Love Letter to Japan

Dear Japan,

I am leaving tomorrow. アメリカへかえる。It has been a fabulous three and a half months, and I want to thank you for that. Actually – it’s more than that. I want to tell you how much I love you.

Because I do love you.

A lot.

A lot a lot.

The extent to which I adore you is ridiculous, and totally at odds with the short time I have known you. But you are amazing, and beautiful, and let me count the ways:

1. Your food is delicious. So good. These have probably been the best-fed months of my life. I don’t even really like US sushi, but Japanese sushi? Yes, please. Udon, tempura, nabe, onigiri, tempanyaki, sopa – so good. Back in the states, I watched this movie called, “The Ramen Girl.” I thought it was silly, because ramen was so not as good as they made it out to be. Only, it is. I just never knew it.
2. TIU. Favorite university in the world. And JSP is particularly fabulous. Can we talk about Japanese class for a second? Might be my most favorite class ever. Two students, three hours a day, four days a week. I would have to work not to learn. And my teachers were so amazing, so helpful, so great and kind and accepting of George and my propensity to burst into giggles for five minutes straight. More laughing than I have ever done in a class, without a doubt. Amazing. And the teachers – again – were nothing short of miracle-working saints. The elective classes, too, were great. Even when they were hard and confusing and made my brain recoil in shock – loved it.
3. Your public transportation system is great. I love the convenience of getting everywhere. I mean, it’s expensive and my number one expenditure, but – it’s great. I also love how I can get everywhere without a car. I love walking down your streets, mom and pop stores and yummy food everywhere. Crowded and tiny and so narrow that I would be terrified to drive on them but – but beautiful. (I am even over the staring my walking down said streets attract.)
4. TOKYO. Man, what a great city. I am so happy to know it, even if I’ve only scratched the surface. So big, so bright, so crowded. But so clean, so full, so fun, so everything. With parks and buildings and little shops and monster department stores and when I come back to you, I’ll be spending a lot of time there.
5. You are so clean. I love it. In the little towns and the big cities – you keep it next to Godliness.
6. You are also very weird, sometimes. Very. Very strange. But it is ok – it is part of your charm and I love that every now and then, you throw and some crazy something that has me doing a double take and laughing eyebrow raise.
7. Thanks to you, I met a fabulous group of people. JSP, for big fat instance, is the best study abroad group in the history of the world. We are different, we like different things, we are not the same – but do we all get along? Wonderfully. I had people to explore Tokyo with, to study with, to talk with, to jokingly cuss at, to hug, to laugh at: the list goes on.I also am deeply in love with my Japanese friends and Japanese in general. Japan, my love, you have managed to produce some of the very nicest people I have ever met. Touché. Where else do people you have met once get you presents because you’re leaving, or be your paparazzi and buy you dinner when you go on paper-making adventures? I have never been to a politer country, and when I get back to American and the grocery store clerks don’t smile and thank my repeatedly, I will remember you fondly. Finally, my host family. Oh, Japan, they were great. Sometimes, I look at my life and think to myself, “Well, dang. I am pretty positive I have done nothing worthy enough to deserve all this.” Because I have a host mom who makes me three meals a day, who hovers around my when I look tired, who lets me sit at her kitchen table and study like a mad men, who sprays me with perfume before I walk out the door and throws extra layers of clothing on me because, “Ma-ree-chan! It’s cold!” And I have host siblings who watch weird Japanese TV that are more like YouTube marathons than anything else and are hosted by cross dressers with me; who grab my fingers and say, “Ichi! Ni! San!” before jumping so I can fling them up.

Really, Japan. For your people: that is why I love you best.

-

And that’s not even it all. There are a thousand other reasons, little things that I cannot even think to name, but that I will miss when I go home. I am excited to be going home, thrilled to be heading back to where the people I love best are, but I guarantee you that I will cry like and akachan when I get on that plane tomorrow.

I thought you would be Pokémon and ninjas and MXC, but you were so much more.

So, once again, Japan: I love you.

This is not goodbye.

This is until next time.

hearts,

Marie

update

Roppongi, Tokyo all lit up.

At least I am freezing to death surrounded by beauty.

The host family and I take a picture after the Nihongo Happyoukai - a performance put on by the foreign exchange students to showcase out (theoretically) improved Japanese.

This was my Halloween costume. I bought it for approximately $3.50USD. It is one of the best investments I ever ever made.

___________________________________

I have gotten really horrible about updating this.

It is just very, very, very difficult to keep up with everything that has been going on! Every single day is a new series of adventures, and recording these adventures on a consistent basis would take away from adventuring time. Seeing as I am in my final month (WHAT?), I have been trying my very hardest to do/see as much as possible.

