Just a brief little post about my adventures yesterday.
I spent all weekend in my futon trying to get my fever down. I had a temperature of 100.9 on Friday and it mannaged to work its way down to normal by Monday morning. I took a little extra time getting ready for work since I had permission to go to the Nerima City Office before going to work. I needed to get a re-entry visa for when I go to Thailand (but the travel agency needs it way in advance of course). Following my host mom's hand drawn map, I mannaged to find my way to the City Office only to be told that I had to go to the opposite side of the city to get my re-entry visa. I hopped on the train and made my way all the way to Shinagawa Station (about 15 minutes past Shibuya) and find the bus that would take me to the Immigration Office. I got in line for the bus behind a Mongolian Sumo Wrestler and infront of a very Russian old man. I think the diversity on the bus to the Immigration office was the most I've seen in one small area since I've been here, but I guess that makes sense after all.
The immigration office is much like going to the DMV. You take a ticket, wait in line, and the people at the counter look like they haven't had a good day in months. After an hour of being in the Immigration Office I was granted permission to get out of the country and come back again. yay! That was one big thing on my to do list that was scratched off my list. The bus ride from the Immigration Office was like taking a tour of the Tokyo Harbor Area. It was an unexpected chance to see huge barges, cranes, fork lifts, pipes and all the rest on a Tokyo scale.
Next, I needed to make it to the Olympic Center in Yoyogi before 1pm. There was a Hippo Workshop going on for Group Fellows (Chaperones who go with exchange groups) that my department had been working really hard on for the past 2 weeks. I mannaged to get to the doors of the workshop just in time to watch them open up and let everyone out. Oh well.. everyone said it was a lot of fun but reassured me that it was no problem that I missed it (since my visa is a time sensitive thing)
At work I stayed busy after lunch until about 5:30. After making a stop at the postoffice in shibuya I made my way to the station to make my way home. As I stepped up onto the Yamanote line platform, a man with a megaphone was announcing that the train headed towards Shinjuku and Ikebukuro had been severly delayed and directed everyone to use the Saikyo Line instead. The walk between the Yamanote line platform and the Saikyo line takes you through this wide walkway that resembles a large airport (with walking sidewalks and all). As I decended the stairs into the walkway, all I could see infront of me was a sea of people. In my experience of crowds in Tokyo, this ranked in the top 3. And just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, we all squeeeezed our way down the stairs onto the platform. (I really wish it had been possible for me to stop and take a picture but there was just no way in hell I was going to risk standing still in this kind of stampede, not to mention, i hate feeling like a tourist and whipping on my camera at every crowded situation in Tokyo...i feel it gets old after a while)
As I waited inline for the next train, I made it a point to take long deep breaths of the cold, fresh air (since the platform is outside) and thought "this is going to suck." We all filed on and just when you think that there is no possible way anyone else could possibly fit, 10 more people try to push on making it litterally impossible to move any part of your body. I had one hand on my messanger bag strap while my other arm was in a really akward possition away from me. I mannaged to pull it in but still only had half of one foot on the floor since my body was tilted diagonally and was being completely held up by the people around me. As the doors shut, we all tried adjusting a bit in preperation for motion when my headphones came unplugged from my cellphone. I thought " well I can't hear anything so maybe it came unplugged from the addaptor chord" because my cellphone has very powerful speakers built into the back of it. The train set into motion and every muscle in my body wished inertia didn't exist. Especially my left foot which was trying its hardest to keep me ballenced on the outside edge of my foot. After a minute or so (after all the jolting of leaving the station) I was able to get both feet properly on the ground. As the train reached its cruising speed, there was silence, and then a very audible primal "Ooooo-ooooiiiiooooo!". My once private music selection (Shpongle- A New Way To Say Hooray for those who know it) had now been made extremely public since my head phones had come unplugged from the actual cellphone. It was imposible for me to silence my phone because i couldn't move and my hand closest to my bag was full. I wrestled with ideas to figure out how I could get at my phone but decided that it was a lost cause. I just sort of laughed to myself at the situation and didnt get to worried about it. afterall...there was no way of telling where it was coming from although they probably could have made a really good guess. :)
Needless to say, I was pretty exhausted from the ride home last night. So I was really happy that my host mom and I watched "Field of Dreams" on TV after dinner. My host mom couldn't believe the amount of open space in Iowa (and how much corn there is). I was really excited to see that in the scene where Ray is driving in Boston, he drives right past MassArt! Anyway, it was a nice wholesom midwestern end to a long day in Tokyo.
I miss everyone a lot!
