2 posts tagged “okayama”
we got dropped off at Sanjo-bashi eki last night, and irene, nick and I stopped at starbucks before getting on the train back home. the drinks were tiny, and even more over-priced than at home. もう、少し雨が降っても、まだそこに行きたかった。 the guy who workd there is cute, irene and i both agree. kathryn has been telling me about that starbucks for the a while, and it is really pretty - it overlooks the river. it had been cloudy all day, and a bit drizzly, but the mountains were gorgeous and misty. they were the same way this morning when i rode the train to school.
i saw an okra flower this weekend. it was green.
i just finished my speech - i made a lot of mistakes, mostly with verb tenses, but i think overall i did well. i realized last night that much of my problem with speaking japanese is that i try to speak as quickly as i am used to doing in english, and i'm not fluent enough to do that yet - i'll get there eventually though.
Hmm… well I haven’t had a chance to update this in a while, and a moving bus is not exactly the easiest place to type, especially since my arms have limited movement because of seat restrictions. But, it’s probably the only time I will have for a bit to record my thoughts and god knows I’m not going to get any work done while on this ride, although I have to admit that listening to Ken sing karaoke over the bus mike is rather interesting. So right now I have my ipod turned up, cause he’s kinda loud, listening to Tori Amos with Nick staring over my shoulder.
So this weekend – how was it? Pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. I didn’t do as many things as some of the other people, but it was still pretty cool and I definitely hope to be able to go back and visit in the winter, when my family says there will be snow.
This weekend I did quite a few things I have never done
before, and most of it was good. I was
slightly late getting to the Kaikan on Friday morning because I woke up late
and then I got stuck with local trains, although it was much easier for me to
walk thanks to wearing flip flops – I have a rather large hole in the heel of
my right foot due to wearing my hot school-marm shoes for about 15 minutes on
Thursday. I definitely need to stretch
them a bit; so, unfortunately I was late and didn’t get to take the kanji quiz,
but Liz didn’t get to take it either, so maybe Ueda-sensei will take pity on
us. If not, well, that kinda sucks. (at
this point, Nick has tapped me on the shoulder and informed me that he is not,
in fact reading, merely glancing sporadically to see if it’s anything to do
with him.)
When we got on the bus, we realized that save for a sheet of paper that Fabian had managed to find in his mailbox about going to a high school for activities, we had no idea what was going on, because we hadn’t received any information. Friday afternoon we showed up at this high school at about the time that class ended for the day, much to the delight of various koukousei (high school students) who stared at the tall and funny-looking gaijin (foreigners) as we filed into their school. There were speeches and introductions, and then we dispersed to visit some of the different clubs: kendo, English club, and shoudo (calligraphy), which I decided to try. It was fun, and more difficult than I thought it would be, compounded by the fact that that I am hidarikiki (left-handed), and calligraphy is traditionally done with the right hand. Evee, Emily and Fabian, who also did shoudo actually managed to something that looked relatively not bad, but I want to practice more and hopefully get better. But, as a side note that was good, the shoudo sensei showed me how to write my name in kanji. It’s written with the character 者 sha, which means person, and 絆 kizuna which means bond (usually of friendship). So I am essentially a person who is the bond between others, who connects people, which seems pretty accurate, actually. I asked the Fabian how the sensei came up with it, and he said she just put the sounds together, which you apparently have to be very good with kanji to do. It seemed kinda random to me, but I guess the way people do English names isn’t any less so, as the large variety of spellings can account for. Anyway, I think I would like to continue doing shoudo, because I really enjoyed it.
After the activities, I met my host parents, the Kananagas, who were very nice, despite that they had no idea how to pronounce my name. “Don’t you have a nickname?” my host father asked. “Amari...”, I replied (“not really”). They settled on calling me Shaba-chan, and thus I received my first Japanese nickname.
My host father Yoshiaki is a Buddhist priest, and they live in a temple. It was huge, compared to the other Japanese houses I have seen. My host mother seemed a little bit nervous all the time, but she was very sweet. I also met their son, Yo-chan (12), and Yoshiaki’s mother Obaasan, and later on in the evening, Ayako-chan, their 16 y/o daughter. We all ate temakizushi (hand-roll sushi) on Friday, which was really fun – you basically make your own sushi. I also tried natto (fermented soybeans), which I had been hearing about for ages but had not actually tried. I didn’t like it – it was kinda slimy, which wouldn’t have bothered me except that it tasted fermented, which along with things that feel like jelly, is one of the things that I simply will not eat. So, I’ve tried natto. I feel that a part of my Japanese experience is complete.
