Bucket'o'photos: Teramachi

I don't think I need to explain this, here it goes:

These are the kinds of bikes I was talking about earlier. They belong to my host brothers. I should also mention that though most of the bikes look like this, there are so many here that it doesn't take long to see any kind of bike.

Also, this is the entrance to the house, the stone floor is the only place shoes are allowed to be.


This is the house. It's small and crowded, but fine for living in, but I think Gavin would get claustraphobic in the hallways.

This is the street where I live. It's small and not exactly strait, which is why you can't see the house from here, not to mention that everything here forms walls along the sides of the road.

This is the main road that street it attached to. It's four lanes wide, and deadly to cross without the cross-walk lights guiding you. It's the main road through the teramachi area as far as I know.
Teramachi means "temple town," I wonder why that is. It couldn't be the crazy amount of temple found at every corner could it?
(Yes, that's what these old style walls surround.)

Here's a small park I walk past every morning.

Need a smoke? Or a can of soda-pop?

Oh, and if you see a vending machine you want to buy something from on the other side of the road, don't bother crossing, there's one right in front of you as well.

Kanazawan Holiday

As anyone over forty can tell from the name (for those under forty, it`s an allusion to the famous movie Roman Holiday, my favorite romantic comedy), today was a good day. I woke up at six-forty and did my best to sleep in another hour. At which point I was close to being late. I got up, ate breakfast and got ready for school. While doing this, I realized why I was able to sleep in twenty minutes more than usual, it was because neither of my host brothers were up (chopsticks hitting plates is what gets me out of bed, it`s not loud, but it works) because they had classes a little later. Anyways, I bandaged my foot (which is being skinned by my solid leather shoes), and headed off for school.



At school it was the second day of the festival, I went to my home room, helped clean, and then went off with my friends (they speak a few sentences of broken English and their not jerks). We waited while the yakisoba stand got setup and we were about fourth in line, after which the line bacame longer than the courtyard it was setup in. We walked around, played golf, shot airguns, and generally had a good time. I also tried tapioca, a drink with fruit candy at the bottom, which makes it more like a drink mini-game when they give you a straw equally as wide as the candy. And a few hours later, it was over, just before the rain started.



So, I decided to use this time to talk to my teacher about my classes. Right now, all my classes are in Japanese. Biology, literature and history all have to many kanji for me to learn in a month, the English classes are basically me reading the booklet, almost crying at the butchered version of Romeo and Juliet ("Juliet you are as beatiful as the sun" just doesn`t do Shakespeare credit enough), and then I get asked by the teacher to read a few paragraphs slowly. She asks me to slowly pronounce a few key words, and then goes back to speaking at a mile a minute pace in Japanese. And as for the math class, well, the teacher is easily distracted and their just doing distance right now (AB=sqrt[(x1-x2)+(y1-y2)]). So, I decided to try and throw some classes around. So next week, forty percent of the classes I`ll be taking will be various levels of mathematics and physics. And by the time this was all sorted out, the rain had stopped.



I walked "home" and was told that my host brother was hanging out with some of his rebounder friends. So I took the bus over to Kanazawa station (which is also a six story shopping mall) and join them. Both his friends spoke English well. We played air hockey, Mario cart (an arcade version) and had our pictures taken in some crazy famous Japanese style. After that, I got on a bus to go back "home" (Kenji decided to stay a little longer), and sat down behind two middle-aged white women. A few seconds into the bus ride, I realized they were speaking in French, so I waited, and when the opportunity arose I excused myself and joined their conversation. We never exchanged names or addresses (we indroduced ourselves by nationality, one was Swiss and the other American), but we had a lovley chat about why I was in Japan, then on to the Japanese language, about the difficulty of learning it, and the interesting and facinating things we had noticed in the language. About five ot ten mintues later I thanked them for the opportunity to use my French and got off the bus. I understood eccentially all of the conversation, there were only four or five words I didn`t catch, and they complimented me on my French despite a few minor mistakes I made like saying "hai" instead of "oui."



