まだ残ってる

Summer break is nearly over, but I'm still homesick, although it's definitely less intense than it was before. I've figured out that a big part of my feeling this way has to do with the fact that I'm living alone alone for the first time ever. I always had roommates in college. Even though it was just the three of us back at our little house in California (four, if you count the cat ;P), I was never really by myself. And my best friend lived a five-minute drive away from me. I feel very thankful and blessed to have made friends and gotten close to my relatives out here, but there's a sense of familiarity and the known that I've been really missing lately.

I had wanted to write a post about this for a while now and was inspired by my friend Manami to do it today. When I applied for the JET Program for the first time, one of the questions that I was asked during the interview was, "How will you react if a Japanese person comes up to you and assumes or insists that you're Japanese?" I can't remember my answer, but this situation happens all the damn time to the point of it pissing me off a bit. I know I have an American accent/incorrect intonations/say the wrong word when I speak Japanese. I also know that I don't look 100% Japanese. But people still assume, even after talking to me, that I'm freakin' Japanese just because I have an Asian face! A lot of the time I actually have to explicitly say that they need to speak slower since I'm a foreigner, but the reaction I get after that is usually, "Oh, really? But your face looks Japanese and you speak so well!" むかつく。And even after explaining my situation, my ethnic background, et cetera, some people still insist that I'm lying!

At the same time, I do admittedly enjoy blending in. I don't stick out as much as other gaijin. It's probably good practice for my studying of the language, and it's incredibly interesting to observe this strange country as an outsider while appearing to be an insider. But sometimes I wish I could look more hapa. I had thought that I appear less Japanese when I wear my contacts instead of my glasses (a lot of my foreign friends have told me this) but several recent events have proved this theory completely wrong, haha.

I'm still enjoying my time out here (I'll post a more positive entry about my adventures at some point, I swear!), and I know that whenever I move back to the US, I'll miss Japan like crazy. But for now, letting this all out for everyone to see is very cathartic and has eased those remaining feelings of homesickness a bit :)

Shocking

It has been ages since I last wrote in this thing. I've been pretty busy with work, but on top of that, I've been dealing with a lot of personal issues lately, thanks to culture shock. I had anticipated encountering it before coming here and I feel like I've been dealing with it relatively well, but it's still a persistent problem that's been taking a bit of a toll on my mental well-being.

Admittedly, I've been feeling pretty homesick lately. I have officially been in Japan for four months as of yesterday, and this is the longest (not to mention farthest) I have ever been away from home. My college was about a two hour drive from my hometown, so back when I was still a student, I'd go home quite often. Since I obviously can't do that now, thanks to the Internet, it's been really easy to keep in touch with my loved ones back in the States. Talking to them through email, Skype, and Facebook has been extremely helpful in easing my feelings of homesickness.

But to be honest, my biggest issue has actually been a language-related one. I studied Japanese in college in order to earn an East Asian Studies minor, but I unfortunately didn't get the chance to study abroad. I also didn't make any native-speaking friends until the end of my senior year, which is when my speaking ability noticeably improved. And then after finally graduating, I pretty much stopped studying. I've been hard on myself for not keeping up with my studies post-graduation especially now that I'm finally in Japan, but I'm trying to make up for that by practicing the language every chance I get.

However, I actually feel like my Japanese is even worse than it was when I first got here! It could be that I was so enamored by everything around me (honeymoon phase!) that I didn't realize all the mistakes I was making when using Japanese, but it could also be that the stress of my particular situation is frying my brain. Mixing both English and Japanese at work is definitely a challenge, and even my English has been coming out incorrectly from time to time, haha.

Summer vacation is just around the corner, so I'll have lots of time to properly relax and spend time with my friends and relatives out here. I know that things will get better soon....I just have to keep my head up and keep moving forward. I've fallen down numerous times before and survived, so what's a few more trips?

A Christmas Cake Birthday

My 25th birthday was on April 28, which fell on a Thursday this year. I had to go to work, but the following day was Emperor Showa's birthday, which is a holiday that marks the start of Golden Week in Japan. So I got the day after my birthday off, and that meant that I got to party hearty on the actual day I was born!

I was lucky enough to make some friends in Kumagaya just after moving here, so I celebrated with them. First, we went to eat dinner at a kaiten-zushi place in the area. I had gone to a similar place with my family in Tokyo, but the restaurant we went to in Kumagaya had Shinkansen sushi in addition to the expected conveyor belt. You can special order certain items on the menu and it'll be delivered to your table fresh on a mini bullet train! I also tried some interesting sushi I hadn't ever seen or tasted before :9 After dinner, we went to a karaoke box near the train station for all night karaoke. If you pay around US$30, you can get all-you-can-drink alcohol and sing karaoke until 5:00 AM. What a sweet deal! I think I ended up falling asleep before 5:00, but karaoke takes a lot out of you, especially with a bit of alcohol in your system. I still had an amazing time, and I can't thank my new friends enough for being with me on my Christmas cake birthday.

