all of them, but started feeling sick half way through, and resumed my meal by picking around the bamboo sprouts. My disappointment must have been palpable as I shoveled the uneaten take no ko into the trashcan with my chopsticks.

It was a short two meal run, but I think my take no ko-eating career has met its end for now. Foiled again!
But I’m going to keep trying to cook different foods, and hopefully in the future I’ll get another chance to easily enjoy fresh take no ko during the spring time. . .

Winter’s Ending

In a few more weeks, Kyoto should be covered in sights like this

I woke up at 8:30am on what may have been the first day of spring in Kyoto. The weather’s been warming up lately, and I noticed yesterday that the buds on some of the Ume trees were looking lined up at the starting line, getting ready to bloom before anyone could notice. It seemed like a good occasion to write a brief blog, although I should warn the reader that it’s distracted and perhaps not too interesting.

When I got out of bed, I wasted a little time online and played two games of go, one of which left an especially bad taste in my mouth. So bad, in fact that a little while after the second one was over, I decided I had to get out of my room. I put a grammar textbook and my electronic dictionary in my shoulder bag and headed out. Odd as it may sound, MdDonalds is doing a campaign right now under the concept of “Big American Burgers,” and the current burger, a “Hawaiian” burger with egg, bacon and sweet BBQ sauce, was appealing enough that I kind of wanted to try it. Partially because I was ravenously hungry and hamburgers are made of meat. Not noodles or rice.

Unfortunately, the burger was not so great, and I was feeling particularly upset about the events of the morning. I felt disgusted with my ego, and it only reminded me that I still need to work on growing up. No matter how irritating or disproportionately stuck up someone is, it’s not appropriate to get upset or be mean to them. It’s not my job to check people, and I need to learn how to remember this and not get so zealous. Hopefully this year will be a year in which I get closer to holding confidence while letting the ego go.

I fled from the Mcdonalds, burger unfinished and ice tea in hand. I got on my bike, and started riding, just wanting a place to lay down in the sun. I turned down side street after side street, and went past several schools, the sound of kids making a ruckus drifting out on the wind. It was pretty warm in the sun, so I stopped outside one of the giant netted-in school grounds and shoved my coat into my bike’s basket before continuing on. When my road finally ended, I found myself at Arashiyama.

Arashiyama has to be one of my favorite places in Kyoto, so I was glad I had weaved my way there. My body knew something my mind hadn’t thought of. For a while I considered renting one of the row boats alone and rowing up the river for an hour or so. I just wanted to get some exercise in the sun, even if I didn’t have anyone to roughhouse with. But in the end, I just parked my bike outside the entrance to the trail that leads up to the monkey park, and set off along the thin road that traces the side of the river as it weaves out of the mountains. After a while I found a place where you could walk down to a fairly large, sharp outcropping of rock that flowed down towards the water’s edge, and there I just laid down in the sun.

There weren’t many people around, although occasionally passer-by’s would pedal along the road above me. And after about an hour, I started writing the introduction to a story, in both English and Japanese. At some point during the process, a touring boat came up the river towards me. The boss of one of the tour-boat shacks that line the upper portion of Arashiyama was giving instructions to a new employee, and I stopped writing to watch him pole the boat around the river as his boss explained to him how to navigate some of the trickier parts. They did the course a number of times, and I idly watched the boat make its rounds as crows flying over-head called out and landed nearby to wash in the river.

When I headed back, I accidentally found the bamboo forest that everyone likes so much at Arashiyama, and ended up buying some postcards that an old man there had painted from a stand along the path. Since I decided a few days ago that I should try to talk to Japanese strangers more often and I got a decent amount of conversation from him, as well as some beautiful postcards, I think it was a really good detour. He had originally called out to me in English when I happened to look over at his stand, and when I replied in Japanese both he and the mid-30′s couple with which he’d been having conversation were rather surprised.

I bought 5 post cards (hopefully to be used when I get better at this mailing thing) and he gave me his card. I thought he was a fairly wonderful artist, and he explained that he sets up stands in Kyoto and Osaka, and also seems to do exhibitions with his work every so often. I’m still not sure if his interest in talking with me had more to do with the fact that he’s a salesman, or the fact that he’s an artist. Maybe both.

On the way home, I noticed that groups of Ume trees here had started putting out the blossoms they promised the day before. I sincerely hoped that there wouldn’t be another strong cold front, and suddenly wanted to drink orange juice. Anything to keep the sun in mind. . .

