Last Post

It's been about a month and a half since I left Japan, and this is probably my last post to this blog.

It's so strange being home. Sometimes I wonder whether or not the experience actually happened--did I just dream the entire thing? Did I really have that amazing experience? I've only got a language in my head and my souvenirs in my room to prove otherwise.

I do miss Japan. It's great to be home and all, and seeing my family is of course wonderful, but sometimes I'll look out the window and wonder if this is really where I'm supposed to be. There are corn fields on either side of me, and a skyline of mountains in my head. I'm a child of two cultures now, and as great as that is, it's also kind of disorienting at times.

I'm always going to remember Japan; I've made so many good friends, and made so many amazing memories. I definitely plan to return someday! But that's not important right now. What's important right now is moving forward, and focusing on the future. I hope that my experiences overseas will help me be successful in college as well!

However, this exchange would not have been possible without Rotary Youth Exchange. They were with me every step of the way, and I am so grateful for their support. The exchange has helped me grow in ways I never thought possible, and I hope that other kids will make the decision to go on exchange. It was probably the most important year of my life thus far.

Live long and prosper, guys. Peace out.

To Japan, with Love

It's been approximately nine months since I first landed in this beautiful country of mine. It seems like ages ago, and yet the time has been flying by so fast I can hardly believe it. There's definitely a sort of 'winding down' emotion going on--I'm making plans for the summer, I'm sending some stuff back to the house. There isn't a word in English that I can use to describe it. In Japanese I'd definitely say 'sabishi!', which I guess the closest translation is 'lonesome'. It's like sad, only more wistful. That probably sounds pretty strange, haha.

Anyway, all this talk of going home is indeed making me sad, so I'll talk about what I've been doing these past two weeks. 

About two weeks ago, I went to Kyoto with my host family and their niece, a sweet little girl named Remi. That's probably a nickname, but since I don't know her full name, I'll just stick with Remi. Kyoto was really amazing; it used to be the capital of Japan, and for a while was the home of the emperor. Because of this, there's a lot of really interesting buildings and history all over the place. We went to a temple called 'Kiyomizu', or pure water, that got us a really nice view of basically the entire city. 

Remi and I also got to ride in a rickshaw, which in Japanese is 'jinrikisha'. It's like a horse-drawn carriage, only a person pulls it instead of an animal. I was a little worried that the person who was giving us the ride would have a hard time, but it was mostly just walking around. Also, the ride was only fifteen minutes long, so that was pretty good. We also got some interesting history about the buildings around us. 

Then I went and got turned into meiko by a bunch of professional makeup artists. We rented a kimono, and I got to take a bunch of professional pictures. Here's a photo! 

The makeup was really cold, and I was having a hard time smiling, just because the lip stuff was kind of caked on. It was an interesting experience, though. 

Then we went shopping. If you ever come to Kyoto, I highly recommend you visit one of the street markets. They sell a lot of very interesting stuff, and while it's a little pricey, it's very cool. Probably because there are a lot of foreigners, but a lot of stereotypical 'Japanese' type items are being sold there. 

On the right is my host family's niece, Remi.

Then last week, I went to Osaka and then Kyoto again, because my host mom wanted to go to a tea ceremony, and then a festival. 

Here's the thing about tea ceremony: it's very interesting to watch. There's about a thousand different steps to one ceremony, and every motion, every word, is planned right down to the inflection. Even the people drinking the tea have a set role. It's a graceful art, and requires a level of patience that a lot of people simply do not have. 

That being said, because there are about a thousand different steps, there are about a thousand different ways to mess up. For example:

Before the tea ceremony began, my host mom handed me a little fan and said, go place the fan horizontally on the floor and bow in front of it before entering the room. 

I said okay, I can certainly do that. I placed the fan on the floor in front of me, and bowed. Score one for the American. 

No no no, said my host mom. Your fan is backwards. Your fan is upside down. You have failed your test.

So she didn't actually say you failed, but it was very strongly implied. 

Also, during the ceremony itself, you have to sit in a certain way, called seiza; it's where you fold your knees in front of you and tuck your feet under your butt. You've probably seen it in martial arts movies, or something along those lines. If you want to understand what I'm about to tell you, try sitting that way for more than five minutes. 

For me, after about five minutes of sitting seiza, I was starting to get an uncomfortable tingling in my toes. 

After about ten minutes, my feet were dead. 

After twenty, I was wondering if my legs were still attached and whether or not walking had been a very vivid hallucination. 