After dinner, Yo-chan, okaasan, and I went to the community center and met a bunch of her friends, and played and talked with them for about two hours. One woman, Marutani-san, had brought her 3y/o daughter Miyu-chan, who was a little bit shy at first, but by the end of the night was calling me oneechan (big sister). They asked me what I wanted to do, but I couldn’t really think of anything, so I just told them that anything was fine. After that, we went home, I took a shower, and we watched some TV before bed.
The next day I woke up around 11, and went downstairs, and everyone (and by that I mean about 5 of Okaasan’s friends, and more came by later) was already there, and discussing what to do that day. We had tentatively decided the night before to cook something and go out and eat picnic style the night before, but it looked like rain, and was a bit cool, so we stayed in and cooked. Everyone made something different, and they wanted me to make Amerika no tabemono (American food), so I made something akin to the sausage and cream cheese breakfast roll that Aunt June made over the summer when we visited her. The only problem was, I couldn’t find any pastry at the grocery store, nor could I find any ground sausage, and I didn’t know the word for it (I later learned it was minus, like ‘minced’), so I settled for some ground pork that I seasoned with red pepper. As for the pastry, I decided to use wonton wrappers, so instead of basked pastry, it was in agemono maki (deep fried rolls). Of course, everyone was excited to try it, and instantly proclaimed it to be “Oishii!!” (delicious).
One of the things that annoys me about the Japanese, even more so than them proclaiming me to be jouzu or pera-pera (good at Japanese, fluent) at my so much as uttering a sentence of Japanese (they as likely to do this almost immediately after they have corrected you on something, as when they first meet you), is their immediate assumption that no Americans speak Japanese, or that they are all completely ignorant of Japanese culture. In some ways, this is beneficial; it gives you room when you screw up, or when you do things that are not considered rude in America (such as eating while walking). But the pronunciation of jouzu at anything you do bothers me, especially when I know it’s not true. I know that it’s the Japanese tradition of being polite, but I genuinely do appreciate people correcting me when I mess something up, because then I can FIX IT. So, anyway, the other thing that bothers me about the politeness thing was that – that you can’t actually tell what people think, or maybe my skills at picking up subtle signals from Japanese people have not yet reached the highest level. For all I know, they could have thought what I made was exceedingly gross, but they were determined to be polite. One of the guys there, Kurakura-san’s son, Shinji, actually ate 3 of my rolls, so I guess they weren’t bad. I liked them, anyway. Although it occurred to me, rather cynically, that they wouldn’t have told me if they were… Ah well, perhaps I will get used to it eventually.
After dinner I was exceedingly tired, so I went upstairs to take a nap, and then missed saying goodbye to everyone, except Miyu-chan, who came up to my room to say bye to me. I woke up around 11, and went to the living room and found Yo-chan watching TV – Kakka woke up and asked if we were hungry, since I had missed dinner, so we had some leftover sushi and cake. After a while he went to bed, and I stayed up reading wikipedia and chatting with Nick. I think my host family was slightly worried about me sleeping so long.
I finally went to bed around 6ish, and slept for a few hours before I got up to take a shower, and Otousan and Obaasan showed me around the house and the temple before I left. It was huge and amazing, and Otousan showed me these really old books in awesome bookshelves in the library. Then there was the temple itself, with the altar. Obaasan does watercolor paintings, and ikebana, and she showed me some of her scrolls. We took some pictures, and then it was time to leave for the party.
The party was pretty fun – all of the people who had been in our part of Okayama and their host parents came – it was me, Yo-chan, and Kakka, and one of her friends who had cooked with us the day before. We all introduced ourselves, and our parents talked about how wonderful we were, and I tried soumen for the first time – which is rice noodles, like angel hair, that you eat with water and soy sauce. Unfortunately, I managed to spill mine in my lap, so I missed singing happy birthday to Ken with everyone. His host mother was so cool – she pretty much ran the thing, and has christened him ‘Ken-chan’, which I fully intend to continue calling him.
After that, and eating, we all piled onto the bus and left, waving all the time. Ken’s host mother had given him a strawberry cake, since next week is his birthday, and he shared it with us – see the pics, which are rather hilarious. The bus ride was pretty much uneventful – we told stories about our trips, Ken sang karaoke, I attempted to sleep, etc. All in all, it was a good trip.