Strawberries in Winter

My Christmas came one day earlier than last year, having begun on December the 25th, Japan time. It had been a near thing, making it to Christmas alive. After two weeks of arduous classes and presentation preparation combined with a cold, I passed through my final class on Friday morning and was catapulted into my first break at Ritsumeikan University. I would like to complain about having given a presentation on Christmas day, but by any consideration it wouldn’t be right. As you all (should) know, I’m not a Christian, and the day holds no spiritual importance to me, despite having received it off for every year of my life prior to now. As I’m sure my parents will happily tell you, I even had a lot of trouble remembering what day of the year Christmas fell on all the way through high school, when I missed a bonus question at the end of a math test.
So why choose Christmas to write a journal entry about? Well, that’s the thing. Christmas in Japan is different. And I don’t just mean that it comes sooner than in the States. Ever since ancient times, the Japanese have been masters of dismantling religions and taking what makes them feel good. The natural result is that most of the population has no religion that they truly identify with, and as such, are free to enjoy a large number of religious observances. Skipping over how beautiful I think this adaptive practice is, having erased almost all tension from the subject of religion, I’ll go ahead and give a quick explanation of the Japanese Christmas.
As a number of you may know, while there’s still a Santa-san, street-corner sightings of figures dressed in red and white, Christmas trees, and houses and businesses decorated (rather queerly) with Christmas lights, the holiday has nothing to do with Jesus or Christians. The meaning behind Christmas seems to even be unknown to a large number of the Japanese, as I found out first hand when I tried to explain that I don’t celebrate Christmas in the U.S.. Christmas is a general holiday in Japan. The gift giving tradition is dubious, and, unlike in America where most people would categorize Christmas as a “family holiday,” Christmas in Japan is more of a lover’s/ friend’s holiday. So when Christmas comes around, the doves pair up and go eat cake, the most traditional of which is the Christmas season Strawberry Short Cake.
I myself, then, having both been in Japan, and currently in league with a Japanese girl, was of course set to do the same thing. So, when classes were done for the day and the sun had finished slipping behind the verge of the mountains that cradle Kyoto, Ayako and I headed down town towards Shijo and Teramachi for dinner and desert.

said partner in crime

When it came time to answer our holiday sweet-tooth’s call to arms, I was rather surprised. I found that Ayako had guided me through the cold Kyoto night, past the T-shirt vendors and odd shops of Teramachi to a Lipton Cafe. Despite all the Americans that seem to like it well enough, I’m fairly convinced that Lipton is a cheap tea company, and I was a little doubtful as to the quality of the confectionery treats that could be found there. Of course, as I’ve heard since the event, Lipton seems to do a pretty snazzy job in Europe, and the Lipton Cafe in Teramachi is also a nice place, with some truly appetizing pastries and cakes of a respectable variety. Including, of course, a number of strawberry themed dishes.
Now, breaking off briefly from the narration that I’ve just begun, I need to point out that I’m amazed by the winter presence of fresh strawberries in Japan. Thinking back on it all now, I’m unsure whether or not you can get good strawberries in the US in the heart of winter. Of course, at the time, I was fairly sure that such a thing had never happened, and marveled at the ubiquitous presence of the red morsels. My only guess is that they come from Australia, which seems to have a summery Christmas. In any case, the Japanese, always wonderfully seasonal in their selection of foods, have made a strawberry season out of the first stretch of true winter. Wonderful special products such as chocolate bars made of 70% strawberry, and ichigo (strawberry) infused beverages can be found most places you go.
Meiji’s chocolate bar idea was a little too much to resist, and I bought one to see what it was like. The color (of both the label and the chocolate) was fairly remarkable, and the flavor was also pretty enjoyable. The chocolate bar could perhaps be most accurately described as having tasted distinctly like frozen strawberries with a chocolate aftertaste. Since there were seeds included, I found the texture to also be especially enjoyable.

70% Strawberry.

