Three Weeks and Counting...

3 and a half weeks. It has already been 3 and a half weeks and I am on my way to 4 this weekend. The weather has been sunny and warm (most of you would say hot but I am of the cold-blooded type), and of course quite humid. After being gone for half of the week at our prefectural orientation in Kakegawa last week (the city next to Fukuroi), I resolved to sleep in last Saturday morning and then attempt to organize and clean my apartment. I still don’t quite feel like the apartment has a “me” feel to it- it still feels like my predecessor’s…although my clothes scattered across the floor does make it feel like home. I still lack organizational containers or boxes for clothes and papers, so my goal is to find those in the coming weeks. However, I feel that I am rarely at home to attempt organization, and when I am I tend to spend most of the time on my iPhone with my one source of internet, watching movies on my laptop or Japanese television.

Actually the other night I was watching TV, and it was some teenage soap opera it looked like…I found it incredibly amusing even though I only had a slight clue what was happening. A high school guy and girl were playing beach volleyball with a teacher, when the guy goes for a dig and slams his hand into one of the net poles. Camera pans to guy as his hand is shaking in uncontrollable spasms, and girl gasps. Well, next scene pans to the girl talking with what I think was her guy friend in the classroom (a different guy), and he is sullen and avoiding her questions (I think he was upset about a girl he was interested in who was flirting with some other guy). Suddenly, one of the girls in the class runs in and interrupts them, and sullen boy and question girl get up to follow her to a room as beautiful piano music is playing. Well the door opens and the girl exclaims something as the boy with the “busted” hand was playing the piano. Question girl had gone to speak with the teacher and they got into an argument, when suddenly CRASH! Glass breaking. They rush to piano room where busted hand guy has his not-really-busted but now-busted hand in a broken window. Teacher carefully extracts it and then they go on a camping trip. (I know, I wasn’t sure when this came in). Then a piano appears on the beach and the teacher asks busted hand boy to play, and then music plays as the credits roll. I am not sure exactly what kept me enthralled in this show but probably the fact that I kept laughing at busted hand boy when each event happened with him. I know my sister and a couple of my friends would be in hysterics right along with me. My first experiences with Japanese television…

Another amazing thing about Japan I absolutely must mention is in Japan people generally hang their laundry outside to dry. I have long wanted to do this since I always received angry letters and calls from my landlords in Seattle about ugly eyesores that no one wants to look at from the street. (I wondered, does anyone really stare at people’s balconies when they are walking on the street? I certainly never did.) So it has been quite nice to hang my laundry out in the sun every day, aside being surprised by random spiders that like to hide in some things and suddenly appear when I put a shirt on or shake out a towel.
Speaking of spiders, the other night I kept hearing a “chirp, chirp, chirp” and it was coming from somewhere in my apartment. Well eventually I caught the culprit, a cricket, in the box in my door (not the mailbox but like a mail slot). Of course I was afraid he would attack me if I opened the box so I just taped paper over the vents so it would muffle his serenading that night. I also have adopted a pet spider in my bathroom. He is small and usually hangs out in the upper corner, and sometimes I talk to him in the shower. His name is Fernando. Fernando actually does some pretty cool tricks… he likes to hide until I walk into the shower area and then he suddenly scampers up the wall to greet me. Well then I turn the water on which scares little Fernando so he flattens himself out and fits himself into a crease of the doorframe. I suppose to keep dry.

I am enjoying my bike and love riding it around everyday, it makes things so much easier, although I am probably risking death since apparently the drivers aren’t used to bikers on the road here, but I can’t go very fast if I ride on the sidewalk with the pedestrians (and I have to pull up my front wheel every time I cross the street because of the curbs). The other day I was actually able to get to the local department store in our city, about 3 miles northwest of me. This doesn’t seem very far, but of course if you drive a car it takes no time at all – by bike, on these crazy roads, it took about 35 minutes. Regardless, I have made more discoveries from riding my bike. In fact, just the other day as I was heading up to the department store, I suddenly saw some brands on a building that really attract me like a fly to light. Columbia, North Face, Coleman….I read as I rode closer when suddenly I realized it was an outdoors store! My very own Japanese-REI in MY city! I had been googling sporting stores for a week or so and expected I would have to travel a bit to get to one, (although those ones may be bigger than the one I found) but the store I found had everything in it, and it was pretty large, surprisingly, so that pretty much made my week. Well, among many other things that makes my week every week here in this Disneylandish country.

