Summing up

I’ve just finished the last of my papers after pulling an all-nighter in which I drank some concentrated Japanese coffee that came out of a vending machine and listened to the downpour of a typhoon that should have ended with the rain season a few weeks ago. With this final act of ganbatte, I have thus severed all connection to Jouchi Daigaku, and am free to enjoy the last few days here with the family before coming back to the States Thursday afternoon.

As I take that long, meandering look over the last four months, I can safely assert that its contained some of the most difficult times in the history of my short 21 years of living. The combined effects of the classic homesickness, of a city that is pure sensory-overload, and having courses that are just a bit beyond my level of understanding took their toll. But at the same time I regret absolutely no part of the experience. It’s taught me much, about the nature of success through failure, about a foreign way of conducting life, and about just how important my friends and family are to my future.

Part of the initial purpose of this blog, along with having a way to catalog my experience, was to give those students interested in studying abroad in Japan an insight into what the experience might be like. To this end, my final word on the whole experience is thus: DO IT. Maybe don’t repeat my particular mistakes, I would not recommend Sophia University as the best place to learn the language or to experience the culture for example, but do it with the full knowledge that you will make your own terrible, terrible mistakes.

Yet the guaranteeably large number of mistakes does not mean Japan is merely a humbling experience, it doesn’t just shake your confidence. Rather, to a certain degree it makes you no longer fear the prospect of your own failure. When even conversing with your family becomes a comedy of errors, you begin to learn that the consequences of mistakes is never the perceived absolute failure you had thought it was.

If I had spent the past four months in Iowa, things would definitely have been more comfortable. Yet, I would never have been forced to question my own limits, to recognize that even when I failed in my own eyes the people around me and my family back home still held respect for me. And now, after having swallowed my pride and pocketed all this, I can return to the States to try and put value back into the place I call my home and rejoice with the people I call family.

All this abstract thinking aside, Japan is an amazing place with some truly amazing chicks and dudes in it, and if you’ve got any interest in the country to begin with, make the plunge. You’ll walk away with some great memories and maybe even a bottle of sake with your name spelled out in Kanji on it.

I’m Still Kicking

I’ve got mountainous piles of work and non-work-related things to be doing, but I’m still trekking, and doing pretty well all things considered.  It’s the final 2 and 2/3 weeks in Japan, and I’ve got to tie off all the lose ends of projects started and as of yet unfinished, another Oxfam seminar I have to prepare for, packing to do, camping with the homestay family, finals and papers and readings and oh so many things.  But so long as I don’t think about it from a holistic perspective, so long as I break it down piece by piece and do what needs to be done right now, things have proven themselves manageable.  It’s the final countdown, and I’m Europe baby.

Also, I’d like to invite everyone who hasn’t already heard to a BBQ get together at my homestead in the luscious green hills of Nevada.  There’s going to be prize winning pork, as well as fruits and whatnot for all those people who aren’t so inclined to that sort of thing.  It’ll be a veritable shmorgesboard I guarantee.

Seriously, everyone is invited.  This includes you and all of your friends.  I’m going to right now at this very moment set the time for 1:00 in the afternoon, August 2nd, so if you can make your way over by all means do so.  I’ll also be making a quick jaunt over to Grinnell to pick up some happening dudelies, so that means I can pick any Grinnellians up too.

Be there, and count on fireworks and raw steak and football and everything else you can’t find in Japan to be there as well.

This blog is about class again; it haunts my dreams

I tried loading a movie the other day of a role-play a Swedish lady named Julia and I made for Japanese class, but I seem to be running into technical difficulties.  It’s up on facebook, but I know some of the less hip-happening dudes (I.E. those who are beyond the infamous world of online social networking) don’t have access, so I’ll try and post it again here when I get the chance.

I’d also like to write a bit more in Japanese on this blog, I’ve been falling behind as of late, but I spend so much time writing speeches and compositions for my class that I hardly feel like writing in Japanese at the end of the day.  It’s kind of unfortunate actually; because the class is pretty difficult, and I always feel like I’m failing to a certain degree, I have very little confidence when it comes to using the language itself.  I’m hoping once I’ve returned, and gotten away from the strictness of the classes, I’ll feel a bit more motivated to actually make use of the language in a functional setting, like giving directions to a lost group of Japanese school girls, for instance.