However the tea was delicious and the snacks were equally so. It was a very interesting experience of Japanese culture, so if you get the chance to watch a live tea ceremony, I recommend you do so. 

Then I went to Kyoto to watch the aomatsuri, or 'blue festival'. I'm not entirely sure what the festival was for, but it was very cool. A bunch of Shinto priests walked around decorated carts, horses, oxen and other such things. My host mom and I walked alongside the parade, and got some nice pictures. Well, my host mom got some nice pictures. My phone was out of battery and I had forgotten my camera, so I wasn't able to get any. 

Finally, I want to talk, once again, about the Japanese weather. 

A wise man once told me to pick a season to complain about, and stick with it. Well, I have picked my season. The season is called tsuyu, which means rainy season, and let me tell you something. I miss the cold. I want the cold to come back. 

It has consistently been around seventy to eighty degrees the entire week, which okay, is actually pretty nice. However, one thing that I failed to take into account was that it is rainy season and we are next to the ocean. There is so much humidity in the air, it feels as though I'm breathing more water than oxygen. At least with the cold I could just put on a few more layers and be okay. The humidity is disgusting; it feels as though I'm going to turn into a puddle of melty human sometimes. 

I suddenly see the wisdom of my host parents buying water bottles by the dozen. 

Catching Up Pt. 3 (Final)

Alright, here's the final installment of my 'catching up' series. I'm on break right now, so I have a lot of time at the moment, luckily.

At the beginning of April, I had to say goodbye to my second host family, which was actually a little traumatic. I'd really gotten attached to these people, so you know. There was much crying, hugging and all that jazz going on. I told them, though, that if they ever decided to travel to America they should stop by my place and say hi.

Anyway, my new host family is...well, they're kind of the 'quintessential Japanese' family that you think of when you imagine traditional Japanese. The house is an enormous, old building, and it's very traditional, in that it still has tatami mats on the floors, and uses sliding doors. There's a shrine in the kitchen dedicated to the grandmother's late husband, and a monk comes in every week and prays over it. I have a host mom, a host dad, and a host grandmother, and the father is a doctor at a private hospital nearby.

In other words: they have a lot of money and it is vaguely nerve-wracking.

However they're very nice people; the host mom does things like flower-arrangement and tea ceremony, and we go to a lot of cultural performances. Just the other day I went to a Japanese puppet show, though I have to warn you: Japanese puppet shows are really morbid. Someone always dies at the end for reasons I can't really parse out because it's a cultural thing.

(Also the food is also a little horrifying, because they keep feeding me whole fish. I of course eat the whole fish, because I am a Good Exchange Student and sometimes that means dying a little on the inside for cultural experiences. But still--veeeeery Japanese.)

I don't have any pictures of my house yet, but I'll post some later.

Also just...two days ago, was it? Anyway, two days ago my brass band had it's annual concert, where we played about an hour and a half of music. The pieces were pretty difficult, but we'd worked for ages on them, so we killed it. In case anyone is wondering: yes, my host family recorded the entire thing and is planning on giving me a copy. If anyone wants to see the concert, I'm planning on posting the videos...somewhere. I'll get back to you about that later. Just to warn you, there's a lot of talking in Japanese in the third section, so you might not understand that one as well.

Catching Up Pt. 2

Alright, so now that I've gone over essentially everything that happened in February, I'll talk about what happened in March. I'm kind of excited about March, because I went to my favorite type of concert: a Japanese drumming concert, called Taiko. It was at a local temple, and was performed as a play, called "Kiyohime and Anchin". But I'm getting ahead of myself.

(My favorite group, Kodo, is actually performing in a nearby city in early June, actually, and I'll be going to see them with a few exchange student friends! I'm super excited.)

So after I expressed an interest in going to see a Taiko performance, Rotary invited me and two other exchange students to a showing at a nearby temple. The Doujo that the Taiko drummers belong to isn't actually just for drumming; it's also a traditional dance studio, and we got to see some traditional dancing as well.

Anyway, the Taiko performance was about two...I hesitate to call them lovers, because while they were in love at one point, the man, Anchin, quickly fell out of love. However the woman, Kiyohime, was still in love, and was so angry when she figured out that he didn't have feelings for her anymore that she chased him basically across the whole of Japan before killing him. And apparently she turned into a giant serpent because she was just that angry. 

You know, I kind of understand where that story is coming from, though. After all, my mom also turns into a dragon when my dad does something stupid.