What the heck IS a Christmas cake birthday anyway? In Japan, it's tradition to eat something called a Christmas cake (it's basically a strawberry sponge cake) on Christmas Eve. According to Wikipedia, "A single woman over the age of 25 may be referred to in Japan as a [Christmas cake] based on the belief that, like a Christmas cake which becomes nearly worthless after Dec. 25, she is "shomikigen-gire" or past the "sell-by date." Apparently, because I'm 25 now, no man will ever want me ever again because I'm expired! I highly doubt this is actually the case, especially since the times are always a-changin', but if I'm wrong, then I guess I can't really get into the dating scene out here, haha :X

I wasn't done partying yet on Friday! Two of my good friends here in Japan have birthdays on April 30, so we decided to have a triple birthday party with our mutual friends on Showa Day. We met up at Tokorozawa in southern Saitama for more karaoke (yay!) and then dinner and drinks at an izakaya. A friend of ours surprised us all by getting a beautiful birthday cake with all three of our names on it, and at the end of dinner, everyone sang to us before we blew out the candles. After the delicious dinner and cake, we decided to go for drinks in a nearby park. It's legal to have open containers in public out here (there are even vending machines that sell beer!), so we took full advantage of that! The weather wasn't too warm or too cold, so it was really a nice evening to be hanging around outside. We called it a night at about 10:00 in order for all of us to catch our last trains home. It was a night to remember, and I'm so lucky to have such awesome friends out here!

I still had a little bit more partying to do on Saturday! Since one of my friends' real birthday was on the 30th (the other already had plans), we decided to do one last get together with a few folks in Ikebukuro (Tokyo). Some people were a bit hungover from the night before, and because ramen is a wonderful hangover food, we first met up for some delicious Ramen Jiro. Ramen Jiro is a tonkotsu (pork broth) ramen chain store with some of the most amazing soup I've ever tasted! It was also the first ramen I ever tried in Japan, and now I'm hooked! I'm dreaming of the day when I can actually finish a whole bowl down to the last drop. After Jiro, we went to an arcade for a while to play some video games and darts. I tried my hand at a UFO catcher but had no luck, as always. We later headed to a Mexican restaurant for some cocktails, and then ended the night with a round of bowling! I was never a fan of or any good at bowling, but I wanted to experience it in Japan. It was basically the same as in the US, except the alley was probably more sanitary overall. And there were a LOT of good bowlers in there! I think our little group felt a bit intimidated, but it was still a lot of fun. We parted ways shortly after bowling, and immediately after coming home to Kumagaya, I fell asleep.

I don't know if my Christmas cake self can handle this much partying next year, so I'm very glad that I had such a lengthy and wonderful celebration for my 25th year on this earth. I can't say it enough: thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes, and thank you to everyone who celebrated with me!

My journey here, part 3

Thanks for sticking with me! This'll be the last chapter of my getting-my-ass-to-Japan saga. I hope you enjoy reading it!

The plane from Hong Kong to Japan landed at about 8:30 PM. It took me about an hour and a half to get my luggage, go through customs, get my tourist visa validated, and find the right train to take out of the airport. My carry-on bags were about 20 pounds. My check-in luggage was probably about 90 pounds. I was basically walking around with another me dangling off of my body. It was, for lack of a better word, painful. When I finally found the station, because of the earthquake, I had to wait an hour for the train to arrive. I wasn't even sure if it was the right one, but since everyone else was getting on it, I did too.

But one of fears had come true -- I got lost on the trains in Japan. All I knew was that I needed to get to my hotel in Asakusa, which is in Tokyo, so I figured that most people would be going to Tokyo from Narita anyway. And they were. But my problem was that I didn't know where the wards and districts in Tokyo were in relation to one another. The first train I got on had its last stop in a place called Aoto. There was a train headed to Ueno leaving shortly from this station, but I had thought that I would be able to take a train straight to Asakusa with relative ease, since there were signs saying that the Toei Asakusa Line goes through this station. When the train to Ueno came, everyone waiting on the platform got on. One of the station attendants told me in Japanese that this was the last train for the evening. I told him I wanted to go to Asakusa, but he told me that the Toei Asakusa Line wasn't running anymore for the day. I was shocked and crestfallen. I wanted to cry again, but told myself to be strong. Everything's gonna be alright...I can just take a taxi to Asakusa! Sure, it would be a little expensive, but at this point, seeing as I had been traveling for more than 24 hours on just under 4 hours of sleep, money was no issue. But first, I really had to go to the bathroom. So before exiting the station to find a taxi, I walked into a bathroom and encountered my first ever squat toilet! I wanted to cry again. However, thanks to some pointers from my friend Chie, I managed to pee without much difficulty and without getting anything on my clothes. ありがとう、ちえちゃん！^_^