びっくりしました。　They were shocked.

My host-family still remains a big help though, always lending a hand when I’m having trouble.  For example, when I told them I was doing a presentation on sushi, we got take-out from the local kaiten place, and they allowed me to take the following picture (the pretense of which is that they are shocked by the fact that I like this cheap stuff, and that kaiten sushi isn’t real sushi).  I do feel bad sometimes though, because I get home from school and the only time I have to interact with the family is devoted to helping me with my schoolwork.  It’s a sad state, but they remain cheerful to help, and for that reason I’ll be forever indebted to them.  That’s why, in the last few days here, I intend to take them to a real sushi joint, and can maybe utilize my newfound knowledge of the complex world of sushi to impress their friends with the 知識豊富 (lit. bountiful knowledge) of their foreign exchange student.

Maybe a picture of me giving a double thumbs up

It`s 22:15.  Kento is fast asleep on the squarish futon to my right, Youko is playing super mario brothers on my DS while letting little gasps of nostalgia for the days of Super Famicon, one of those typical Japanese talk shows, one where little inset pictures of audience members show you what emotions you ought to be feeling at the present moment, is on the T.V., and I`m sluggishly (the result of 3 bowls of soba) typing away at a commentary on the oppresiveness of dialectic opposition for my Buddhist class.  In other words, all is well in the world. 

I`ve gone through a pretty ridiculous scale of thought processes in the past few weeks, from feeling untouchable to feeling its opposite (super touchable?).  But I`ve learned to start letting certain things go; a product of adjusting to the sheer weight of a foreign culture.  I`m not going to claim it`s been a world-shattering epiphany that has henceforth made me a changed man, but I have noticed that in general I`m more capable of living in the now; of really starting to care about the people and places that make up my current situation.

Aside from internal changes to the very fabric of my existence, I`ve had a few interesting experiences since my last time of writing.  After our big Kanji midsem, a beast of a written exam that stole 50 minutes of my life I will never get back,  our class had a little celebration at a Japanese bar to forget the woes of the world.  It was a good time in general, as I brought my Japanese tutor along and his estranged friend from Mexico who kept making eager advances on the Russian girl from our class.  Admittedly, the Russian girl wears pretty short skirts, but no one deserves the likening of their backside to a peach I don`t think. 

This saturday I gave a brief presentation/English lesson to a group of 50 Japanese students of Tachibana Middle school.  The project was a function of Sophia Alpha, with 10 of us trying our best to keep these kids under control under the watchful eye of the superindendent, a man who very well fits into all the stereotypes of his occupation.  But after the session, even though I was sure we had failed to meet his demanding standards, we had a cool little chat on the overstuffed couches of the faculty breakroom, and he was all giddy with excitement for our return in mid-July.  We certainly made some mistakes, one kid almost took a 5 foot plunge during our family and friends related hoping game, but no one died anyway, and this seemed to please the teachers in general. 

It`s only 4 more weeks until I come back to my rightful place in Iowa, to make good on my promise to see everyone and do everything that I`ve been missing something terrible for the past 3 1/2 months.  Don`t forget about me in the meantime; maybe put a little picture of me up on your refrigerator and in the mornings wake up and say “that Jeritt kid, he was a cool dude.  I should totally party with that guy when he gets back”.  Just do me this one favor. 

Momo is here

Mom is in town!  I mean this both figuratively and literally when I say it.  She’s visiting Japan for a total of 10 days, and is at the same time wrecking havoc all over the country.  She’s already been to mount Fuji, Hiroshima, in and around Tokyo, is headed off to Nikko with my home stay family at the moment, has a traditional Japanese tea ceremony planned for tomorrow in Toro, and will be heading to Kyoto for the weekend.  She’s managed to pack more travel in the past 7 days than I think most people undertake in a lifetime, and she’ll be a well-versed traveling mamma by the time she returns to the states. 

She seems to be enjoying herself pretty thoroughly, taking to chow-han and soba noodles like nobody’s business.  We’ve been having a pretty good time, Nate and myself, in escorting our mom’s like valuable cargo through crowded train stations and figuring out the shinkansen departure schedule, and it’ll be sad faces all around when it’s time to see them off.