Love
Jess
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Has it really been a month?
あけまして おめでとう ございます！！ (Happy New Year!)
きょねん も よろしくおねがいします (continue to help this year)
Here comes a broken record.....
"Sorry that I haven't written in a month...I've been so busy"
Alright, now that's over with...
Swa-dee-ka! (Thai for hello!)
I have started listening to the Thai language cd everyday during work and when I get home. I only have a month and a half until I make my journey to Thailand and I need to adjust my ears from Japanese to Thai (and try to pick up a few words here and there if possible) Afterall, I:ve been only using 5 vowels my whole life but in Thailand there are over 38....don:t ask me how that is possible....and lets not even talk about tonal variation
Christmas was totally different here since actually, christmas is most seriously celebrated only by couples (like a variation of valentines day since, they also celebrate that differently here too) But my host mom and I went to a jazz concert which was Amazing! I couldn't believe that the band we saw was my host mom's favorite band. It was a mix between ska, rock and jazz (extremely fast passed and the lights were out of controll) and what was even more suprising was to look over at my moderately conservative host mom jumping up and down with her fist in the air. But we had a great time. And when we got home, we finished the day off by eating the Christmas Cake (the single most important part of christmas in Japan) It was a chocolate strawberry cake...soooo good! Santa brought me a scarf, a bear(holding a moon) for my cell phone, tea, and chocolate.
New years was pretty relaxed despite my grand expectations for "Golden Week" At the end of December I had a couple "ぼねんかい” ("bonenkai" or end of the year) parties at work and at my hippo club. Despite the festivities I was feeling quite meloncholy and self consious for no apparent reason. But I enjoyed myself as best as I could. On my week off I spent a lot of time sleeping in, reading, and making my new years cards (ねんがじょう) which I did in wood cut. Its the year of the cow so I was able to make it pretty simple (black, white and green) so it only took me a couple days to make. As I was getting ready for making my new years card I made my way to a famous department store for craft goods in Kichijyoji (my new favorite place) called Yuzawaya which is the equivilent of taking A.C. Moores and multiplying it by 6 floors (not even kidding you) I just about died when I got to the floor for just drawing, painting and printmaking supplies (and just for the saftey of my wallet I completely avoided exploring the fabric floor). I also mannaged to find a pretty sweet 100￥ shop (like a dollar store) near by which was filled with all kinds of strange/cheep treasures.
On new years eve day I spent the day deep cleaning my room since it is extremely important to the Japanese to completely clean everything before the new year comes so that the New Year starts out with good feelings. I spent a lot of time looking at the stuff that I:ve accumulated over the past 4 months, whcih is mostly strange fliers, a couple magazines and other random things. I will be changing host families next month so I did my best to get rid of stuff that I really didn:t need. For dinner, Japanese people usually eat a very traditional japanese meal including carmalized sardines, pickled vegetables and all kinds of other strange things but my host mom made "nabe" instead which I was really greatful for (Nabe is a big soup that is kept hot on the table with a table top kerosine stove. the broth has a lot of spices and my host mom put in lots of mushrooms, tofu, daikon (japanese raddish), and other tasty things that I like. Those who are reading this who know my history of strange eating habbits might be suprised that I was infact happy to eat soup, something I had firmly placed on my "absolutely will not eat" list. I think it was all the ramen that I ate that made me change my mind.
I also celebrated Christmas/New years with the Nomi family which was a ton of fun. I really love going over to their house, everyone is so welcoming. Even nanako's grandfater said to me in his best english "you are my family" and we always have a lot of fun eating, drinking, playing, laughing and singing. We also went on an adventure to Akihabara, Electric Town, whcih was really crazy. I enjoyed it a lot because of how strange it was. There was a whole market place that had low celings, tiny booths scrunched in really tight selling very specific electric parts of all different sizes, shapes and varieties. One booth sold only switches, but was packed with every type of "switch" imaginable. Next door was a booth dedicated only to different kinds of computer board circuits, and another to wires. Totally strange, but awesome at the same time. I honestly expected to see a family of robots squeezing past to look for new parts to either use or eat (since it looked exactly like food market made out of electronics) I went out to eat in Shinjuku with Nanakos parents which was a really awesome experiences. I was able to have almost all of my conversation in japanese with them, something i couldn:t do when I came two years ago. I had a great sense of accomplishment after that visit with them.