I found a cab easily and asked the driver how much it would cost to get to Asakusa. He told me it should be no more than ¥4000 (around US$40). I told him the name of my hotel, but he had not heard of it before. Thankfully, I had the phone number and address of my hotel written down so he ended up finding the directions on GPS with no problems. However, when we got to the place where the GPS told him to go to, my hotel was nowhere in sight. Japanese addresses are very different from addresses in the states. There are no street names or building numbers...you find a building based on its district, block, and what actual building number it is on that block. It turned out that we were just on the other side of the block that the hotel was on, so after giving them a ring, the driver found my hotel.

I went to the lobby with my 110 pounds of luggage, told the receptionist my name, and provided him with the confirmation number provided by my travel agency. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep. I didn't even care about showering or brushing my teeth...I was just about ready to pass out. But of course, there had to be one final obstacle for me.

The receptionist couldn't find my reservation. I didn't even know what to say. I had notified the hotel and my travel agency through email that my original flight to Japan was canceled and that I was getting there at a later time. But that shouldn't have affected the confirmation number I was given...wouldn't my reservation still be in the record books? Apparently not. "Do you want to pay for just one night here?" the receptionist asked me. "No, I don't," I responded, gritting my teeth and holding back tears. "I already paid for my week here more than a month ago. Why can't you find my reservation? If I show you the email I got through the travel agency, will that help?" The lobby had free wifi, so I brought out my laptop and found the email I received with my confirmation number and reservation information. The idiot receptionist was still having trouble finding my reservation even after I showed him the email, but finally, his coworker managed to piece everything together and figured out whatever problem there was. I got my room key, received a small apology from the douche-bag receptionist, slowly made my way to my room, plopped on my bed....

...and at long last, cried those many tears I had been holding back since leaving California.

The end! If you made it this far, brownie points for you :) See you next time!

My journey here, part 2

Continuing from where I left off last time, I was finally at my terminal and waiting to board my flight when I got a call from my best friend telling me about the earthquake in Japan. Memories of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake quickly filled my mind. I was only three then, but I still remember it so vividly. I ended up spending the rest of my time before boarding my flight looking up as much information about the earthquake online, texting/calling/Facebook-ing my worried friends and family who didn't know the details of my departure (some people had thought I was already in Japan), and feeling sick all over again. My 14+ hour flight to Hong Kong was filled with anxiety and uncertainty. I had no access to the news during my entire flight and I could barely sleep. The middle-aged man sitting next to me was super rude and obnoxious. A passenger who couldn't speak English got sick in the middle of the flight and the crew was helping him out right by my seat for a good hour or so. It was the longest flight I had ever been on and the experience couldn't have been more awful.

When we finally arrived in Hong Kong and I got off the plane, there was a woman standing right outside the exit holding a card with my name on it. She informed me that my flight to Haneda had been canceled, my new flight was leaving for Narita in the late afternoon, and I now had an eight hour layover in Hong Kong. The exhaustion and stress were getting to me really bad at that point, because I almost broke down crying right there in front of her. On the bright side of things, I got a free hotel room for a few hours, so I got to rest a bit (not really) and take a shower. I also got free brunch, so I filled up as much as I could on dim sum. But of course, I had to stand in a few wrong lines and get lost in the airport for an hour before finding my damn hotel.

By the time my plane to Japan was finally up in the air, I was beyond tired. The flight was only about four hours, but I got to sleep for most of it, and that helped me feel a little better. What awaited me in Japan, however, was another adventure altogether.

Part 3, the final chapter, is next! :)

My journey here, part 1

I took care of a lot of errands today on top of relaxing a bit, and since I'm free now, I thought I'd take some time to sit down and practice my English. One of my friends remarked the other day that my spoken English has been sounding "Japanese" lately (I've personally noticed that my spelling has been getting pretty bad), and I blame it mostly on using super simple English at work to communicate with a good number of my students and coworkers. I'm allowed to use Japanese at work especially with the really young kids and teachers who don't know any English, but I'm supposed to use mostly my mother tongue while on the job. Anyway....today, I wanted to write about my actual journey to Japan a little more than a month ago. I had mentioned before in an earlier post that it was a crazy adventure in itself, so here we go!