All in all, today was an excellent day, unfortunately I probably won`t spend the night smashing guitars over secret agents` heads or falling in love, but attempting to write a few sentences in Japanese and working out isn`t too bad.



Here`s a picture of the front area of Kanazawa Station. You can see the giant wooden pillars off to the left in the back. I would have taken a picture from in front, but you can see that on any site about Kanazawa, and I thought this was a nice cross section.

I`ll post the pictures taken in the strange picture booth once I get a clear picture of them.

By the way, to leave a comment, just hit the word comments below the entry you want to comment on. Leaving a comment on this site may be a weird process, but that`s for security reasons.

School Festival and Personal Touch

As stated before, today was my school festival, well, the first day of it, it continues for a few more hours tomorrow. It was fun, despite the difficulty of asking "so, what do we do next?" I ate some things who`s names I do not know, I drank some mediocre drinks, learned how to play a few Japanese games, and got a brief peek into a "haunted house" before the lights came on and the festival was over for the day (not that a bunch of people running up to me to test out their English is scary, it seems they we`re more interested in my words than my screams [no I didn`t scream]). There were also television cameras there to report on the sixth of one of the builtings that had been covered in cardboard and paper mache to like a giant strawberry cake.

I came "home," had a shower (I`m used to the climate, but it was a hot day by any standard), drank some Coca-Cola and wished I had some nachoes. You see, in Japan, they don`t snack very much. They eat a regular breakfast (a little meat, a little salad, some bread and yogurt), a basic lunch (rice or yakisoba and something else to add some flavor to their day), and than, in this famlies case, at twenty-hundred hours, err, eight o`clock post meridiem, there`s a supper comprised of a small bowl of rice, fish, soup, tofu or something of the like, and something else. They seem absolutely fine with the eight hour gap. Thankfully though, working in a restaurant for three years has made me very good at avoiding eating food.

Anyway, from one thing to another. So why is the title of this entry personal touch? Because it`s something I almost miss here in Japan. Don`t get me wrong, on step into a Japanese book or game store and I could almost die happy, but everything here is factory made standard issue. This computer is small, and though some of its components could use a tune up (more RAM, fix the buttons for power and eject), I`d bet any one of my harddrives that nine out of ten Japanese comupter users would buy a new one rather than upgrade. And the bikes... Terry, you would not believe the conformity in bikes. With rare exception, every bike is as follows: silver with low frame, low, wide seat, handlebars that curve upwards and back, two fenders, place for bag on back, one gear, two rim breaks, one oval reflector on each tire, a basket on the front, a chain guard, basic plastic petals, a double-sided kickstand that lifts the back tire, and front and back reflectors/lights. User friendly, uncustomizable, standard issue. I`ve seen hunrdreds upon hundreds of this exact make, and very little deviation. I`m going to miss messing with every piece of machinery I touch.

Oh, right, and by the way, it doesn`t seem I`ll be doing much running. The area I`m in is very tight and maze-like (my host-father explained that had this city been bombed in the war, it would have been rebuilt in a less cumbersome way, not that that would have been a good thing) and the only place to run safely would be along one of the main rivers, but knowing how far I would get, that`s probably not a good idea, so for the moment, I`m working out at night while I wait for the lights to go out.

More Pictures & Boring Text

Yeah, a lot of the pictures I`ll be taking will be sideways. Sorry, it`s just a habit I have.

Anyways, this is the computer I`m using. It`s very basic. Google Documents` auto-save can almost crash it.

And beside it is the upright I was talking about earlier.

Moving on.

This is the entertainment section of the living/dining room. They have a nice television with a whole eight (I`m not absolutely sure of the exact number) channels, which is common here. They have a Japanese DVD player, and American DVD player (for region lock reasons), VCR, and something that looks like either another VCR, or beta max. That seat on the floor there is the closest thing in the house to a couch. Everyone else sits on the cushions under the table.

And this is my Japanese ID card. Not much I can say about it... It tells people that I`m a registered alien here as a pre-college student... It`s issued by the Ministry of Justice. It seemed so much more interesting at the time....