Anyway, after eating diner my host sister who is in France called the house to wish us a happy new year. I talked to her for the first time which was really nice. I look forward to meeting her when she gets back. My host mom and I watched a countdown program on NHK which had all the major music artists perform one after another up until the countdown. But we got bored just watching singers so we had changed the channel to watch a comedy where a group of comedians were staying in a newspaper company office for 2 days and were not allowed to laugh or they would be hit quite forcefully on their back side by people dressed in all black (they resembled ninjas). We got pretty sucked into watching this show that we totally forgot that we were waiting to watch the countdown and when we finally got sick of watching the comedian show and switched it back, the confetti had already fallen and we looked up at the clock and it was 15 minutes after midnight. Oh well.
The next day we went to the nearby shrine to pay or first visit of the year and to wish for good things to come. The shrine we went to was the shrine to the god of studying. we had to wait in line for over an hour to pay our respects before heading back home. The next day we went to a different shrine (to the children's god) and then did a bit of post-new years shopping. Just like in the states after christmas, everyone goes shopping after new years because kids usually get lots of money from their parrents and so there are a lot of sales and what not. My host mom didnt't give me money but she bought me a sweatshirt and jacket (she insisted that she needed to buy them as a new years present since I am now like her real daughter) So we weathered the crowds to find a reasonably priced jacket that fit me. new pictures will be up on flickr soon so you can see my new jacket there. I dig it a lot.
On saturday the 3rd, my friend Lilla was expected to come to Tokyo from Boston. Her host mom, dad, younger sister and I met at Houya station at 12 on saturday to make our way to Narita, a 2 hour and 45 minute treck one way by train. We got there about an hour early but we were pleased to see that her flight would be coming in a half hour early. We decided to spend some time sipping tea in starbucks before waiting at the arrival gate. We waited anxiously for about an hour and a half, and she still hadn:t come out of the arrival gate. It was obvious that her flight had finished passing through customs and doubt sunk in. We tried to brain storm what could have happened and tried to go find her, thinking that she had gone somewhere strange to look for us. We even paged her several times (over the enire airport) and bugged the information people for all kinds of ideas to figure out where Lilla was. Finally, her host sister Risa commented that Lilla had written her phone number on her information sheet. after going through a long process of figuring out how to call overseas from my cell phone I called the number she had listed.
I wasn:t sure if it was her phone number or her mom's but i was certain that it was extremely early in the morning, boston time. But I called anyway. When someone picked up on the other line i thought for sure it was her mom since lilla only has a cell phone and wouldn:t be able to use it if she was in transit or in Narita airport somewhere. "Hello, is this Lilla's mom?" i said hesitantly, worrying that I was about to have to explain to my friends mom that her daughter was no where to be found. "no, this is her daughter" she replied "Lilla?" "Yes, this is Lilla, I'm sleeping, who is this?" obviously annoyed. "This is Jess...where are you?" "Boston" "Ohhh my godd......are you serious?" at that point I realised that there must have been a big mistake between time difference (even though her itinerary didn:t say she would be arriving on the 4th) and I realised that I had just dragged 3 people with me all the way out the air port, put them through an extremely stressful situation all to realise that she wasn:t going to be coming until the next day after all. After I ended the conversation with Lilla, we all had a big laugh at the situation but I still felt extremely bad since it was such a rediculous mistake to make on my part. We made our way home to attend a new years party at Waka chans house and laughed at all the craziness of the day.
Waka chan reasured us that this sort of thing happens all the time since Japan has such an extreme time difference to a lot of countries (americas and europe) and that people in Hippo are used to these sort of misshaps. it made me feel better but still....
But Lilla arrived on the 4th safely and I went to greet her at the air port with my host mom and it was so crazy to be able to speak in english with her but also to see part of my life in America very physically juxtaposed with my surroundings. She'll be going back home on sunday which is really too bad. I feel like these two weeks have gone by too fast. I took her to a lot of really interesting places and was able to talk to her about a lot of things that have been on my mind that I wanted to let out. I have found that my english vocabulary is dwindling a bit since I haven't been using it. But one very obvious thing was how much my Japanese has improved. I had to do a lot of translating for Lilla to catch her up with what was being said during converstations and to explain how to do a few things around her house and our schedule. One thing we found to be a huge obsticle during her stay here was our host families. My host mom and her host mom were constantly hounding me to tell them what Lilla would be doing while I was at work and wouldn:t take "she wants to go somewhere by herself" for an answer. They were extremely protective of her and we had a lot of frustrations about it. But over all, I had a really great time just talking and relaxing with Lilla. It has really boosted my spirits. But it is too bad that she is going back so soon.
I think that is enough for now. I will be posting pictures soon. (I already posted some from christmas and new years on flickr if you want to check those out in the mean time)
love, peace, dreadlocks and happiness!!
jess
きょねん も よろしくおねがいします (continue to help this year)
Here comes a broken record.....
