They’re Staring at Me Anyway So… Might as Well!

You don’t have to be in Japan long to realize there are not very many people in any particular area with very dark skin.  Call us what you want: Black, African-American, African, a person of African Descent, or my personal favorite, Chocolate; the fact of the matter is that there are not very many of us in Japan so I guess it’s  bit of a novelty to see someone walking down the street or riding the train looking about 15 shades darker than the average Japanese person.

I don’t have much of a problem with it, in fact, I’ve already become so used to it that on a day-long bike trip around Kyoto I saw a guy who looked African standing on a corner listening to his headphones, waiting for a light.  As we rode past him, I audibly said, “Wow!”  A friend heard me and asked about it… I couldn’t help but laugh as I explained “… now I know how the Japanese people feel!  I really was not expecting that!”  The only sort of issue I have is when people – adults – continue to stare.  I don’t mind the little kids so much, I understand, it might be a completely new experience for them; but for adults, it’s a little like they should have more “home training” than to openly gawk at a person sitting across from them on the train, especially in a city as big as Kobe, which in its history was the first Japanese city to open its ports to Western traders and even had an international community that dates back to the 1850s.  Basically, it should be old hat to see foreigners… dark foreigners even, in their city.

In Kyoto, random High School kids wanted a picture with us.

What I’m trying to say is that they stare.  A lot.  So I have learned that I might as well make the most of it and there’s a new sort of freedom that comes with that.  Back home in the States I have reservations because people only look if you’re being nutty and you feel embarrassed to act a fool and draw attention to yourself.  Here, they’re already staring so it’s like I can do nutty things because it’s not going to draw more attention than I already get on a regular basis… does that make sense?

For example; Friday I was with friends and I was bored of the usual hang-around-all-night-doing-nothing-until-we-have-to-run-for-the-last-train events so I grabbed a couple people and set out to make mischief.  What we really ended up getting into was hanging around several groups of dancers practicing routines in CenterGai after all the shops closed down.  We didn’t have proper speakers or anything, but the six of us danced around, sang songs to create the music to dance to, (unsuccessfully) tried to exchange business cards with any willing salaryman (good try, Andy!), rescued random mice in the JR Kobe train station, and us girls even consoled a love-lorn Japanese guy.

We got tons of stares but it didn’t matter because they’d stare at a mini-gang of gaijin anyway so we just had fun.  So much, in fact, that making mischief may just become a regular part of the weekend.  Bring it on.

STICKY POST: Photos

I have FINALLY gotten a camera (just as my camCORDER needs to be repaired >=/ ) so I have linked photo albums in the right sidebar of my blog.  It’s in the “Albums” section and there are several different albums, so enjoy!

At Least They Know The Important Parts

Got some mail today that was A] actually addressed to someone and 2] actually addressed to me!!!  How crazy!  Of course, it was a bill.

NTT is ready to get their money for phone services so I opened the envelope because I can’t remember if this is one of the services I set up to auto-deduct from my bank account when I first came. >_>  Back home I’m used to itemized usage so I wanted to see if I could figure out how much I was charged for calls back home but all I could see was kanjikanjikanji! I recognize the kanji for month (月), day (日), and even [phone] number (号); as well as the kanji that’s in my address: 神戸市北区#### (sorry, those last couple kanji don’t need to be on here for safety reasons…)

So I know some basics but couldn’t get the information I’d wanted.  Then I look up to two pink boxes that show an amount of yen (円) and a date at the end of the month.  My deductive reasoning says “hey, that’s probably how much I owe and when I owe it.”  And wouldn’t you know it, that’s that only part of the bill that has any English whatsoever….

Crazy.

NTT is about their money for sure.  Way to do it.

Oh yeah; and everyone is freaking out about the weather this weekend.  Either way I have to be at school on Saturday.  If it’s sunny, we have Sports Day; if it rains…. we have Thursday class schedule (which means I teach 5/6 periods), and then come back on Sunday for another go at Sports Day.  And did I mention there’s a Typhoon moving North from Okinawa so that could stir up some rain this week?  Yeah… here’s the week’s forecast. Keep your fingers crossed.

This Week

My 日本語 Really Needs Improvement…

Learning Japanese is tough, any sane person will admit that.  I know I have an advantage over many other beginners in knowing how to look up a kanji in three ways: by total stroke count, by radical + stroke count, and finally by pronunciation… now, the last one I don’t use so much because I don’t know how to say most of the Kanji… but if you give me a paper full of Japanese and my Kanji & Kana book (which has been EXTRMELY helpful, btw), I can work out the basic meaning of whatever you’re trying to inform me of… which is generally what I do everyday for a couple hours at school.