I have been doing pretty well.

Since I have last checked in, some new experiences include:

sleeping/lounging/eating/studying sprawled out on the floor, because the floor is where the heat it; writing and memorizing the script for Little Red Riding hood in Japanese; performing, with two friends, that same story - in Japanese; watching my classmates flex their acting muscles quite impressively as they performed their own Nihongo skits; going to beautiful, elegant museums in Tokyo; walking through streets that reek of class and money in (what I assume) are some of the richest neighborhoods in Tokyo; getting to see real, live, red/orange/yellow/green fall in all its glory; exploring the city and enjoying every minute, despite the bone-chilling rain; falling asleep on a stranger on the train and not realizing it until I was poked awake because he had to get off; acquiring a mastery of the train system that allows me to decide on a general direction or specific location I want to go and actually get there; meeting my family's foreign exchange student to-be; walking around Ueno Park and Ueno Zoo by myself and being able to take in the awesome all around (pygmy hippo! I WANT ONE); going to a Neko Cafe and playing with some of the cutest cats in the history of the world; somersaulting down a hill; seeing a light display that rivals in Zoo Lights; having long, gossipy conversations with the host mother; going to a salsa club in Roppongi and having the awesome Emily lead me through the steps in a semi-competent manner.

hello, hello

I know it's been awhile.

But, you see, being in love with life takes up a lot of time.

Kinkaku Shrine! Look how shiny.

View of Kyoto from Kiyomizu Temple.

We are ninjas. We are at a ninja restaurant. We go big or go home.

WHALE SHARK!

At the awesome aquarium in Osaka - that's the whale shark behind me!

Epic hike through hundreds of gates/tori in Kyoto.

Pretty picture, right?

My fellow exchange students in front of the gate in the water, enjoying a brief vacation/tour of Japan.

Approaching Miyajima, aka: Jurassic Park. (Not really even where they filmed it, but I swear it could have been.)

The famous Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo.

At the Lock-Up, a prison-themed restaurant.

Crea Mall at night.

The Kawagoe Matsuri (street festival) in all its crowded, float-filled nighttime glory.

(It's been awhile.)

But first, a little bit on

Because it's real, and it happens. And it happens like this:

As you can seen, I am now at the stage at which I am almost totally adapted, comfortable in the culture, and pretty much loving Japan for being Japan. That said,

TIU; walking to school in the morning; karaoke with my new Japanese friends (!!!!!!!); pretty-fying my phone; the 100 Yen Shop (where I bough said cellphone pretties); helping host mom peel and cut pears, because she compliments my knife skills every two seconds (!!); TIU's lunch buddy program - I've made awesome friends; my iPod, for being my calender/mobile Skype device/boredom breaker/host-sibling entertainer; Japanese class and five minutes of cracking up a day; finally settling into the rhythm of things; Skype conversations with much-missed friends; Japanese TV dramas (I am hardcore addicted!!!!!!!!)

And the list goes on and on an on.

Phone Photos

Canned whale. No, I am not kidding. Yes, I was disgusted. No, I did not buy/try it.

Teeny-tiny dried shrimp. They are sold like/as (??) candy. Or so host mom says.

Breakfast. Yummy yummy.

The inside of an anime porn shop. This picture is incredibly tame. I am scarred for life.

We had a contest to find the most insanely bizarre cover in this fan-manga (aka: doujinshi - look at me, whipping out the pop-culture terms left and right!) and this was the winner. Because that is a grey-haired man kissing a kid's chest. Pretty sure that's not even legal in the U.S.

Doujinshi.

My school work. It is in hiragana. I wrote it. Yes, yes, yes. You are impressed.

I've Been Here Awhile

So I meant to have a post that would pretty much just be about, “Hey, I’ve been in Japan for a month and here’s what I think!” But, because I am a silly girl that has had way too many tests, and spider bites (and, to be honest, who has a hard time keeping track of the days and weeks), this post instead will be the

It’s like this: I go to Japanese class for 12 hours per week and have homework every single day. For the last two weeks, I’ve had 2-3 tests each week. During Japanese class, we are only allowed to speak in Japanese. Actually, it’s been that way since the first day. Luckily, the sensei’s are very good at nonverbal communication – there is generally much gesturing and picture drawing on the board. Yet, despite the fact that my brain often literally hurts after class, I must admit to loving it. Why? Well, first of all, each sensei is wonderful. Secondly, it’s practically a private lesson: A Class (the bottom of the bottom) is only two students! Combine these two factors, and George and I pretty much have an awesome time. I would estimate that 10 minutes of each day are spent laughing so hard not one of the three of us in the room is capable of speech. Add all this awesome together, and you’ve got a Marie who has mastered two of the three Japanese writing systems (admittedly the easy ones), can go to the post office and tell the workers she wants to send her letters to America, can muddle through an introduction, and who can formulate sentences like the following:

わたしのねこはコーヒーがすきですから、わたしはコビンーでコーヒーやミルクおかいます。

Which, in case you were wondering, roughly translates to: Because my cat likes coffee, I went to the convince store and bought coffee, milk, etcetera. Be impressed.