Other than keeping a constant eye to verify my mom is still trailing behind me in the crowded streets of downtown Shinjuku, I’ve been trying to manage a complicated balance of school-work, sanity, and volunteer opportunities.  Yesterday, being Wednesday, I ducked out of class early to head to Tsukidaijima elementary to help act as a precursor for the eventual enforcement of English education planned to take place in Japan in 2011.  Hopefully I can show middle-schoolers that English is a tool; a means of communication rather than an end in and of itself with no practical application, before they learn to hate the language.  It’s so awkward that we should choose to take the communicative aspect out of language education; so far removing it from its actual purpose through tests and quizzes and mandatory participation. 

Luckily the little tykes had boundless energy on the level of Kento-esqueness, so getting them to participate was no problem.  I enjoyed it so much, and the kids and I sort of fed off of each other, getting more and more into this whole prospect of “let’s learn together!”, that I almost want to reconsider the JET program.  But I think I still miss too many aspects of the states to stay away for an entire year; especially if I felt like Japan was only temporary, a sort of delay of the future in some regard.

I’m still missing everyone a ton, and I plan to take a veritable tour of the countryside when I get back.  So if anyone reading this has a place to put me up for a day or so, I’m more than willing to make the trek.

Unexpected 意外なニュース

The other day a friend studying abroad from Germany, Bianca, told me that she had been reading my newspaper article and found it very interesting. I told her that I had no idea I had a newspaper article. As it turns out, the interview that was conducted rather covertly a couple of months ago, by who I thought were just some friendly Japanese neighbors looking to know more about me (although admittedly they had name tags and carried a microphone and wore business suits), was through a large-scale newspaper publisher. The article appears in Japan today under the “lifestyle” category, and it focuses on the particular homestay situation I am in. (it can be read here).

It’s somewhat strange to have yourself written about and people discussing the international consequences of your actions, especially when you had no idea that your actions had international consequences. But the remarks are insightful, especially the one dude who really feels for me because I’m stuck with a retiree family and unable to bring girls back from 原宿 late in the evenings. It characterizes me as charmingly inept, but perhaps this is a fair characterization. As for the truth of the article, its hard to say how accurately reflects the situation, but I do not feel offended in any way after having read it. Although I do wish I would’ve avoided saying a word like “individualism”.

今日、私は新聞記事のトピクのことと聞いたばかりです。これは本当に驚いた、なぜなら今まで面接したことが分かりませんでした。新聞記事はここに見えられます。あいにく、日本語版があるかどうか分かりません。

その記事の題はただ私じゃなくて、もう退職する人は外国人の留学生を自宅を訪問させらることについてです。とても面白い記事だけど、その中に私はちょっと不手際に見えます。でも、アメリカ人と日本人もコメントして、皆の反応はありがたいでした。今、右の新聞記事に対してコメントがあれば、どんなインプトでもいただければありがたいです。

Awe.

Again things are flowing quickly, each moment seems to blur into the next as I narrowly catch the train, find the time to get to the computer lab and eat before the next meeting so I can make it to the tiny gym that has way to many rugby players in it to be comfortable, and then just duck into my next class.

This last weekend though was relatively relaxed, and I managed to catch up on a few things. I helped out an Oxfam workshop talking about the problems of creating international gun control sanctions. Surprisingly, the workshop was in English and the students were Japanese, and although their level of understanding was relatively high, conversing about demobilization and reorientation is a difficult concept no matter who you’re speaking with. I had no idea what those concepts meant, so that didn’t really help.

On Sunday I met with a girl who is perhaps the most amazing person I have ever spoken with in terms of accomplishments. The pretense of our meeting was that I should help her prepare for an interview with the Carter Center in Atlanta, but when it came down to it her mastery of the English language, and her ability to present herself in a positive light as a great candidate put me to shame. This girl was born in Nepal to Japanese parents, was taught in an English international school through highschool, and is conversationally fluent in Spanish. Since the age of 8 she has helped out supply optometry equipment to poor Nepalese families, volunteered at a cerebral palsy center, helped cancer patients throughout highschool, helped individuals gain refugee status in Japan by translating and presenting their case to the Japanese courts, attended Georgetown for a year in which she gave a proposal to the (likely) future president of Liberia, and works four part-time jobs: translating for a Fulbright scholar doing his dissertation in Japan, teaching students of Japanese such as myself, translating for a Japanese corporation, and working at CIEE. When you meet someone like that, what do you do? Are you motivated to try and pursue the same sort of humanitarianism, or does it just sort of paralyze you?

