I'm back in the U.S. for real now, and even back on East coast time in a record single day after an entirely sleepless Narita-Newark flight left my body's internal clock reeling in confusion. I'm glad to be back with my family in our annual reunion at my grandparent's house and eagerly anticipating the new school year, but also missing my host family dearly.
When I checked my e-mail for the first time after I my return I found the sweetest message from my okaasan waiting for me. As I read it, I felt overcome by a wave of natsukashiisa... I miss most the little routines like walking to the train station every morning with my okaasan. It was a good fifteen minutes away and she wasn't taking the train with me, but she'd accompany me to the station every morning, rain or shine (and there was more rain than shine). Along the way we'd chat about anything and everything or sometimes just lapse into companionable silence... All I can say is it was the best way to start a day.
I'm incredibly grateful to my host family for taking me into their house, for truly being my family for two months, and it's terrible to say goodbye not knowing if I'll ever see them again. Right now I'm struggling to write the perfect letter to them, feeling oh-so-clumsy as I fumble for the right words to express my heartfelt thanks.
While my summer experience still leaves me struggling in Japanese letter composition... I know plenty of the correct ritual expressions, but long to write something beyond the trite sounding osewaninarimasu, still, I feel that my language skills have improved a lot.
My speaking and listening comprehension are certainly far beyond what they were before, but I fear losing some of the progress now that I'm outside of the immersion environment. My reading and essay writing skills are also improved, though kanji writing still remains my weakness. I can also now competently discuss a wide variety of social problems (a big focus in our textbook), with newfound vocabulary to describe things like acid rain and the yutori kyouiku education system, though I wish the emphasis had been a little less academic.
I'm now left at a bit of a crossroads, planning to take the Japanese placement test, but unsure whether I'll be taking a Japanese class in the fall... the bitter realist in me realizes that this is perhaps slightly suicidal on top of my chemical engineering requirements and whispers reminders that I still have writing and humanities distribution requirements to fulfill. And even if I do take a class this semester, am I just postponing the inevitable backslide another few months? I intend to keep up the spoken Japanese as much as possible by speaking with my family, but without an academic class, I know I'll start losing the language surprisingly quickly. (I'm always appalled to realize how much of my high school Spanish I've forgotten.) For now all I can do is see how the fall turns out... where I can place and if I have time for another class. For now sayounara and thank you to the Light Fellowship for giving me this amazing opportunity.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
where did all the time go?
First of all, apologies for not updating in forever. I will blame my blog negligence on extreme academic diligence/attention to coursework. ;-)
The second half of the program flew by, and I'm more than a little surprised to find myself writing this on the plane ride back to the states. A twelve hour plane ride is the prefect time to catch up on the blog posts I've been procrastinating on. So here goes a marathon month's worth of recap blog post covering through the end of the program:
Mid-semester break, I spent at a backpacker's hostel in Sapporo with Leah and Joseph.
our room
We visited the old Sapporo beer factory which has been turned into a museum with lots of vintage beer posters. It's a lovely old brick building with stain glass windows patterned after hops and the red star logo.
And of course we hit Ramen Alley to try the miso ramen Sapporo's known for...
The highlight of the trip was attending a Nippon Ham Fighters baseball game in the futuristic Sapporo stadium. The Nippon Ham Fighters are an all Hokkaido team sponsored of course by Nippon Ham... meaning that there are ham commercials during the game!
I've never actually been to a real major league game in the U.S., so I didn't really have any idea what to expect, nor did I have more than a rudimentary knowledge of the rules of baseball.
But none of this mattered... the chief enjoyment of going to a Japanese baseball game is watching Japanese baseball fans. They sit in regimented cheering sections with drummers and flag-wavers who lead them in chanting the individual cheers for each player as they come to bat. (The fans for the opposing team also jumped up and down for certain cheers... though the jumping became less energetic as the innings progressed.) The cheers generally involve the player's name, but in the case of a certain American Termel Sledge, chants of U.S.A.!, U.S.A.! had to suffice as the consonant combinations in his name were beyond the range of Japanese pronunciation. Unfortunately the Nippon Ham's star pitcher Darvish wasn't on the field the day I went... I'd been hoping to see him as he's hugely popular, both for his talent and extreme attractiveness. In fact, more than half the female fans in attendance seemed to be wearing replicas of his uniform shirt.
Japanese baseball fans, in addition to being highly organized, are also much more polite than U.S. sports fans; they don't boo when the opposing team does well. (Though I'm told Osaka is an exception...) In any case, the Fighters fans didn't need to worry as the home team won handily against their opponents, the Marines.