(Just kidding. I'm sorry mom.)

I researched this story after I saw the performance, I have to admit, just because it's really hard to convey turning into a dragon with just props. Also there was some speaking going on, but during Japanese story telling they tend to use old terms that even the modern Japanese don't know, so I was confused. At least the drumming was VERY COOL. There is something very satisfying about watching a bunch of fit people hit drums. Here's a video--I'm crossing my fingers that it'll work, but these things so rarely do.

Anyway, after that we watched a bunch of amateur performances by elementary schoolers, middle schoolers, and high schoolers. Very cute all around! This performance was also during cherry blossom time, so I got some nice pics of the temple. 

I found it very pleasing to ride through the mountains when there were sakura blossoms on the trees. Japan in the spring is the best. 

Anyway, continuing on. I got to see the semi-finals for the high school baseball league! You may be wondering, the semi-finals for the high school baseball league? Yes, that is correct. Baseball is a huge thing in Japan; there's a stadium in Osaka completely dedicated to the Spring and Summer league. The league is called 'Koshien', and I'm really disappointed that I'm missing this summer, because I really wanted to watch all of it.

Anyway, my host mom and I got to go because her coworker's child was on one of the teams, Chiben. Chiben won, and here's something I don't say often, but sometimes it's the truth: real Japan is sometimes a lot like anime Japan. Here's the story.

It was the bottom of the ninth, and the score was 0-1, with the other team in the lead. Chiben was having it's final at-bat, and here's the thing--no one actually had expected Chiben to win, because they'd been losing the entire game. 

But then one of the kids hit a huge one, and managed to get the two on base home. I think the stands literally exploded--everyone jumped to their feet and started screaming, and this guy who I'd only met that day reached out and grabbed my hand as we were all jumping and screaming. And then everyone started crying--Chiben was crying, my host mom was crying, I nearly started crying too out of solidarity. It was so much fun.

Anyway, so like I said in the last post--I had my aikido black belt test last week, and I passed! I am now a certified black belt! (Haha that reminds me--the other day in aikido I was paired up with this one friend of mine. And in aikido, you're trying to make people unbalance and fall over, essentially. So what I did was I pointed at his chest and said, "What's that?" When he looked down, I flicked his nose and pushed him over. Being a black belt really just gives you license to be eccentric.)

Language Learning

You know, I'm kind of in the mood to write, so I'm just going to make a short blog post about some experiences I've had with learning language. I've...packed a lot of language experience into the last seventh months, so I think I have a pretty broad view of it. My opinion is of course flawed, but I thought the perspective might be interesting.

One thing that I've really come to understand when learning a language, is the power of persistence and the grace to accept that you need to give up.

This is a very contradictory statement, and I'm aware of it. However it's true, and I'll explain why.

To learn a language, you need to be persistent; there is no substitute for an unrelenting drive. You can try to learn a language for years and years and never get a step farther if you don't practice. I remember when I was a kid, I used to go online and try and teach myself Russian or some other language, but I always got discouraged and gave up before I even tried. If I'd just pushed myself harder and practiced every day, instead of expecting to immediately be awesome at it, maybe by now I'd know two or even three languages.

However, on the other hand, you also need to know when to give up. I'm not saying give up on a language, or something silly like that. I'm just saying, there are somethings you're not going to understand at first, no matter how much you try at it. When I first started Japanese, there were some phrases that I would see and then spend hours looking up. I asked my Japanese friends, I asked my friends who were also learning Japanese. I looked it up in the dictionary, and online, where the results of my inquiries were mostly useless.

At a certain point in time, you need to accept that some expressions just aren't going to come to you until you have experience. I spend about a month looking up the phrase 'otoite', and then eventually learned that it doesn't really have an English equivalent, and there are just a lot of random things it relates to. It honestly still confuses me, but it's better than it was a month ago.

And that brings me round to my final point in language learning: there just isn't a substitute for complete language immersion. There just isn't. I've had a bit of an odd experience with learning Japanese; I would say that the first three months of my exchange I wasn't really immersed. My first host father was Canadian, so I spoke a lot of English at home, and because there were three Aussie exchange students at the school, I was pretty close with them and didn't have many Japanese friends. I was still speaking Japanese, but I would place the level of intensity right around a difficult college class, and not actually being in another country.

