Today is Thanksgiving. Well, not really. Yesterday was officially Thanksgiving, but because it is not any sort of holiday at all in Japan, we all had school, so there was no celebration. However, tonight we are having a feast. There are several turkeys in several ovens across the city of Kyoto, there are delicious odors of cooking sweet potatoes coming from the kitchen, and I know that numerous pies were cooked last night. You have no idea how much I am looking forward to this food! We are planning on feeding 60 people tonight-students, teachers, and staff. Happy Thanksgiving to all!!

My host mother once told me that my host father is very yasashii, which means he is a nice, easygoing, likeable person. I thought this was a good thing coming from her, seeings that being the wife of a man who leaves at 7am and doesn't come home until 11pm seems to be difficult. But they get along so well. However, I never realized just how well they get along until this morning. Every morning, my otosan eats breakfast, but he always leaves something on his plate. I think, "He's always in a hurry and doesn't get to eat very much. Poor man." But today I figured it out. He leaves half of his breakfast for my okasan, who is out walking the dog. He leaves half of his tasty pastry from the bakery, and the fresh fruit so that she can have some too. I am not a sentimental person, but I think this is so sweet.

One of the toughest things about applying for anything is asking teachers to write recommendations. Now add the fact that it must be done in Japanese, and for me, it is a slightly nervous experience. The simple phrase of "Would you please write a recommendation for me?" becomes "Chotto onegaishitai koto ga arundesu kedo..suisenju o kaite itadakenaindeshou ka?" But I managed to get all of this out, plus some regular conversation, without too many blunders, and Japanese teachers are forgiving of grammer mistakes, anyway. So now I have two recommendations being written for internships in Japan for the summer. Good stuff.

It has come to my attention that some people are reading this site and getting certain "ideas" about how my life in Japan really is. Is it really necessary to put a disclaimer on this page? What I write are my thoughts, how you read them are your interpretations of my thoughts. However, these little blurbs are exactly that - little snapshots of what is going on here. It is not possible for anyone to get the full picture just by reading these little stories. If you have questions about the whole truth of what's happening here, I would be overjoyed to receive emails...

The Japanese kitchen is filled to the brim with dishes. Small ones, big ones, plain, fancy, bowls, cups, bigger bowls, smaller cups, spoons and forks of an inumberable variety...The Japanese are very specific with their use of tableware. Hardly ever will you see more than one kind of food on a plate at a time. Each plate or bowl has its specific function. Do not use the rice bowl for cereal. Do not use the cocoa spoon for curry. Never put kocha (black tea) in the ocha (green tea) cup. As if this were not enough, everyone has their own dishes. My ocha cup and rice bowl match: pink with white flowers. My chopsticks are squared with red on the ends. My cocoa/kocha mug has a little dog on it saying "I looked the star over a bottle of wine." I don't know what would happen if I used the wrong dishes. I don't think I want to find out.

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Sunday, November 24

I believe that my favorite Japanese food is sukiyaki. I say this because I just ate the largest amount of it that I possibly could, and it was amazingly tasty. Sukiyaki is made is a pot right in front of you. You put some strips of beef, tiny white mushrooms, big mushrooms, lettuce, special noodles, bean sprouts, and tofu in the pot with some sake and shoyu and let it cook. When something you want to eat is done, you just grab it with your chopsticks and dip it in the raw egg in your bowl. It is so delicious. And as my okaasan says, "If it's hot and has lots of vegetables, it is good for you." So both she and I had no qualms about stuffing ourselves to the extreme. "Tabesugita!" I ate too much!

I have recently begun taking koto lessons from this nice lady who will teach me for free. Today is my second lesson. In the first lesson I learned how to sit properly to the side and how to press, not pluck, the strings. This is more difficult than it sounds. The koto is the Japanese version of a harp. It is about 6 feet long, and lays horizontally on the floor. It has 13 strings of equal length, which are tuned by placing bridges underneath at different intervals. The scale is not an 8 tone scale, but a 6 tone. Do, Mi, Fa, La, Ti, Do. I often mess this up because when the music jumps an interval, I want to jump strings, but it is actually just the next one over. Today I get to practice the song "Sakura, Sakura," a famous Japanese tune.

In order to learn Japanese, we often read Japanese newspaper articles. Our last lesson's subject was on the consequences of giving children their own bedrooms. It compared the Western emphasis of individual privacy with Japan's close parent-child connection. The most interesting concept, however, was the method of punishment and reinforcement of family rules, which related to individual rooms. In America, we use "Go to your room!" as a barrier from letting the child do what they want. In Japan, they use "Get out the house!" as a barrier from the family they are part of. My teacher says that he was punished this way several times as a child. He would sit outside the house and plead for them to unlock the door. After a couple of hours they would let him back in, and he would promise not to misbehave again. If I ever have kids, I would be tempted to see what would happen if I kicked them out of the house at age 5 or 6. How much effect does the emphasis on individuality have?