Japanese children are adorable. Absolutely adorable. In fact my friends and I have been discussing how we can obtain our own Japanese child. Some of the children in my neighborhood were running around one day as I was walking out of my apartment and as they all are running at breakneck pace past me they yell “Konnichiwa!!!!!!” to which I of course responded “Konnichiwa!” while my heart melted on the pavement. Then I was riding the train one day and observing a little family sitting nearby, when the conductor announces the next stop, Iwata. The little boy in the family says “Iwata! Iwata desu!”, mimicking the conductor, and proceeds to make up his own song and sings it the rest of the time I was on the train, “Iwaaata, Iwaaata, Iwaaata, Iwata desu!” over and over.

I also helped one of the teacher’s son’s with some of his English homework. An elementary school kid I would say. Well it was so much fun helping the boy figure out what to put where and when he was done he says “Thank you for teaching me Ashurii” (My name is pronounced that way in Japanese, since they don’t use “L” or “R” sounds and “Sh” is always combined with a vowel). Again, melted heart. It really never ends with all these adorable children.

The first two days of this week were Summer Seminar in Hamamatsu, so I spent that time with other ALTs working with high school students on their English. The students were great and I had a lot of fun interacting with them, and I think they really liked me because they all wanted pictures, and every time they saw me the second day they got excited and said “ASHURII!!! ASHURII!!!” Then I saw a bunch of them after we had left and were getting donuts from, where else, Mister Donut, before we headed back home, and so every time I saw a small group they of course get really excited, and run up exclaiming “ASHURII!”
I still don’t have internet, and don’t expect to for awhile for various reasons. I am planning on heading to the Izu Peninsula of Shizuoka this weekend to visit a friend and (hopefully, if we can find it) see the famous seven waterfalls. I don’t remember the name so I’ll update with that later. We also hope to visit one, or a few, onsens (hot spring baths basically) since she has many near her. The following weekend is a tentatively planned Mt. Fuji climb….we shall see about that though.

OH! How could I forget! I went out to lunch last Sunday with my new Japanese friends that work at Mister Donut. We decided on sushi so they took me to a conveyor belt sushi place in Hamamatsu. THIS place had TVs at every booth that you order off of, by pressing various buttons, choosing what you want, how many, and then the order comes out on a train that goes by all the booths. GENIOUS. The sushi was also amazing of course, and I had some of the most amazing soft serve ice cream ever. It was pretty fun, despite my somewhat poor Japanese skills, but I attempted to talk with the two girls who didn’t know any English, so the one friend wouldn’t have to translate the entire time. Although really I think we spent more time laughing than anything else, especially because I was so amazed at everything and kept saying WOW!!!!!! Then they laughed hysterically. We also made faces at the little babies and children who would stare at us (you know how kids do that, just looking around and checking things out) so that was quite fun.

That day, and the past few weeks, has made me think a lot about non-verbal communication and how often we use it in every day life, because it seems that we can really understand a lot about people simply from non-verbal cues. This is of course a big part of Japanese culture in general (from what I have learned anyway), but in a more universal sense, it amazes me that even though people are from different cultures and backgrounds, in some of the most basic ways, we communicate the same. Even watching children and teenagers here, you can see how they are shaped in different manners, but in essential development, they are similar to their Western counterparts. Of course, this kind of thing always has me fascinated…being a Social Sciences major and all. Communication, at least the essence of it, transcends cultural mores - in otherwords, we, as human beings, are really all essentially the same.