After I changed host families, and after the Australians returned--that's when my Japanese started to get really good. Which brings me around to the point that: if you are attempting to learn another language, I highly recommend that you watch movies in your chosen language. Read books. Get as much actual language exposure as you can, and if possible, travel to a country that speaks the language you're trying to learn. I know if you've tried to learn a language before, you've heard that about six billion times, but it's the truth.

Catching Up, Pt. 1

Okay guys, so I actually have a good reason not to have been posting ,besides the whole 'I was extremely busy' thing. I just recently moved in with a new host family, and they're...a little technology challenged, so I've been waiting almost a month to get my internet up. Sorry for the wait.

Because of this, though, I'll be doing a blog post a week, to catch up with all the stuff I missed. Forgive me if my English seems a little weird, as Japanese has started invading my brain and stealing my usual literary prowess. I shudder to think at the grades I'll be getting in my English class next year.

Anyway, to start: back in late February, I went with my host family to see a temple in Kyoto. I really wish I'd blogged about this earlier, just because the stuff in it was sooo cool. Here's the thing about this temple: right next to it there's the house of an old political leader, and most people can't go and look inside, just because it's considered a World Heritage Site. HOWEVER. Because the nephew of my host mom is a monk, we got a special VIP tour inside the house!! Along with some very, very interesting information.

This temple itself is called the Hongwan-ji Temple, and it is one of the many World Heritage sights in Japan (here's the thing about Japan, though--you could go a block away from your house in any direction and find a World Heritage sight). It's been considered one of the main schools of Buddhism for the last five hundred years, and is known as 'Nishi', which translates to West in English.

The house of the Political leader is directly next to it, and doesn't appear as impressive if one were to look at it. However it's got some really neat stuff, for example: as you walk along the wooden floor boards, you'll notice that there's an odd chirping noise. This is deliberate, because the floor was built so that the nails rub together whenever you step on them. Why is this useful?

Well in ancient Japan, people had a tendency to try an assassinate each other. An assassins job is made a lot more difficult if the floor they're walking on makes a sound every time one steps on it. This of course probably led to the whole legend of ninja walking on rooftops--because this 'Nightingale floor', as it is called, was built to prevent them from getting in the normal way.

Another interesting fact--the main visiting area is built like a hall, in that it's a wide, spacious area with pillars on either side, leading to the base of a tatami floor raised ever so slightly from the ground. I wish I could've taken a picture to give you a better image, but alas, pictures were not allowed. Anyway, when the political leader was visited, he did not actually sit facing his visitors; instead he sat to the right of them, perpendicular to the other person. I'm not sure if this had some sort of ritualistic meaning, but there you have it.

(I decided my explanation was too confusing, so I drew a picture)

However, right next to where the political leader would sit, there is a wall. However it is not, in fact, a wall, but a door, and sitting behind this door would be a retainer of samurai, ready to intervene in case someone decided that today was a good day to kill a leader. This led me to the conclusion that it was very hard to kill people who did not want to be killed in Japan.

Last of all, in this house there were pieces of carved wood hanging from the ceiling, placed between the massive pillars as decoration. Here's the thing: these giant slices of wood are really intricately carved, and depict beautiful scenes of nature or something of the sort. These giant slices of wood are also one piece of wood. Which means some person slaved away for hours on a tree to make it perfect. That takes dedication, people. If you ever come to Japan and see decorative wood hangings from the ceiling, chances are that it's one piece.

After that, we got to go to a movie park, and I got to sit on a horse and look cool. All in a days work.

Also, just to let you know, on Sunday I will be taking my black belt test for Aikido. Wish me luck!

Hiroshima and Marching Band

Hello everyone! I hope your winter is going well. Mine is hovering right around the 35-40 degree range, which makes me very happy. Mild winters are awesome.

First of all, before I continue, I'd like to thank my American Rotary for generously sending me a care package! Probably the best thing about it was the massive bag of chocolate, haha. Just kidding. The best thing I got were all the letters from the Elementary School kids! They're so adorable! I'm in the process of writing back--my host father even took one and decided to write his own response, so one lucky kid gets post from him.

Also, if any Rotary people back home are reading this--would it be okay for me to send some stuff back for the kids? Like some Japanese candy or something? I think they'd enjoy it a lot, especially since Japanese candy is tasty.

Also thank you to my own parents, for sending my giant sweaters to me--they're doing a great job at keeping the cold out.

Alright, now what have I been doing for the past month or so?

I'm actually going to talk about marching band first, because that'll take a shorter time.