Right now most of the schools in my area are gearing up for Sports Day which ought to be pretty epic for me since I’ve never experienced this bit of Japanese culture; and if the daily practices are any indicator, this thing oughta be bananas.  I will definitely be packing my camcorder + tripod that day, for sure.  Since Sports Day is so “important” to the students’ education, every day the schedule is ridiculously modified so that the student body has a chance to practice together, as well as within their respective grade or sex; depending on what performance or activity they’re practicing.

As I mentioned, the schedule is changed every day… now, granted, they make annnouncements about the changes in the schedule every morning at the 8:30am staff meeting but, hey, it’s all Greek to me because when they get to talking, all I can pick out of the announcements at this point are the days of the week, times, and grade-and-class groupings.  Oh, and I learned 練習 “renshu” which means “practice” so….. yeah.  The only notification they offer up is a sheet of paper or two placed on my desk with the day’s schedule; so if I don’t have a class to teach or a lesson to plan, I start looking up Kanji and work out the basics, then I ask the teacher I team-teach with if what I scribbled down is correct… generally it’s good enough for me to get the point.

In terms of actually speaking and communicating with people…. I know what a lot of the basic particles mean or what their purpose is (ga, kara, made, wa, ni, o, etc…) but I get tongue-tied when it’s time to used them; so what good is that?  Right now if it’s more complicated than asking where the toilet is, how much something costs, or apologizing for not understanding what they’re saying (which I say a LOT -> “sumimasen, wakarimasen“) I am sort of left to pointing, gesturing, and using the few words I do know and hope to God they get the point.

For instance a few weeks back some of us went to an arcade after work… I bought an ice cream and before I was even 80% done with the thing, it fell off the stick and SPLAT! right onto the ground (and this was the third time with the same brand of ice cream, you’d think I would have learned my lesson by this point >.>)… I picked up the big hunk of wasted treat and chucked it in the garbage.  There was still a bit of liquid on the floor and I didn’t have a paper towel, so after wiping away a tear from once again dropping one of the most delicious ice creams I’d ever bought from a vending machine (and subsequently swearing to never buy that kind again) I walked over to the game counter where a bored-looking employee was and prepared myself for an attempt at successful communication.

Che was there and her Japanese is pretty decent.  She offered to help but I told her, “I got this… sorta” and she just watched as I stepped up to the counter and played charades:

ME:  Umm… sumimasen (excuse me)  uhh… アィス クリム (“aisu kurimu” -> ice cream) *gesturing ice cream licking motion + sound* SPLAT *gesturing ice cream toppling to the floor*… over there *points* gomen nasai (I’m sorry)

Swear, homeboy shook his head a little as he walked from behind the counter to clean the mess that the gaijin had created… my bad! As far as I’m concerned, Seventeen Ice (the creators of said irresistable frozen confection) has one of two options.

Grape-flavored Temptation

They either A] re-engineer the shape and design of their ice cream (hello!, FUNCTION over form, anyone?) or 2] stop making those things so delicious so I won’t feel the need to eat the push-pop-style tastiness!  Someone said I just need to learn how to eat ice cream faster, or bite it… but that goes against my philosophies of ice cream enjoyment!

Anyway, I’m tired (as you may be able to tell by this point) and I have to rest up for for Sports Day practice tomorrow. yay.

Shoot Up Zombies Day Out Alone

At Bryan’s a group of us are talking about movies. Zombies, clowns, Army of Darkness; the usual.  I’m explaining how Shoot ‘Em Up was an unbelievably unwatchable movie, namely because of the merry-go-round infant rescue scene.

Andy says, “Hey, that sorta reminds me of Baby’s Day Out” and I literally collapsed with laughter.  How random, Andy!  And then he says, “I’ve got it on DVD!”.  I fall backwards flat on the floor, tears of laughter streaming down my face.

Then he says, “Well, it was better than Home Alone, don’t you think?” and you’d have thought someone stopped a record because Grace and I, the only two cats from the States (out of 9 people in Bryan’s place) had to represent that there was no way Baby’s could beat Home Alone 1 or 2.