"Sorry that I haven't written in a month...I've been so busy"
Alright, now that's over with...
Swa-dee-ka! (Thai for hello!)
I have started listening to the Thai language cd everyday during work and when I get home. I only have a month and a half until I make my journey to Thailand and I need to adjust my ears from Japanese to Thai (and try to pick up a few words here and there if possible) Afterall, I:ve been only using 5 vowels my whole life but in Thailand there are over 38....don:t ask me how that is possible....and lets not even talk about tonal variation
Christmas was totally different here since actually, christmas is most seriously celebrated only by couples (like a variation of valentines day since, they also celebrate that differently here too) But my host mom and I went to a jazz concert which was Amazing! I couldn't believe that the band we saw was my host mom's favorite band. It was a mix between ska, rock and jazz (extremely fast passed and the lights were out of controll) and what was even more suprising was to look over at my moderately conservative host mom jumping up and down with her fist in the air. But we had a great time. And when we got home, we finished the day off by eating the Christmas Cake (the single most important part of christmas in Japan) It was a chocolate strawberry cake...soooo good! Santa brought me a scarf, a bear(holding a moon) for my cell phone, tea, and chocolate.
New years was pretty relaxed despite my grand expectations for "Golden Week" At the end of December I had a couple "ぼねんかい” ("bonenkai" or end of the year) parties at work and at my hippo club. Despite the festivities I was feeling quite meloncholy and self consious for no apparent reason. But I enjoyed myself as best as I could. On my week off I spent a lot of time sleeping in, reading, and making my new years cards (ねんがじょう) which I did in wood cut. Its the year of the cow so I was able to make it pretty simple (black, white and green) so it only took me a couple days to make. As I was getting ready for making my new years card I made my way to a famous department store for craft goods in Kichijyoji (my new favorite place) called Yuzawaya which is the equivilent of taking A.C. Moores and multiplying it by 6 floors (not even kidding you) I just about died when I got to the floor for just drawing, painting and printmaking supplies (and just for the saftey of my wallet I completely avoided exploring the fabric floor). I also mannaged to find a pretty sweet 100￥ shop (like a dollar store) near by which was filled with all kinds of strange/cheep treasures.
On new years eve day I spent the day deep cleaning my room since it is extremely important to the Japanese to completely clean everything before the new year comes so that the New Year starts out with good feelings. I spent a lot of time looking at the stuff that I:ve accumulated over the past 4 months, whcih is mostly strange fliers, a couple magazines and other random things. I will be changing host families next month so I did my best to get rid of stuff that I really didn:t need. For dinner, Japanese people usually eat a very traditional japanese meal including carmalized sardines, pickled vegetables and all kinds of other strange things but my host mom made "nabe" instead which I was really greatful for (Nabe is a big soup that is kept hot on the table with a table top kerosine stove. the broth has a lot of spices and my host mom put in lots of mushrooms, tofu, daikon (japanese raddish), and other tasty things that I like. Those who are reading this who know my history of strange eating habbits might be suprised that I was infact happy to eat soup, something I had firmly placed on my "absolutely will not eat" list. I think it was all the ramen that I ate that made me change my mind.
I also celebrated Christmas/New years with the Nomi family which was a ton of fun. I really love going over to their house, everyone is so welcoming. Even nanako's grandfater said to me in his best english "you are my family" and we always have a lot of fun eating, drinking, playing, laughing and singing. We also went on an adventure to Akihabara, Electric Town, whcih was really crazy. I enjoyed it a lot because of how strange it was. There was a whole market place that had low celings, tiny booths scrunched in really tight selling very specific electric parts of all different sizes, shapes and varieties. One booth sold only switches, but was packed with every type of "switch" imaginable. Next door was a booth dedicated only to different kinds of computer board circuits, and another to wires. Totally strange, but awesome at the same time. I honestly expected to see a family of robots squeezing past to look for new parts to either use or eat (since it looked exactly like food market made out of electronics) I went out to eat in Shinjuku with Nanakos parents which was a really awesome experiences. I was able to have almost all of my conversation in japanese with them, something i couldn:t do when I came two years ago. I had a great sense of accomplishment after that visit with them.