But getting back to my narration, we entered the Lipton Cafe and were guided to seating on the second floor. The manila-colored room was packed with noisy customers, and warmed up by thick cream-colored lighting. Over the bustle, we could hear waitresses at nearby tables apologizing for sold out items. Looking over the menu, we mentally crossed off what we knew wasn’t around, and gazed at what they still had left to offer. We both liked the look of a slice of Japanese sweet-potato and apple pie, a slice of chocolate cake, and a gorgeous strawberry tart, red and shiny above a moderate crust. There were a few other choices, but rather than merely splitting one or two, I suggested we get those three so we could get a good balance of flavors: a fresh strawberry tart, a slice of rich chocolate cake, and a cut of a sweet Imo+Ringo pie.
We caught the attention of a waitress as she departed from the table next to us, and put in our order. Of course, as could have been predicted by both the talk of sold out items and the fact that strawberries were “in season,” the waitress returned shortly to report that the strawberry tart was sold out. Ayako looked towards me and offered up “Well, we don’t really need three deserts anyway, right?”
“I suppose not. . . but what about replacing it with something like this strawberry waffle, or a strawberry shortcake?”
I guess the restaurant was pretty loud, and the second half of my statement was pretty halfhearted. I’d be willing to assume that it came out in a bit of a mumble, perhaps even with incomplete or awkward grammar. So, having caught the first part, Ayako gave the waitress the go-ahead, who then departed rapidly into the clamor of the thin aisle that stretched off beyond my left shoulder and away. And it was about this time that another waitress brought the same strawberry tart to the table next to us. I felt a hole open up inside.
At first I wasn’t sure how I should react to my sudden sorrow. As I stared down at the dark grain of the table, glossy under the cream light coming from the ceiling above, I felt as though it wouldn’t have been too much to say I was on the verge of tears.
Now granted, it had been a pretty hard couple of weeks, and I had been sleep deprived for a very long time. The emotion was probably not merited, but the despair swallowed me up, and showed clearly in my face.
After declining to explain myself to Ayako a few times, I finally sheepishly admitted that I wanted to eat strawberries. I really wanted to eat strawberries. After all, this was my Christmas in Japan. Or so I weakly reasoned at the time.
We got a hold of another menu, and looked through the ravaged list of strawberry dishes, mostly rent crust and seed from the Lipton Cafe’s kitchen. But there were few that seemed to be left. We called a waitress again, and inquired: “Is this already sold out?”
“Yes, I’m sorry.”
“Well, then, what about these two?”
The issue was set to rest when we ordered a waffle dish with some chocolate mousse and some strawberries sliced up over the top.
The first two deserts came, and I believe we enjoyed them fully. Both were well done, and pleasantly different from each other. When the waffle dish arrived, we were both feeling pretty full, and again I felt a little sheepish.

But when I began to eat, and got my first taste of strawberry, it felt like sunshine. And then I realized that despite Ayako sitting across from me in the cream-colored light of the Lipton Cafe, and the cold Kyoto air washing through the busy downtown stretch that abutted the entrance to Teramachi, I was laying on the grass in Georgia, picking and eating strawberries with my mother under the summer sun.

When we were finished eating our christmas deserts, Ayako and I left Teramachi, and caught a bus back home towards Hakubaicho. With Christmas done, pretty soon it would be new year. And winter was deepening in Kyoto.

Once More, to the Future! (with feeling?)

It’s already January 7th, 2010, and I’ve decided I need to accept that not only has yet another year passed by, but I also now have to get used to typing only one zero after the two in 2000, and writing a one after the slash whenever I hand-date anything. It’s sure to be a challenge.
Of course, and perhaps more importantly, the other remarkable thing about January 7th this year is that the week it’s been so lovingly installed into (the week of the fourth, for those of you not keeping track) is the week that my finals started. Coming from a different school-year track, it’s rather interesting to be taking finals in early January instead of relaxing and making money at Zea, but even more intriguing to be facing a two month-plus spring break starting at the end of January.
As far as breaks go, it’s a wonderful length, and as far as the timing is concerned, a long break after a difficult semester is always aptly timed. But from a seasonal perspective, it’s a little bizarre. My few and beloved readers, I would ask you to not be fooled by the sweet name that has been glossed across the span of this break. As I’ve heard, and am gradually starting to understand with my own flesh, winter comes late in Japan, peaking during Feb., and then working towards spring and finally a sweltering summer during June/July. The weather up until now, staying in line with my outline above, remained fairly mild. But with New Year’s Eve came the first snowfalls (none have left any proof of their passing aside from a touch of white in the corners of buildings and some frosting on the outside legs of metal guard rails, waiting eagerly to melt away) and on today’s bike ride home the wind poked fun at my clothing, and I was unfortunate enough to feel the jabs. I’m fairly sure the only sign of spring will come at the end of this break.
The winter break (late in terms of needing a break from school, and somewhat reasonably timed seasonably, although also admittedly a little early for Kyoto,) ended after it provided its scant 9 days of relief, and yesterday, what comes to roughly two weeks of a-test-a-day festival began at 10:40am. The reading test went alright due to copious studying, and today’s listening test was passable, despite some problems with graph interpretation and my apparent failure to learn the names of various illnesses in Japanese. Tomorrow’s test for my Essay class is feeling a little hopeless, and having struck upon an almost delightful dou demo ii attitude, I’m waiting until after dinner to study what I don’t understand, and can really only wait for my brain to come to terms with.
And so I’ve found my way to my computer, to write my intro to the last few weeks of my life, which have included more seasonable observations, a presentation week exhumed from Hades, a Christmas holiday in Japan, a spectacular trip to Osaka for onsen and hiking with Kurt Sauer, and of course New Year’s eve in Kyoto. It should be a fearsome recollection.