The Japanese salaryman has a tough life. He leaves home early in the morning for the usual hour commute and doesn't return until possibly 11pm at night. Why such lateness? It is not necessarily what you would call your normal overtime, but rather it is obligatory and often crucial meetings held in the friendly setting of a bar. If you don't drink, it is considered rude and could cost you an important deal. As a result, many of these late night commuters come home a little tipsy. I have the fortune of getting off work at the same time many of these men are returning home. As with many commuters, the most frequently used mode of transportation from the train station to home is the bicycle. There is something faintly amusing, and yet somewhat scary, about a slightly intoxicated 50 year old man in a business suit swerving back and forth across a narrow street on a green bicycle with a basket on the front.

Alrighty. Because I hate leaving things not done, I fixed the pictures pages for the time being. All the links work. All the little pictures can be seen as big pictures. And thank you geocities for giving 15MB of free space, even though I needed to use two web addresses. And now, I am off to write the paper I should have started writing an hour ago.

And there are lots of new pictures of beautiful fall leaves.
I would like opinions: Do you think that the Japanese autumn colors are more beautiful, less beautiful, or you can't tell in comparison to the trees in America?

As previously mentioned, it is peak leaf season. On Saturday I went hiking to see if I could get some good views. I must not have been in the right place. However, on Sunday morning my host family took me to Komyoji Temple at 6:30am to beat the crowds to the red trees. We were late. There were already about 100 people there. Craziness. It is said that Japan has some of the best autumn colors in the world. I think that maybe this is true, but maybe it is not necessarily the extrodinariness of their trees, but the extent to which they really appreciate the beauty. How many Americans would get up early on their only day off just to watch catch a glimpse of the early morning sun through the red fingers of a momiji leaf?

Okay, I realize that my website is strange looking, and that many of the links don't work. I apologize. While trying to fix it I ran into more problems, and now I don't have time to fix them. Give me a week, or two or three, and maybe I will get it all working correctly again.
In the meantime, I must go try to find apple cider in Japan. Which suprisingly, is hard to do.

It is peak season for leaf viewing here in Kyoto. Many of the trees are bright red, providing a wonderful contrast to the otherwise subdued colors of the buildings in this area. As part of the study of Japanese gardens, my art class went to Kinkakuji (The Golden Pavilion) to experience the well planned landscape of this Edo Period Stroll Garden. I caught a great picture of the pavilion (truly plated in real gold) against the bright red of a momiji tree. Lovely.

My host mother says it was the wind, my host father says it was the wine I drank with dinner. In any case, the earthquake that I was sure had occurred, apparently did not. How very disappointing.

Yeah for cool friends! I was very sad last night when all the people I invited to my birthday dinner did not show up. However, they made up for it by getting me a cake with Pocky candles today. How very nice of them!

New experience: waking up at 2am to the feeling of your house shaking. I will never cease my amazement at random earthquakes.

According to my host mother, I have recently made many mistakes against the "Japanese way" of doing things. The first is that I left my futons outside airing for over three hours. This is bad because "they'll get cold inside." The second is that I was studying while watching television. If I do this "the TV will be too distracting to concentrate properly." Well, now that I know these oh so important pieces of information, I will be a better Japanese person. Yeah...

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Sunday, November 10

Happy Birthday to Me.

I celebrated the eve of my 21st birthday doing what is appropriate for this occasion with a couple friends from frisbee and some random Japanese people.
The important items:
1. Squid is good to eat sugared and dried.
2. According to some Japanese friends, apparently, I look like some doctor from the TV show ER.
3. Japanese cabs have a maximum charge of 1600 yen. ($16)
4. Takoyaki (an octopus snack) is good, but not as great as everyone makes it out to be.
5. It is possible, though difficult, to shotgun a double-size beer.

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Saturday, November 9

The cities of Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe pretty much run together in a neverending jumble of suburbs, connected by at least three different train lines, for your conveneience. I had never really stopped in Osaka or Kobe to do anything other than pick someone up or get on a boat, so when I went to Osaka today, it was my first time actually being there. And despite looking the same as everywhere else from the train, in actuality, Osaka is a big busy city. There is Denden Town where all the stores in a six block radius sell exclusively electronic items. There is the shopping district, which has the most covered streets that I have ever seen. And there is the Osaka Station, which changes its decor from train station to supermarket to shopping to hotel lobby as you walk through. Osaka is supposedly known for its wonderful food, but since I really didn't know much about it, and my friend was craving chicken, we went the complete other direction and at KFC. Contrary to in the US, KFC in Japan is actually tasty and popular. Who would have thought..