So anyway: just yesterday, the brass band and I went to Amagasaki in Hyogo Prefecture to do our marching show! It was so awesome. I'd like to say I got a lot of pictures, but unfortunately cameras weren't allowed. Still though, it was so cool! The thing about Japanese marching is that you don't watch from above, so formations and stuff aren't so important. What's important is timing and sound, and let me tell you, these kids had it in spades.

Even an elementary school performed, and I was just about ready to give the color guard an Oscar. They reenacted some sort of gladiator thing, and the girl playing the gladiator looked very, very anguished. What a day.

Our group played Disney, but old school Disney, like the Seven Dwarves and When You Wish Upon a Star. We didn't do nearly as well as the other groups (I'd like to blame it on the 3.5 mile marathon we had to run the day before), but it was still a lot of fun. The drum line from this one school killed. And another group was entirely drum line, which also killed. All the schools killed. 

Alright, what else?

Well, like I said earlier, I went to Hiroshima with the other Rotary Exchange kids from my district. Actually it was a trip to Miyajima AND Hiroshima, for reasons I'm not entirely certain about.

So first we went to Miyajima by ferry, which I got some pretty cool pictures from.

I call this one boat aesthetic. I got many pictures of the boat aesthetic. Why? Me from a few weeks ago knows, but I sure don't.

Japan is so pretty. It's kind of hard to take a bad picture here, to tell you the truth.

After we landed, we walked around a little bit. Now I didn't realize that this was a thing, but apparently you can take pictures of and with deer on Miyajima. It was pretty interesting to watch. The photographer had about five deer hanging around him at any one time, and he'd occasionally give them a few snacks to placate their rabid hunger. What he'd do is he'd give the deer a few snacks right next to the photography area, and then run away really quickly before the deer got tired of chewing and take the picture. 

Pictured from top to bottom, left to right: Two parents I don't remember the names of (I'm very sorry), Chalita from Thailand, me, Mr. Mizusaki, Allison from America, Kaja (pronounced 'Kaya') from Germany, Yurna from Indonesia, and Misaki from America. 

Oh deer!

Heh. Also, see that red construct in the background? Apparently that's a pretty neat piece of history. I don't remember that piece of history right now since I don't have the pamphlet, but it still looks pretty cool. 

That's a really heavy backpack, by the way. In case you were wondering. 

Have some more pictures, just because!

After we finished taking pictures with the deer, we headed over to a shrine on the island. A little thing to know about shrines: at the entrance, there's a place where you wash your hands, for ritual purposes. You have to splash water on your hands in a special order, and at the end you can optionally wash out your mouth as well. 

I decided to give the mouth washing thing a try, but in the end wasn't sure whether or not to spit the water out. I ended up carrying it in my mouth for about ten minutes afterwards, just smiling and nodding at anyone who tried to talk to me. That was a bit embarrassing. 

But we got to look around the shrine, which made up for it. 

I wish I'd used a filter to make the red pop more, but too little too late and all.

Le squad. I'd like to turn your attention to my very comfortable green sweatpants. I was perhaps the strangest looking one there, but you can bet I was the warmest.

After that we ate lunch in Miyajima, and then headed back to go to Hiroshima.

Now here's the thing about Hiroshima: I'm not going to talk about it too much. I don't think what I say is going to do it any justice. If you get the chance to go to Japan, make sure Hiroshima is on your destination list. 

Hiroshima is a beautiful city; it's every picture a modern city, with streets that look like they were paved in the last year, and tall buildings everywhere. The people are young and vibrant, and the roads are bustling with cars and traffic. 

It's a beautiful city. And yet, there is something off about it.

One thing you come to notice about Japan: for all that it's a highly modernized, advanced country, there are touches of traditional Japan everywhere. If you know where to look, you can find traces of an era that isn't quite yet bygone.

As a fellow exchange student said: "Everything looks new."

And then you see it: an old, blackened building in the center of the city. It's the kind of place that would've looked impressive years ago, but now is soundly dwarfed by skyscrapers. That is all that is left of old Japan in Hiroshima, the "Genbaku Dome". It's a peace memorial dedicated to the memory of all that was destroyed from the nuclear bomb during World War II. 

Seriously, see it for yourself. Go to the museum, take the audio guide with you. I can guarantee that if you weren't against nuclear weapons beforehand, you will be. Of all the things that have existed in this great big beautiful world, the nuclear bomb should not have been one of them.