Anyways, today I read my first text in Japanese outloud. It`s a song called Nada Sou Sou (teardrop). I had some of my new friends write furigana (hiragana and katakana that explains how to pronounce kanji) on it so that I could say the whole thing. And, I can understand a few words of it, yay! Oh, right, I should probably tell you why I`m learning a song at school. Tomorrow is the school festival, it`s for a singing contest between classes. So I`ll probably have much to write then.

Oh, and before I go, err, stop typing, to those of you who will understand this, today I ate a cornet the Lucky Star way.

Pictures

Oh, right, you guy`s probably want ot see some pictures. Well, I don`t have very many right now, but here`s my room.

Neatly folded clean clothing. A pile of dirty clothes destined for the washing machine before they dry on the hanger you see there. The floor is a tatami (traditional japanese woven floor), and those are real shoji, but there`s also a window and screen right outside.

My desk. Above is my younger host brother`s collection of Detective Conan manga (they have a lot of manga), which I hope to translate and read. Also, my books, a leant book about Japan, Shogun, and four books on Japanese (by the way, Gavin, I`ve mostly given up on Japanese for Dummies, it seems to be more for tourists. Opposite my books can be found my PSP and cameras. The paper clipped to my new clipboard (my old one was falling apart, and Japanese A4 paper is bigger than American A4 paper) is, dadadada! geoffcard`s Japanese cheatsheet! My MEC jacket hangs from my chair, and in the bottom left corner is my photo album (yes, I have pictures of all of you, but it`s more for show, I won`t forget you guys that easily).

And here`s my bed. My backpack with +1 Canada. My school uniform is laying beside my bed (I`ll be and expert tie tier by the time I get back). Originally there were three blankets on the bed, I traded those in and got a towel, but that too is too much, and it balls up before akatsuki (my favourite Japanese word, it means dawn). So I sleep in a pair of shorts. Also, while I didn`t suffer from jetlag, and I`m not staying up late on the computer, but I`m still missing just a little sleep because shoji (paper windows) don`t work as blinds. Every morning I`m　partially awoken at dawn and from there I do my best to get the last few minutes of sleep. But it makes a nice alarm clock.

kanji to kanji to kanji mo kanji

I`ve been here half a month. I miss all of you, and eating nachoes, but I`m liking life in Japan. Granted, I would like it, will like it much more once I have command of the language. I speak English and French pretty much fluently, and in both I have an extensive vocabulary, which I rely on heavily to express myself ( as this sentence shows). Now, in English, this is a matter of firguring out all the latin and greek fixes and a few anglo-saxon words, and while that is quite a challenge, nihongo (Japanese) has a bigger challenge. It`s name is kanji.

Now, all japanese words can be written out in kana (hiragana and katakana), but there are so many homophones that it would be difficult, it not impossible to completely understand the message, especially since the japanese don`t have words per-say, they have phrases (eg. konnichiwa is actually kon=now, nichi=day, wa=topic particle). So, in order to figure out which word you mean, you use kanji. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, each kanji can be from one to, the highest I`ve seen is twenty-four lines (at which point it becomes more of a blob on a page), tt usually takes two kanji and one hiragana to make a word, and every kanji has at least two ways of being pronouced.

So, you can understand my greif when looking at a page of text and about 40-60% is kanji. Well, it`s not just my greif. Every Japanese person must learn these (they`re taught 1058 in elementary school), and there are over ten-thousand. It`s a system so cumbersome that every gameshow I`ve seen in Japan has a major part of the show that basically "pronounce this word!"

But my book on the subject is very good. I also have a Japanese-English dictionary, all I need now is the Japanese version of Beshrelle.

As for school, I don`t like the uniform, the pants are okay, the solid leather shoes I wear to school are uncomfortable (but inside school I wear sneakers), the shirt isn`t bad, but tying at tie takes ten minutes every morning. The girls are nice, the best English speaker in my class is the class clown (they all try their English around me, and I try to speak Japanese back), and the math class is doing distance now, but I spotted some calculus in the back of the book.