Also, apparently the Japanese do not believe in hot dog buns...
Once back in Hakodate we had the privilege of participating in the Hakodate Historical Spectacle, an evening event at Goryokaku Park which presents a condensed version of local history presented by citizens performing en masse in a vaguely organized chaos involving reenacted battles, fireworks and performances by a local ballet studio, all culminating with the entire cast singing a song titled "Oh, Hakodate" and waving glowsticks. The HIF student contingent helped provide human scenery by acting as village people in various scenes.
Us in costume... notice how Helen is wearing a man's wig complete with chonmage...
We also had the opportunity to make mochi and soba in a local restaurant. Since I've only seen mochi made by machine before, it was pretty impressive to see it made by hand. Basically you pound the hell out of sticky rice with a huge wooden mallet until it becomes mochi.
I gave it a try and nearly hit the guy who turns the rice ball between blows.... oops!
In the final week of my stay I at last made it up to Hakodate Yama for the famed night view, ranked third in the world by whoever ranks such things. It is indeed beautiful... the city stretches glittering below and the lights from the squid boats sit like floating lanterns upon the dark ocean.... This blurry photograph certainly doesn't do it justice.
And then there was the Minato Matsuri, Hakodate's annual port festival, especially grand because this was the 150th anniversary of the opening of Hakodate harbor by Perry. The festival opened with a parade in which HIF students took part, many dressed as historical figures from the opening of the port. I was disappointed that they'd run out of historical costumes before I signed up, but this ended up being lucky since it meant being on the taiko float with Helen.
Unfortunately I don't have a picture, but here goes my attempt at explaining... basically this meant getting strapped into seats facing each other across a large drum, which we pounded as we went. The seats were themselves connected to a large red metal frame which formed a sort of cage around us and was mounted atop the float. The frame could be spun 360 in all directions using handles on the outside of the frame operated by to men who stood atop the float with us. We kept on drumming while flipping upside down and spinning in all directions for the nearly hour long parade route! It was a lot of fun, though Helen looked slightly green by the time we stepped shakily to the ground...
That evening we watched the fireworks set off from the harbor. All I can say is that the Japanese take them very seriously, even a small city like Hakodate putting on an hour-long display involving all sorts of fireworks, even ones shaped like Anpanman, Hello Kitty, and the inevitable squid.
The matsuri also includes the infamous ika odori (squid dance). Imagine group after group of people (each group having their own float with huge speakers and lights)... the local plumbers' union, hordes of intoxicated college students, airport workers, dance studio members... thousands in all, dancing through the street to the same song and doing the same traditional dance. The song itself is composed of a list of the names of local squid specialties (squid noodles and the like) followed by the refrain ika ika ika ika ika odori (squid squid squid squid squid dance) and the dance involves lots of hopping and amusing arm movements. The entire thing lasts for many hours and is held for three days in a row!
ika odori
squid float
The second half of the program flew by, and I'm more than a little surprised to find myself writing this on the plane ride back to the states. A twelve hour plane ride is the prefect time to catch up on the blog posts I've been procrastinating on. So here goes a marathon month's worth of recap blog post covering through the end of the program:
Mid-semester break, I spent at a backpacker's hostel in Sapporo with Leah and Joseph.
our room 
compare... my backpack vs. real pack
We visited the old Sapporo beer factory which has been turned into a museum with lots of vintage beer posters. It's a lovely old brick building with stain glass windows patterned after hops and the red star logo.
And of course we hit Ramen Alley to try the miso ramen Sapporo's known for...
The highlight of the trip was attending a Nippon Ham Fighters baseball game in the futuristic Sapporo stadium. The Nippon Ham Fighters are an all Hokkaido team sponsored of course by Nippon Ham... meaning that there are ham commercials during the game!
I've never actually been to a real major league game in the U.S., so I didn't really have any idea what to expect, nor did I have more than a rudimentary knowledge of the rules of baseball.
But none of this mattered... the chief enjoyment of going to a Japanese baseball game is watching Japanese baseball fans. They sit in regimented cheering sections with drummers and flag-wavers who lead them in chanting the individual cheers for each player as they come to bat. (The fans for the opposing team also jumped up and down for certain cheers... though the jumping became less energetic as the innings progressed.) The cheers generally involve the player's name, but in the case of a certain American Termel Sledge, chants of U.S.A.!, U.S.A.! had to suffice as the consonant combinations in his name were beyond the range of Japanese pronunciation. Unfortunately the Nippon Ham's star pitcher Darvish wasn't on the field the day I went... I'd been hoping to see him as he's hugely popular, both for his talent and extreme attractiveness. In fact, more than half the female fans in attendance seemed to be wearing replicas of his uniform shirt.