Andy, you are comedy and you don’t even know it!  Thanks for the laughs. =D

Epic Bug Battle – It Was Chemical Warfare

I like butterflies.  I like roley-poleys or pill bugs or potato bugs or whatever people decide to call them.  I am okay with dragonflies, even; but outside of that, all bets are pretty much off.

This morning I took an extra bag to work and left it on the floor under my desk alllllll day.  When I came home, I took a smaller, plastic bag out of it and set it on the counter, walked away.  I came back later to put my empty ramen bowl in the sink (I made my own dinner, btw… give me a pat on the back) and when I set the bowl down, out of the corner of my eye I saw a roach.

“afkljalkjpoagjpodj!!!!!” was my immediate reaction.  I screamed, backed away from the counter, and literally stood there for 2 solid minutes thinking “what am I going to do!??!?!”  Now, please realize, I’ve been in my place for almost a month.  It was absolutely spotless when I got in here and I try to keep it pretty well maintained.  There are tiny little bug bait things in every corner and I have only seen a bug in here one other time; and that was a tiny one, right next to the window, before my screens got put in, so it could have just flown in.  Also, I live on the fifth floor… I hear you get less bugs like that the higher up you are… who knows.  And another thing, anyone who knows me knows I do not play well with big bugs.  I am almost paralyzed with fear and getting closer than 10 feet will make me scream and get antsy and jittery.

Anyway.  As I stood in my kitchen, mouth agape in total shock, I couldn’t help but think of how leaving my bag on the floor under was a terribly bad idea.  I also wished I could call someone to come take care of the problem but seeing as how the only person that ever volunteered for that job is currently out of town, I knew I’d have to take care of this problem myself or else I would not be able to sleep tonight for fear that the giant monster bug would [a] plant eggs and/or babies all around my apartment; or [2] come and land on my face while I slept.  Neither of those were good options for me.

So I grabbed a can of what I assume to be mosquito spray, I can only guess from the pictures on the can.  I assumed that what works for one flying bug should work for another.  But I couldn’t just walk up on the bug and start spraying, so I grabbed my broom out of the closet, all the while thanking God that I bought the one with the plastic bristles.  I stood as far away from the counter as I could and one-by-one knocked the few items into the sink because I didn’t want that thing to up and start flying around because I would probably have run screaming right off the balcony or something.

As I knocked the last item into the sink, I just started going crazy with the mosquito spray.  ksssssssssssssss kssss ksssssss ksssssssssssssssssss I hope that stuff isn’t too poisonous because I sprayed so much that I’d at least have cancer by now.  As I was spraying, the l bugger crested the top of a tupperware containing edamame that I was sure as heck not going to eat now.  I screamed again and started smashing away with the broom.  Then immediately went back to spraying kssss kssssssssss.

I feared that the spray was just not direct enough… it was more of a mist, so I headed back to the closet to beef up my arsenal of weapons.  This was now chemical warfare.  Everything is in Japanese, mind you, so I’m just going with whatever pictures are on the bottle, or smelling for confirmation.  I grabbed some foamy stuff that you spray in the toilet, a blue bottle of something, and a little green bottle of what smelled like bleach.  I hurried back because I didn’t want it to come out of its stunned phase.  I immediately blasted the entire sink and all its contents with foamy toilet spray.  I mean, I pulled the trigger about 50 times.  I couldn’t see the bug so I was just going for full coverage.  When the sink looked nice and snowy, I opened the bleach and poured nearly half the bottle over every bowl and spoon and chopstick.  At this point, I was really glad that I had washed and put away the dishes earlier that day and only had dinner dishes in the sink.

After the bleach I waited a little bit for the chemicals to set in.  Came back to the computer tried unsuccessfully to watch some TV.  I still hadn’t seen the bug to confirm the kill, but with the smells of bleach and toilet foam filling my apartment, I figured it had to be dead.  It was me or the bug.  I finally went back to the sink and sprayed a few more times.  Then I saw it.

Belly up and motionless, I guess that meant I was successful and had scored a kill.  But I’ve heard stories about roaches being hard to kill… so I just kept spraying.  and spraying.  and spraying.  It’s been about 30 minutes since the epic battle came to an end… and the bug is still in the same spot, I checked.  But to be sure, I just sprayed it about 5 more times.

I feel like I can possibly go to sleep now without fear that it will rise from the grave and fly directly for my face; but I know I will not be able to eat in my kitchen for awhile… even if the place is SPOTLESS…. my God.  I have to give it time.

I.Hate.Bugs.