p.s. For those of you that noticed, sorry if the reference in the title got your hopes up. You should know I don’t watch that show.

Updates from my Journal

As I’m sure everyone’s starting to realize, it’s again been a long time since I’ve made an addition to this blog. At the moment I’m too tired to continue studying grammar, but not tired enough to sleep, so I figured I would upload one of my journal entries. This is from a little while ago, so don’t be picky about dates or time expressions!
- – -

Today is November 1st, the day I got hungry 2 hours too early.

I’d like to say that today is November 1st, the day that I woke up hungry 2 hours too early, but the simple fact of the matter is that I haven’t slept since 10pm last night.
Halloween kicked off at least 5 hours early this year, the SKP program’s Halloween party having started at 7pm on Thursday, October 30th. What followed was a night of costumes, unusually friendly and amused Japanese strangers (oddly unnerving after almost 2 months of getting used to how they really are,) drinking at Kamogawa, Karaoke until 3am, and clubbing until 5am, when it was all topped off by a tired band of peculiarly dressed Japanese and foreign-born students taking turns alternately eating, talking, and sleeping on the counter at a Matsuya. (It occurred to me while writing that that last sentence was a shameless run-on, and could probably do for some trimming, except that the night leading up to Halloween morning was a blurry stream that never seemed to end. Since most everyone who might read this blog is overseas, that sentence and a few random pictures may be about as close as I can get you to experiencing my night out. And so I leave it.)

I met Lelouche

Saturday the 31st was passed (somewhat disappointingly) in bed, groggily trying to recharge and pry my precious hours of rest from the sandman’s grainy hands after I eluded his usual rounds. Alas, much like the postal service workers, while neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor (perhaps especially) gloom of night stays the sandman from the swift completion of his appointed rounds, he refuses to hand anything over after hours. Because of said restless attempt, I assumed that I would finally be able to sleep at around the usual time with the only change from the usual being that morning would come especially early. Since I had a mind to study, this was not adverse, but rather I was looking forward to it. Well, I can dream, right?

Wrong on this occasion. Because the sandman seems to be one to hold a grudge. 10pm passed Skyping with my parents, 12pm talking with a friend who had just had a breakup. I ate ramen in the kitchen at around 1am with the others that also felt it should be about noontime, and made my way to 3am chatting with Jessie and watching go games online. Between 3am and 5am I rigged a trap and played some music sadly hoping to tempt the sandman once more, but he was listening to sweeter sounds in the rooms next door.

With 5am finally came my will, and a keener understanding of the homework that lay before me, so I bought a hot canned coffee (yes, people drink these in Japan) from the vending machine downstairs and studied grammar while the sun came up outside. And this is when I got hungry. And so, haggard and hungry, at 8 am I shook myself out of my room and into the cold to go get breakfast and do some shopping. I headed off as the sunlight matured to a full morning bloom, and spilled slant-wise through the bamboo grooves lining the rode to the store. Lost in thought, and enjoying the scene, I winded down the hill towards Marutamachi rode and through the absently blinking traffic light, all on the left side of rode. When I pulled up to the supermarket and found it closed, the first seeds of malcontent sprouted in my mind.