Yes, I am pretending that three weeks in London made me a master of the tube system. Otherwise, it would have been even sillier of me to hop on a train approximately two hours from home with the conviction that I could end at Akehabara, the Electric City. I will not lie: There were a few moments of panic, because it definitely didn’t look like we were going in the right direction. But, luckily, I can read. Thus - even though the map was supremely confusing and seemed to be missing stations – I eventually found out where we were and surprise! that we were heading the right direction. From there, more reading, frantic searching followed and I even managed to make the right connection. And Akehabara was there. I was proud. I am proud. (Thank you, Warren Street!)

TIU is a really great university, first of all, and the JSP program is excellent. They hold our hands and make sure we’re ok and everything is pretty much fabulous. So it’s no real surprise that the lunch buddy program is great. See, a JSP (what I am) and a TIU (regular, Japanese student) sign up and have lunch together. There are English days and Japanese days. It makes awkward, openly grasping conversation starters entirely acceptable, forces you to practice a language, and makes you make friends! I like. And it has taught me that even if the shared language is only minimal (as in, my Japanese), it is possible to carry out a conversation. A little English + A little Japanese + wild gestures + phone translators (which my phone has! SCORE) = half an hour of genuine communication.

Or, at least, there are some very intellectual people that write about it and try to convince me they aren't forming theoretical frameworks where they really aren't any. Regardless, my pop culture class pretty much leaves me in awe every single class. (And, yes – so far, pop culture is all about anime and manga.) Sometimes, it breaks my heart because cartoons can be freaking sad. Sometimes, it ruins my childhood, because there are people who draw very inappropriate Star Wars cartoons. Sometimes, it ruins my life, because there are other people that draw inappropriate and NOT TRUE Harry Potter cartoons. Sometimes, it talks about gender roles and feminist theory and Harlequin romances and rewriting history and symbolism and escapism and all this crazy awesome stuff that blows my mind.

Now, this is not to say that I have not seen some seriously strange food. The Japanese eat pretty much anything out of the ocean. I have seen canned whale, dried squid, and other strange, fishy things that I wouldn’t ever want to eat. But my host mother is a fabulous cook, and I love love love my salmon/rice/veggie breakfasts and my assorted Japanese dinners. Ramen - the real, legitimate Japanese kind – is delicious. Octopus is yum. Sushi here is so much better its laughable. Milk Tea is the best drink ever. It is probably my largest expense. I am in love with convinee icecream – it’s sold as a cone wrapped around icecream with chocolate in the middle. Only, that’s a really bad description. But you can eat it as you walk down the street without getting messy at all and it is amazing. O-Bento lunches, prepared my host-mom, are better than lunch box lunches by a multiple of 10000000.

They just are. The difference is makes in actually feeling like you belong is amazing. You have someone to look out for you, ramble at, compare cultures with, play cards with, give you cold medicine, bring you extra blankets, do your laundry, cook you food, tell you you look like a supermodel, buy you crazy skirts, tell you about their day, text good morning, etcetera etcetera.

Really, people. It is.

Cell Phone Photo Diary

Japan as witnessed by my phone:

Tokyo Game Show / Akihabara

9/18/10

• Purple poofy skirt + Mesh shirt = Me = Maybe overkill.
• Spider bite.
• Game show in Tokyo. Enough said.
• Most crowded train ride of life. Sardines in a can is accurate to the t.
• Long, long wait to get into game show.
• Way, way more people than expected in Game Show.
• Light and cameras and crowds and games and noises and craziness.
• Dressed up people everywhere.
• Perverted men and scantily clad women in the same convention does not equal happy gaijiin.
• Stupidly brave decision to leave the Show, hop on a train, and hope to end up in Akihabara. The words, "Let's get lost!" definitely left my mouth at some point
• Success. Akihabera, hello hello.
• Electric City: Bright and crowded and the amount of staring directed in our direction was ridiculous to the point of annoying.
• More anime shops than can be described.
• Adventure into the mother of all adult shops. Emerge traumatized.
• AWESOME, SUCCESS.