I’m still sort of reeling from the meeting. I was having troubles figuring out the meaning of simple Japanese grammar, and she is applying for a foundation that helps impoverished nations establish democratic institutions and polices voting sites. How do you bounce back from a statement like that?

The answer is do your best I suppose, so I guess I’ll just keep on a truckin’ through this linguistics homework.

後で

もう一度この日本語のことをしてみましょうか。最後の書ったのから、何もあまり変わらなかった。授業のことはまだちょっと難しすぎ、授業の複雑な事を楽しむのを習えるようになってきました。

明日は作文の中間試験で、初めての自分で書かれた試験だから、出来るだけ準備ようにしています。実際に、このブログは僕の書き方を助けられるのではねいでしょうか….. あ、ケント君はねむいみたいから、あとでこのブログを書き終わらなきゃならない。

お休み。

Down Time

I just wanted to write real quick-like and let everyone know that I’m still making it safe and sound through the maze of wonders that is Japan. It’s mid-sems week, which has turned into something more like mid-sems three weeks, which means I haven’t had a lot of time to sit down and recount what’s been happening. Over the weekend I took a trip to Hiroshima through CIEE with the other 70 some odd students, and it actually turned out pretty amazing. Despite the tragedy of the events and the general depressive sort of feeling you get when you talk about Hiroshima, the city has really rebuilt itself in the past 60 years. Save for the peace park that sits right at the hypocenter of the dropping of the bomb, there is no indication that anything was ever awry. The people there have a very interesting way of dealing with the connotations of their city’s past, and it was a pretty meditative way to spend a weekend.

I’ll try and post some of the pictures from the trip here when I get the chance, Youko let me borrow her future-camera so they should look pretty decent.

ちょっと違う

これから、日本語の先生の頼みと、短い作文　(作文じゃないけど、「blog entry」に当たる日本語が良く分からないから…)を書いてみます。残念ことは、日本に着発して以来、私の日本語の進歩が見にくいです。それじゃ、ちょっと自身じゃなくて、先生の目の中から私は失敗するかどうか心配しています。でも、新しい言葉を習うために、間違いはむしろ重要なことです。なので、遠慮なく書くようにしています。そして、今間違いがいっぱいですが、日本語がだんだん上手になると、この作文は進歩を見られるために使えます。そうかと言って、このブログを見ながら私のグリネルの先生に泣かされれば、本当にごめんなさい。

実際に、今日の午後日本語でスピーチをしました。大体に、発音とか助詞などのことは見当違いだったのに、良いでした。そのスピーチは観客が上智大学の「Sophia Alpha」と言うサカルで、御岳山へ行く時に、駅でしました。皆は外国語を学ぶの経験があったから、私の事誤りと親切でした。でも、私は今日の旅行の目的地は鎌倉と言う町と思いましたから、私のスピーチのトピクは、鎌倉の歴史、ちょっと変でした。

でも、小っ恥ずかしくと思ってから、他の会話の方が易しいでした。Sophia Alphaのメンバと外国で教えるについての会話がありました。Sophia Alphaの目的は、英語だけ教えるの事じゃなくて、日本の小中学校を外国人と付き合い方が教えるの事です。とても面白いことに、日本人の若い子供にとって、時々英語を習うよりアメリカ人は恐くないの方が大事です。

御岳山を登った上でちょっと疲れきっています。私の予定は今からちょっと勉強するとシャワーを浴びる後で、すぐに布団で良く眠るつもりです。大体の質問とコメントがあれば、教えって下さい。

 

The above is written per the request of my Japanese professor back at Grinnell, Asaoka-sensei.  It may inspire a few young dudes fresh to the world of Japanese to　want to pursue things  further.  It`s so full of mistakes that I`m pretty sure Asaoka would like to claim no role in having taught me, but it looks kind of impressive if you`re unfamiliar with the language.

 

As for the English section of this entry, I would like to leave everyone with a single picture.  Try to invision this image, if you will, only everywhere.