I proceeded, store to store in the area, at an increasingly hurried pace. And this is when I came to learn that in Japan, if it closes, it probably doesn’t open again until at least 10am. The discovery that the store’s do not share the same fervor as Japan’s tag name set me to hungry grumbling about Japan actually being the land of the rising sun and lazy shop keepers. And such being the case, I passed from convenience store to convenience store (discovering along the way that the Japanese McDonalds, or as the Japanese lovingly have named it Maku, also shares in the silly breakfast-foods-only-between-certain-hours tradition) and finally settled on a variety of small onigiri and a carton of milk from a 7-eleven.

It was my first time drinking plain milk in the past 4 years, the last time being my first fateful trip to Japan. I’m not a big fan, but I felt I owed my body some measure of protein/ fat, etc. without sugar attached.

By the time I finished extracting the milk from the blue and white carton, it was a little before 9am. Caught without music, my journal, or anything else to provide amusement, I returned home, having achieved surprisingly little with my trip out into the Japanese post-dawn world. What followed was more sleep and lots of homework– ultimately little of note. So I’ll clip this entry here.

see you next time. . .

On a morning when I started homework late

Since I come across a decent number of things I find amusing, I think I’ll start making some random in-between posts with them. I’ve written some entries in hard form these past days– I’ll try to find the time to transcribe them in the next week and a half.

- – -
Combinations that catch my attention:

Me and the realization that the computer thinks combination can’t be plural, or conjugated into an adj. What’s the deal with that?

A lack of fundamental copier skills, and a copy machine with multiple paper sizes operating in Japanese. I swear it spent 10 minutes asking me to remove the paper from tray 5, and I spent those same 10 minutes assuring myself that there were only 4 paper trays.

Weather growing steadily colder, and a building (yes, my dorm) with half inch unsealed gaps around the main entrance doors. Combine this with a lack of central heating, and leaving my room is going to be daunting.
- – -

I’m really gonna miss America this season. When Ayako prompted me to finish the line “If you talk about Autumn. . .” a few weeks ago, I found myself able to answer for winter, spring and summer, but had no response for fall. To speak of it now,

If you talk about autumn, it’s gotta be pumpkin pie and pecan pie, Thanks-Giving turkey and American football with the family, after all.

The Missing of Classes

It’s been a long time since I’ve written, again. I’ve been living in Japan for at least 5 weeks now, although my recent days have mostly been filled with studying. Last night I was up until 3am, trying to get myself to finish my homework, and this morning I decided to ditch my classes and sleep in. I finally got out of bed after 12, and my decision not to go to class is what’s enabling to upload this journal post (even though I have continued to record my life in hard form the past few weeks.)
In place of going to classes, I rode my bike to the Ukyo ward office in order to finally pick up my completed foreigner’s registration card. It sparkles with ethereal circles in the light, and is good until 2014, somehow. On the way to the ward office I came across several interesting places that I’d life to visit later, including a monstrously large shopping center boldly named “LIFE,” and branded with four leaf clover symbols, just like the ones out of Cross Game. It felt so good to be out and around that after claiming my card, I got back on my bike and kept wandering around, opposite the direction of home.
My final destination turned out to be a place called Aeon Mall, and I’m pretty fascinated by some of the differences and similarities between Japanese and American mall spaces. After wandering around, I decided to grab lunch at a place called “Freshness Burger,” which to my shocked delight actually served me a real burger like I’d find in the U.S., replete with the familiar flavor, grease, red and yellow ketchup and mustard nozzle squirt bottles, and a glass of water with crushed ice served in a cup three times too big to have been purchased within Japanese territories. The walls of the restaurant were also decorated with some famous American photos from the past 60 years. The store thoroughly amused me.
But perhaps the most shocking experience in the mall was how uncomfortable I felt about walking on carpet with my street shoes. After only living in Japan for a little over a month, my ideas about cleanliness are starting to change some.
Another mentionable, but far less shocking observation that emanated from the mall visit was manifested by stopping off in the Starbucks there, which was naturally a precise imitation of all Starbucks’ everywhere . I decided that it would be a good chance to sit and read/write, and went in to get one of my beloved iced lemon cakes. From outside the shop, the sweets case looked exactly like what I would expect it to be in the States, but up-close, everything was a little bit different. They did in fact have my iced lemon cake, but it looked so different from the American counterpart that you wouldn’t have associated the two based on their visual merits.
I decided to order it without fear, and found a table in the busy shop while familiar jazz played over head, and the clouds passed lazily by outside. It was feeling like a good day, and as first the tines of my fork, and then I myself bit into the lemon cake, the feeling only spread and I felt truly glad that I had ditched school, failing to turn in assignments or no.
- – - -
Dark jazz
and half eaten lemon cake
on the wooden table.
clouds roll ponderously out of sight,
over a strange land, the birthplace of an unfamiliar people
and three girls dressed in business suits gossip quietly by the counter.
Prim light lines in dark fabric;
matching bangs and dark eyes, like my own, in the three faces,
and the horrible knowledge that outside everything moves faster.