I had booked through a travel agency back in February for a flight going from San Francisco to Hong Kong and then from Hong Kong to Japan between March 11 and March 12. I had picked this particular itinerary since a) it was pretty cheap, b) it had the least amount of layover time/flight changes for its price, and c) it flew in to Haneda Airport instead of Narita, which is much closer to the center of Tokyo. Since it was going to be my first time in Japan and because I get lost pretty easily, I didn't trust myself enough to navigate the trains. On top of that, I figured I'd be pretty tired from traveling for 14+ hours, and that the extra two hours of traveling from Narita to Tokyo would only make things worse.

My flight to Hong Kong was a red-eye leaving at midnight, meaning I had to be at the airport on March 10. I'm a very last minute kind of girl, so of course, on the evening of March 10, I still had a bit of packing and getting ready to do. Right after my family and I finally left the house at around 8:00 and were on the freeway to SFO, I realized that I had forgotten a very important document at home! Thankfully, we hadn't gotten too far, so that only set us back about 15 minutes. Upon getting to the airport, however, I encountered another setback.

I had only purchased a one way ticket to Japan. My work visa had not gotten to me yet since I was given notice that it was received by company just a week before my departure. This meant that I had to enter Japan on a tourist visa and change my visa status after my arrival. This also meant that I needed to buy a refundable return ticket somewhere [anywhere] to qualify for a 90 day tourist visa. The cheapest ticket was $2000. I only have a debit card with less money in my checking than my savings, so I couldn't buy it on my own. My dad's credit card wouldn't work either. The airline could not split the ticket price between our two cards. I felt like crying...after all this anticipation, hard work, and preparation, would I not be able to go to Japan after all? Luckily, my awesome friend Will had come to SFO to say goodbye to me. He had a working credit card, and being the punctual fellow that he is, had gotten to the airport way before I did. My knight in blue jeans! I really owe him big time for this one, haha.

After finally checking in and getting my boarding pass, I was all set and ready to go. But first, I had to say goodbye to everyone. Will had told me that his dad had driven him to the airport, so I was expecting to see him waiting around the corner in front of security. However, I was shocked to see that instead of his dad, my Friday Night Family was there instead! There are nine of us, including me and Will, that hang out every Friday night in San Francisco for drunken antics and all night [video] gaming fun times. I had thought I had said my final farewell to them when we had our last Friday night together the week prior, so you can imagine my surprise when I saw their smiling faces there at the airport! I was so touched and still a little shaken up about the whole ticket fiasco that I almost started crying. But I didn't, and we took a couple of awesome Family Fotos before parting ways.

Taped-on chap was there in spirit. He was sick at home for a couple of weeks :(

Love these guys! ♥

I said goodbye to my dad and brother, went through security quickly and easily, and found my terminal without managing to get lost. Everything was going so smoothly, and I couldn't wait to board the plane! I turned on my laptop and was about to go on Facebook to help myself relax when my best friend Audrey called my cell phone. "I don't want to alarm you or anything," she said, "But there was just a 9.0 earthquake in Japan, and I thought I should let you know..."

This has gotten rather long, so stay tuned for part two!

わたしが誇るまち

Long time no blog, I know! I'm finally getting settled in to a place of my own and started work on April 8 so things have been pretty hectic. But I thought I'd disclose some information about my new job and living situation since I've got some time on my hands.

I found employment through a private ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) company called RCS after being put on the waitlist for the prestigious JET Program two years in a row. I have several friends working through this company as well and they have had nothing but good experiences! I'm currently working at two junior high schools and one elementary school in the city of Kumagaya in Saitama Prefecture, which is just about an hour north of Tokyo. My job is to aid the head teacher, a native Japanese, in teaching English as a foreign language to the students. In a big way, my job is to also act as a cultural bridge between the U.S. and Japan because in addition to teaching English, I am a "living resource" -- I give my students a glimpse of what life is like in a country with a culture different from their own. I finished up my first full week on the job on Friday, and although I was a little nervous during my first few classes, I think they all went pretty well! The kids are very cute and sweet, although a few are a bit rowdy, haha.

The city I live in, Kumagaya, is well-known as the hottest place to be in Japan over the summer. I love the heat, but I don't know if I can handle THIS sort of weather! Japan gets hot, but it also gets humid. My friends in other cities in Saitama have told me that it feels like you're melting 24/7 because you're constantly sweating. I don't know what only a few degrees of difference will actually make out here, but I guess I'll find out in a few months when summer rolls around. Other than the potential heat factor, my city is great! It's close enough to Tokyo so that I can see my friends and family pretty frequently, the people here are really nice, and there's plenty to do in the area since it's not considered totally inaka ("rural"). My apartment is small but cozy, and I have only a 10 second walk to a river and road lined with sakura trees!

I think I'm going to like living here :)