It has all been one big lie - the smiles, the "konnichiwa"'s, letting me pull all the time...My frisbee team ordered new jerseys and I was not included. Despite playing massive amounts of defense, teaching them American offense, and always bringing back omiyage (souveniers) from my trips for them, I was not even asked if I wanted a uniform. It was a sad, sad day on the ultimate field.
I just hope that my team back home hasn't forgotten me, or at the very least the dues I paid last year still count for something.

It's a foreigner paranoia thing, I think, that whenever I am out in public, I am constantly listening to see if I can catch people talking about me. I mean, it is obvious that I don't fit in, and this is made evident by the glances of adults and blatent stares and loud whispers of small children. But I want to know what they are saying about me. Most of the time, I just catch the word gaijin (foreigner), but I am straining for more. What makes me want to know? They could be commenting on anything from why I am here to how large my feet are. Am I looking to be insulted? No, I think that it just gives me a quiet sense of power in the fact that I may look like I haven't got a clue, but secretly, I understand what is going on. It's like I'm a spy, but not really.

There is more help in Japan than you will ever need. For instance, I went to the library the other day to look up the conversion of ounces to grams. I asked for an internet computer, and they didn't have one. When I explained what I was looking for, three librarians all ran to different parts of the library to find something that would have that information. When I say "ran,"I do not mean they hurried. I mean they were actually running. It happens quite frequently in big stores or customer oriented places. Waitresses will run to place your order, store clerks will run to find your size, and postmen will run to get you stamps. You can tell them that it's not a big deal, but it never works. They will run for this thing, and then wait to see if you are satisfied, and run for something else. What a shame that American salesclerks aren't trained in Japan.
By the way, thanks to a dictionary, a science book, and cook book (3 librarians yields 3 answers), I now know that one ounce equals 28.4 grams.

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Monday, November 4

Lately, Ultimate Frisbee practice has been pretty much a waste of time. The freshman and sophomores have a tournament next weekend, so everyone has been helping them practice, by playing defense over and over, and then standing around and tossing for the rest of the time. Today, however, we played a few games. The best part, though, was Andrew. He is an American teaching English here, and he has the wonderful excuse of not being able to speak any Japanese. So he can do what he wants, including breaking up their horrendously slow turnover time by picking up the disc and hucking it to people looking for a fast break that usually never comes. i.e., me. It was great fun, and I actually feel like I accomplished something, besides the fact that one of my pulls went in the river...

Today is my Otosan's birthday. I didn't know that until about a half an hour ago.
Last week we were watching a television show all about ramen in the Kansai area. There are always shows that send someone to find 'all the best kinds of ___ food in ___ area.' I noted that I had not had Japanese ramen yet. So tonight for dinner we went out to Yokoso Ramen, and I ate the largest bowl of ramen imaginable. Afterward we stopped at a cake shop and got little cakes. When we came home my host mother says, 'And today is Otosan's birthday.' I feel bad that they went somewhere for me on his birthday. But the ramen was delicious!

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Sunday, November 3

Many of the National Treasures in Japan are not in museums, nor private collections. They are tucked away in temples behind closed doors and only shown to the public every third year for two weeks. This is that time. One of these, Toji, opened its five storied pagoda with elaborate paintings still bright after 700 years, and several hundred school children came to see them. Luckily, I was able to sneak past while they were waiting for tickets. Everything smelled old, which is a nice smell, but was wonderfully preserved, due to the limited viewings allowed.

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Saturday, November 2

A few weeks ago, I promised my host mother that I would make an "American meal" for dinner one night. And so I contemplated what food we Americans eat that could possibly be considered distinctly American, and that most likely had not already been imported into Japan. So I thought, hamburgers, then I remembered McDonald's. And there's pizza, but that too is an international food. Finally I settled on the classic Macaroni and Cheese. My host mom had not heard of it, and Japanese people eat very little cheese anyway, so I thought it was a good choice.
Last night I made the dish, compliments of my mother's recipe, and using a microwave for the baking process. It came out slightly burned, but still full of cheesy goodness. Add to that plain green beans (they always add something to them here), and a Waldorf salad, and I think I did a pretty good job. They enjoyed it anyway. I just hope they don't ask me to do it again, because I can't think of any other distinctly American food�E

After dinner we went to the Mukomachi Take Matsuri (Bamboo Festival). The highlight was a walk through a bamboo forest in the dark, with the path being lit by candles placed in cut bamboo. We got there at the end, so as we were leaving they were putting out the candles. I asked my host mother what they did with the left over cut bamboo, and one of the workers heard me. He gave me two large pieces of cut bamboo with the candles still inside. They are now an integral part of my bedroom decor.