Anyway, after eating diner my host sister who is in France called the house to wish us a happy new year. I talked to her for the first time which was really nice. I look forward to meeting her when she gets back. My host mom and I watched a countdown program on NHK which had all the major music artists perform one after another up until the countdown. But we got bored just watching singers so we had changed the channel to watch a comedy where a group of comedians were staying in a newspaper company office for 2 days and were not allowed to laugh or they would be hit quite forcefully on their back side by people dressed in all black (they resembled ninjas). We got pretty sucked into watching this show that we totally forgot that we were waiting to watch the countdown and when we finally got sick of watching the comedian show and switched it back, the confetti had already fallen and we looked up at the clock and it was 15 minutes after midnight. Oh well.
The next day we went to the nearby shrine to pay or first visit of the year and to wish for good things to come. The shrine we went to was the shrine to the god of studying. we had to wait in line for over an hour to pay our respects before heading back home. The next day we went to a different shrine (to the children's god) and then did a bit of post-new years shopping. Just like in the states after christmas, everyone goes shopping after new years because kids usually get lots of money from their parrents and so there are a lot of sales and what not. My host mom didnt't give me money but she bought me a sweatshirt and jacket (she insisted that she needed to buy them as a new years present since I am now like her real daughter) So we weathered the crowds to find a reasonably priced jacket that fit me. new pictures will be up on flickr soon so you can see my new jacket there. I dig it a lot.
On saturday the 3rd, my friend Lilla was expected to come to Tokyo from Boston. Her host mom, dad, younger sister and I met at Houya station at 12 on saturday to make our way to Narita, a 2 hour and 45 minute treck one way by train. We got there about an hour early but we were pleased to see that her flight would be coming in a half hour early. We decided to spend some time sipping tea in starbucks before waiting at the arrival gate. We waited anxiously for about an hour and a half, and she still hadn:t come out of the arrival gate. It was obvious that her flight had finished passing through customs and doubt sunk in. We tried to brain storm what could have happened and tried to go find her, thinking that she had gone somewhere strange to look for us. We even paged her several times (over the enire airport) and bugged the information people for all kinds of ideas to figure out where Lilla was. Finally, her host sister Risa commented that Lilla had written her phone number on her information sheet. after going through a long process of figuring out how to call overseas from my cell phone I called the number she had listed.
I wasn:t sure if it was her phone number or her mom's but i was certain that it was extremely early in the morning, boston time. But I called anyway. When someone picked up on the other line i thought for sure it was her mom since lilla only has a cell phone and wouldn:t be able to use it if she was in transit or in Narita airport somewhere. "Hello, is this Lilla's mom?" i said hesitantly, worrying that I was about to have to explain to my friends mom that her daughter was no where to be found. "no, this is her daughter" she replied "Lilla?" "Yes, this is Lilla, I'm sleeping, who is this?" obviously annoyed. "This is Jess...where are you?" "Boston" "Ohhh my godd......are you serious?" at that point I realised that there must have been a big mistake between time difference (even though her itinerary didn:t say she would be arriving on the 4th) and I realised that I had just dragged 3 people with me all the way out the air port, put them through an extremely stressful situation all to realise that she wasn:t going to be coming until the next day after all. After I ended the conversation with Lilla, we all had a big laugh at the situation but I still felt extremely bad since it was such a rediculous mistake to make on my part. We made our way home to attend a new years party at Waka chans house and laughed at all the craziness of the day.
Waka chan reasured us that this sort of thing happens all the time since Japan has such an extreme time difference to a lot of countries (americas and europe) and that people in Hippo are used to these sort of misshaps. it made me feel better but still....
But Lilla arrived on the 4th safely and I went to greet her at the air port with my host mom and it was so crazy to be able to speak in english with her but also to see part of my life in America very physically juxtaposed with my surroundings. She'll be going back home on sunday which is really too bad. I feel like these two weeks have gone by too fast. I took her to a lot of really interesting places and was able to talk to her about a lot of things that have been on my mind that I wanted to let out. I have found that my english vocabulary is dwindling a bit since I haven't been using it. But one very obvious thing was how much my Japanese has improved. I had to do a lot of translating for Lilla to catch her up with what was being said during converstations and to explain how to do a few things around her house and our schedule. One thing we found to be a huge obsticle during her stay here was our host families. My host mom and her host mom were constantly hounding me to tell them what Lilla would be doing while I was at work and wouldn:t take "she wants to go somewhere by herself" for an answer. They were extremely protective of her and we had a lot of frustrations about it. But over all, I had a really great time just talking and relaxing with Lilla. It has really boosted my spirits. But it is too bad that she is going back so soon.
I think that is enough for now. I will be posting pictures soon. (I already posted some from christmas and new years on flickr if you want to check those out in the mean time)
love, peace, dreadlocks and happiness!!
jess
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