The book in my bag is just a collection of silent symbols,
but there’s something careful about the cake on the table,
the girls by the counter,
jazz falling softly onto the wood
And me here with it all.

- – -
All said and done, my joy was checked only slightly by the fact that the American counterpart to the iced lemon cake is a bit tastier. I finished up and headed home, disappointed that I forgot to bring my camera along with me for the trip.

Testing

It’s silver week in Japan, so school and many businesses are at a stand still until Thursday. Along with orientation, my placement examinations also began this past Thursday and Friday before we plunged happily into this holiday.

Orientation (so far) has been comprised of the induction ceremony, campus tours, earth quake simulations, lectures on swine flu and safety, introduction to the school cafeterias, information sessions, and, of course, the first 2/3rds of the placement exam. This past Friday I took Ritsumeikan’s listening and written portion of the placement test, and did a lot better than I expected. Most of the people that I keep company with (partially because of their linguistic abilities, but also because we all seem to get along nicely) scored high enough on those portions to take the Seiki test.

Because of this, if my interview goes well, and I did as good as I think I did on the first two portions of the test, I might be able to scrape into A class, an entire class above my worried expectations (editor’s note– time has passed, and I actually was accepted into class A1, far above my expectations.) I’ve been working hard to study before Thursday arrives, working on some kanji, and also going through a copy of Mushishi that I purchased, in order to pick up some additional vocabulary. I don’t really have a great way to review grammar, since I left so many of my study materials behind, so I’ve resorted to thumbing through my grammar dictionaries, and picking out forms to briefly review.

I snapped some shots of campus during the orientation experience, so I figured I would put them up for show. From now on, I may break up my posts whenever times are busy, so that there may be four or five posts all from the same day, addressing different occurrences. We shall see what suits me best.

Picture from the Ryoyuukan, where all my language classes are held.

I’m currently half way through my first week, and I’ve been absurdly busy. There’s a mandatory dorm party in 20 minutes where I’ll try to kick back some, and then I’ll probably have to do some studying before sleep. More on this week to come as I get settled in. . .

Gatherings and Goings About

Since my second day, I’ve been living a pretty full life. Right now I’m sitting with my notebook, some Miles Davis, and a few new stationary items (which are startlingly expensive in Japan,) after a long day of placement exams and lectures.

Since arriving in Japan, I’ve already met up twice with Ayako and Tomoko, who both came to OU the past semester on a spring break exchange program. Going out to eat and walking around with the two of them has resulted in what are probably my favorite two experiences in Japan thus far, despite the fact that the Japanese fries me, and I’m sure I come off as awkward as it makes me feel.

When my first week in Japan, abruptly cranked into motion on 09/08/09, slowly stopped spinning, and rolled past the cherry and the lemon into the weekend, I went to meet Ayako and Tomoko at a nearby kaitenzushi restaurant. We ate a decent amount of cheaply priced sushi and had a decent amount of conversation, stopping only to impose ourselves on some poor waitress, so that we could ask them to take our picture.

After lunch, the two showed me around campus, and most of the surrounding area. We briefly visited a lot of the temples around the school, and went to a nearby area that was pretty busy. All said and done, we walked for about 5 or 6 hours, before eating dinner and then splitting off for the day. It was really a lot of fun, and I’m already starting to get to know this part of Kyoto really well.

When we met up for the second time this past Wednesday (the day before my orientation began) the two brought a friend along (Shihou-san,) and we all went to an Indian place near campus, where once more we ate lunch and spent a lot of time talking. We hung out from 12 until 3, and then split off our separate ways. It was a very enjoyable afternoon, but at the end, it really left me receding into discontent.

When you remove my voice, what of interest is left to me? I’m not a powerfully energetic person, nor am I well-suited to party-like get-togethers. I’ve certainly begun to feel the pressure of one of my major original fears. By no means am I brilliant, but it seems to me that my defining quality is my flavor of intellect.