Japanese baseball fans, in addition to being highly organized, are also much more polite than U.S. sports fans; they don't boo when the opposing team does well. (Though I'm told Osaka is an exception...) In any case, the Fighters fans didn't need to worry as the home team won handily against their opponents, the Marines.
Also, apparently the Japanese do not believe in hot dog buns...
Once back in Hakodate we had the privilege of participating in the Hakodate Historical Spectacle, an evening event at Goryokaku Park which presents a condensed version of local history presented by citizens performing en masse in a vaguely organized chaos involving reenacted battles, fireworks and performances by a local ballet studio, all culminating with the entire cast singing a song titled "Oh, Hakodate" and waving glowsticks. The HIF student contingent helped provide human scenery by acting as village people in various scenes.
Us in costume... notice how Helen is wearing a man's wig complete with chonmage...We also had the opportunity to make mochi and soba in a local restaurant. Since I've only seen mochi made by machine before, it was pretty impressive to see it made by hand. Basically you pound the hell out of sticky rice with a huge wooden mallet until it becomes mochi.
I gave it a try and nearly hit the guy who turns the rice ball between blows.... oops!
Leah cutting soba noodles with a huge knife!
(The ones we made turned out uneven and fat, but the professional's looked machine cut.)In the final week of my stay I at last made it up to Hakodate Yama for the famed night view, ranked third in the world by whoever ranks such things. It is indeed beautiful... the city stretches glittering below and the lights from the squid boats sit like floating lanterns upon the dark ocean.... This blurry photograph certainly doesn't do it justice.
And then there was the Minato Matsuri, Hakodate's annual port festival, especially grand because this was the 150th anniversary of the opening of Hakodate harbor by Perry. The festival opened with a parade in which HIF students took part, many dressed as historical figures from the opening of the port. I was disappointed that they'd run out of historical costumes before I signed up, but this ended up being lucky since it meant being on the taiko float with Helen.
Unfortunately I don't have a picture, but here goes my attempt at explaining... basically this meant getting strapped into seats facing each other across a large drum, which we pounded as we went. The seats were themselves connected to a large red metal frame which formed a sort of cage around us and was mounted atop the float. The frame could be spun 360 in all directions using handles on the outside of the frame operated by to men who stood atop the float with us. We kept on drumming while flipping upside down and spinning in all directions for the nearly hour long parade route! It was a lot of fun, though Helen looked slightly green by the time we stepped shakily to the ground...
That evening we watched the fireworks set off from the harbor. All I can say is that the Japanese take them very seriously, even a small city like Hakodate putting on an hour-long display involving all sorts of fireworks, even ones shaped like Anpanman, Hello Kitty, and the inevitable squid.
The matsuri also includes the infamous ika odori (squid dance). Imagine group after group of people (each group having their own float with huge speakers and lights)... the local plumbers' union, hordes of intoxicated college students, airport workers, dance studio members... thousands in all, dancing through the street to the same song and doing the same traditional dance. The song itself is composed of a list of the names of local squid specialties (squid noodles and the like) followed by the refrain ika ika ika ika ika odori (squid squid squid squid squid dance) and the dance involves lots of hopping and amusing arm movements. The entire thing lasts for many hours and is held for three days in a row!
ika odori
squid floatThe program finished up with exams and presentations of our independent study projects... highlights included Jamar's Hakodate Final Fantasy and Li-san's Sweets of Hokkaido projects.
In the official closing ceremony we received our certificates and my class regaled the audience with the song Ashitagaarusa complete with dance routine and ceremonial presentation of a banana to our our teacher, Saito-sensei. (Here's the official music video from where we took the choreography: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ujmvpt6GwIA)
Yay Jyokyuu class!
Me with my okaasan and little sister Sachi after the ceremony
In the official closing ceremony we received our certificates and my class regaled the audience with the song Ashitagaarusa complete with dance routine and ceremonial presentation of a banana to our our teacher, Saito-sensei. (Here's the official music video from where we took the choreography: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ujmvpt6GwIA)
Yay Jyokyuu class!
Me with my okaasan and little sister Sachi after the ceremony
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