School

Today, September 1st, was my first day at Yugakan High School. I started off seated at the back of the class with all the as-.... slackers (it`s not that I couldn`t understand them, it`s that I wish I didn`t). I sat through a few courses in Japanese. I drew, folded paper, tried to explain that the word Charlottetown obstructed the map`s view of Cape Breton, etc. I made a few minor corrections to some of my Teachers` English (I was nice, don`t worry).
And near the end of the day, certainly the height, the new seating arrangement was made up with me beside all the girls. Yes, I know what my parents and Rotary members are thinking, but my reasons are better than that. I trust the girls more than the boy-band-wannabe guys. Also, I trust them more. And finally, as expected, they`re cuter than the guys.
At the end of the day was the opening ceremony for the second semester. I introduced myself to the ENTIRE school, in Japanese stating my name, age, nationality and length of stay. Shortly after that, school was over and I　went "home."

Still alive.

First Week

Over the next few days I learned hiragana and katakana (memorized), a few kanji and a few common phrases. As is my custom, I designed a kana (hiragana and katakana) cheat sheet. Unfortunately, while my host family is very nice and helpful, they mostly speak in full sentences of Engrish or Japanese, or they try to explain complex kanji that I won`t be able to use.

I`ve been to a video games store, and I`ll either buy Star Ocean: First Departure, or MGS: Portable Ops in Japanese. Also, Gavin, I`ve heard the rumours and if I can, I`ll sell off my 2000 go get a 3000, but don`t explain what this means if you understand. I`ve also been to a bookstore, and I`ll be buying some manga once I`m done reading Shogun.

The computers here aren`t what I was expecting. This one at least is a mediocre IBM with all its warranty stickers intact and all legitimate, legal, store bought software. There are a few wireless signals around here, but nothing strong enough to use my PSP. Granted though, their cell phones more than make up for their computers; televsion, GPS water resistance, and more.

As for the house I`m living in, it`s small, but comfortable. My room is very traditional with sliding doors and shoji. There isn`t enough room for furniture, so while I site on a wooden chair for supper, there`s a floor based half-seat thing in front of the television or you can sit on a thin cushion. My older host brother just got back from Canada, (we joke that he`s the foreign Canadain and I`m the alien, as the Japanese Customs Angecy apparenly calls me), and my younger host brother speaks very, very little English, but he`s good at video games and chess, he`s beaten me in European chess, and in shogi, where I was scared to learn that you can summon the dead to fight for you. And they have an upright in excellent condition that I have taken to playing.

So, by now some of you are probably what I`m up to. The answer to that is the same as always. Nothing. So far I`ve only been outside the leach of my host family`s sight and house for about two hours and that was entirely spent inside a private school being ushered around by teachers and students. When I asked about my curfew (fun fact, the French word for curfew also means cover fire), they didn`t seem to think I`d be going out that much (8:00PM, 20h00). I finished Shogun, a new record for my reading. I`ve played a few games of chess against my host brother (3, 1 for him). I`ve kept up to date on all my sites. I`ve watched a few movies. I`ll be making a grammar cheatsheet (not to mention, I`ll be making a phys12 cheatsheet for Burke`s class). I would go for a run, but I don`t think I`d be allowed out for that long. Well, hopefully I`ll get more freedom　once I get to school.

My Flight

My flight was average. I was bored from Sydney to Halifax, delayed on my flight to Toronto, so I had to run through Toronto`s security in order to catch my flight to Tokyo. Once in the air I shut the window to accomodate the mass of people trying to sleep, which included half of the people seated beside me. I watched Roman Holiday, Chariots of Fire, and Prince Caspian. I tried and failed to sleep. I missed the mountains, and the Pacific is kinda boring. After eleven of the twelve hours, the two people next to me were awake enough to let me use a stall. It would have been cool if I had gotten to see Tokyo, but all I got was fog and cloud cover. I met up with my host brother at Narita airport and on our next flight, he dealt with jetlag while I suffered from sleep deprivation. We landed and I got a warm welcome from my first and second host families. I got into the front passenger seat of a car, which seemed natural at the time, and I was driven "home".