The side thoughts that I have up until now included in these writings, and intend to continue to produce in the writings that follow, will remain absent from this post, in recognition of my inability to verbally recognize my inner voice when interacting with the Japanese.

Catching up

A lot has happened since I last wrote! I’ve neglected my chronicling principally because I’ve been really exhausted, but also because I’ve kept really busy. When I last wrote, I left off with the arrival of one haggard shadow-of-a-person at the dorm known as Ritsumeikan’s International House II. It was almost 7pm Japan time, and my dream-like, oddly disassociated self was aware of little beyond the hungry knot in my stomach, twisting ravenously at my ribs, and all the great unknowns that lay just within the building that sat quietly before the airport shuttle’s resting place.
The dorm manager (Morita-san,) greeted me at the door, guided me to the kitchen, and (after I got out of my shoes and changed into the provided slippers) gruffly told me to sit down. Morita-san set me on guard right after he asked if I was Zach Heines’ friend.
“Zach didn’t talk any Japanese while he was here. What about you? Can you speak?”
“Some. What should I talk about?” (in Japanese)
“I dunno. Show me how much you can do.”

After pealing through some paperwork and the initial outline of the rules, Morita-san showed me around the dorm while I tried to prove my ability to use Japanese on little sleep, and without much to really talk about. I met some of the four students that had already arrived, and found my room. Since I hadn’t eaten yet, Morita-san made some instant curry for me, and sat with me while I ate, giving me a little more time to figure out what to talk about.

As it turns out, Morita-san went to college in Bluefield, VA, not too far from Fairfax (my place of birth.) He’s a redskin’s fan, and has good knowledge of what football teams belong to which states. I was pleasantly surprised, and in the end I seem to have had a measure of sucess, since every introduction I’ve received since has included “彼の日本語はうまい” (This guy’s Japanese is good.) Still, having received the praise, and remaining one of the more skilled students of Japanese in the dorm, I feel endlessly frustrated by both my inability to express myself, as well as my knowledge that a lot of what I say, I say with somewhat incorrect grammar. I’m really looking forward to class starting (although not the placement test) so that I can learn more Japanese. I feel determined to, by years end, be able to speak and read at least half of the signs I see in my daily life.

I went to bed by 9 O’clock, but woke up almost every hour until 3am, when I finally gave up and straightened out my room, some.

Desk, OU hat already hung

Storage space and mini-fridge

When I was tired of doing my unpacking, I switched to reading dune, and waited for the clock to draw my 8:40am departure to the school out of obscurity and into reality. I decided that my room is really a pretty comfortable space with a big enough bed and desk, and plenty of storage space, so I think I will be happy. The area surrounding the dorm is also really nice, although I don’t have any pictures yet. There’s a bit of a bamboo forest behind us, and a fairly quite road out front, right next to a bus stop. The whole area is quite hilly, as I learned during my dead-tired 5am trip to a nearby 7 eleven for breakfast and tea.
- – -
The mind is awash
in a world that is awash.
The mind is a crafting space
within a crafting space,
making just as it is made,
interpreting while it is interpreted.
Reality is much like the second-hand spoken report
of different spectators’ glimpses
of a convergence of ripples in a pond.
Variable lays in the transmitter, the receiver, and the environment simultaneously;
you might as well make whatever you want of reality and be happy.

When 8:40 finally came, I headed off to school, met up with the SKP buddies and two students from I-house I, and then proceeded on to the ward office. The buddies were two girls named Aika-san and Ayaka-san. After dealing with still more paperwork, and finishing our business at the ward office, I tried to convince everyone to go to lunch, but it was a no-go. No one else was hungry.

Everyone fell as I took the picture, but I figured it was probably good enough.

When I returned home, I tried again, but was told to wait for more new arrivals. When the time finally came that everyone had arrived, the buddy on my hall (Kurimata-san, likely to be often mentioned from here-on out) guided us to the スーパ (supermarket) and showed us a nearby ramen shop. Again, no one was hungry, and I returned home tired and starving. I fell asleep at 4pm while waiting for everyone to go to dinner, and despite my fitful and sickly slumbering and waking, forced myself to stay abed drifting between unconsciousness and misery until 5am the following morning, hoping to get caught up on what I’d missed. . .