HappyOneYearAnniversary

              When we are not sure, we are alive. – Graham Greene.

Happy Anniversary!

ー周年[いっしゅうねん]おめでとう(isshunen omedetou）

As of today, July 30th, exactly one year ago, I flew into Kikuyo, Kumamoto from Tokyo and began my new life in Japan. I am remembering my wonder of a world full of fish and strange vegetables. A world where people with beautiful black hair live in paper boxes, contemplate nature and love cartoons. A yin-yang world of zen mysteries and contradiction, an ancient world of stoic warriors and a nascent world of technological exploits, living harmoniously together. Everything I dreamed was true and yet not; vastly different yet strangely similar.

I am recalling all the things that shocked me, and wondering if I would have been discouraged to know the amount of knowledge I would be forced to attain। Was there a time when I couldn’t read? Some of my misunderstandings came back to me when my brother Jake came to Japan for two weeks. I got on the bus, grabbed a ticket and in passing told him to grab a ticket too. He didn’t hear me, and was trying to pay a machine that gives out tickets. How could he not know that here in Japan, we pay after we leave the bus according to our ticket number? How else would we properly pay for the amount of time spent on the bus? Is that not common sense?

Being treated so well here, despite my social handicaps, makes me wonder about our collective treatment of immigrants in America. From what I know and have personally experienced, I have come to the conclusion that we have much to live up to in the Japanese treatment of foreigners.I have a tremendous amount of respect for immigrants in America, and immigrants anywhere for that matter. Many things that we take for granted (food, culture, protocol, societal norms, etc) aren’t what they seem and aren’t necessarily the best way of doing things. Something that I will take back with me is the knowledge that I don’t know what I don’t know, lest I think I am smarter or better than anyone else because they have an accent, can’t read, or have different ideas. When I meet an immigrant in the future, I will greet them as equals and wonder what cup of knowledge they brought with them, and how I can drink some of it.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance. – Confucius

My favorite snacktime meal

It's edamame hummus time, edamame hummus time! 

Edamame hummus!

Edamame hummus!

Edamame hummus with a cracker pack!

Edamame hummus!

Edamame hummus!

Edamame hummus with a cracker pack!

Edamame Hummus

2 cups edamame 
1 cup tofu
1 avocado
1 tsp salt
3 cloves of garlic
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3  cup lemon juice
dash cayenne

Blend for two minutes and enjoy with the above song!

Ｎｉｎｊａ Ｂａｒ

Enter the ninja bar and prepare to be surprised by stealthness you cannot even begin to imagine. We were escorted to a blind-enclosed alcove by a classic two-toed ninja clad server. The ninja server, when rolling up the blinds to our dinner hideaway, would shout NIN-NIN-NIN. When pulling the blinds down, would shout DOROM! I believe that those are the phenomime noises that blinds make when they are rolled up and down, but don’t take my word on that. The menu came in a scroll and our appetizer was ninja starーshaped bread, that came with dipping sauce. A ninja magician randomly showed up in our 3-person alcove to do a magic show which was actually pretty good. The best part of this ninja restaurant, was that the button to order more food was…drum roll please…hidden under the table. Wow, so apparently, this made the ninja atmosphere more ninja-y. A hidden button is sure to make you shiver in ninja glory. The server button is usually right on top of the table, so imagine the ninja-fying experience of having to touch the dirty underside of the table to find the hidden server button. To be honest, the thought of a hidden button being entertaining, is more entertaining than the button actually being hidden. OHH!

Ｄａｔｉｎｇ Ｐａｒｔｙ

Jake and I went to the volcano, blueberry picking on the mountain, etc etc, you know, the usual... yukata (kimono) party on a rooftop. On Jake’s last day, we went on a 50 person dating party, and surprise surprise, Jake was the life of the party, with girls screaming “telephone number, telephone number” and pretending like they were about to beat Jake’s girlfriend up. I have never EVER seen Japanese girls act like this before. It could have been the people that were in dating parties, or those particular girls, but it surprised me. One of the party organizers, drunk and entertained, “auctioned” off the seat beside me and would keep informal time, to ensure that anyone who wanted to speak to me got a chance. Opportunities for them to test out their English on a native speaker is apparently rare。

Ｈａｒｒｙ Ｐｏｔｔｅｒ Ｔｉｍｅｓ

Kate, being the Harry Potter fanatic that she is, reserved advance movie tickets at the local 7-11, for us to see The Half-Blood Prince. The $13 price tag was much lower than the usual $20, and the group reservation ensured that our assigned seats would be together. Japanese theaters have one rule: Absolute Silence. When I was little, my mom invented The Quiet Game, which was quite effective for 6 rowdy children, the quietest kid for the longest amount of time wins. That audience took the Quiet Game, added a Japanese twist, and took Silence to the 5th power. People chew the proverbial popcorn cud slowly and deliberately, with a massive amount of attention paid to not making any crunch noises. There is no way that anyone can finish a bag of popcorn in just two hours chewing time. Straw sucking is slow and painful, like someone with strep throat. When we entered the pin-drop silent theater, I was to be honest, slightly thrilled at the prospect of skipping stones across the placid sea of movie-goers. We show up, scream, laugh, giggle, jump and react in the way a movie was meant to be enjoyed, and in the end, we clap. Our 6 person clap was promptly drowned by the vast sea of silence. But we were still proud of our stone skipping. We left the theater and my Japanese friends were laughing as they came up to greet us. They said that although the theater was dark, they knew where we were at all times. They could have closed their eyes and found us using sonar waves. I don’t know how it’s possible not to react if something pops out at you; maybe that’s why Japanese movies are the scariest in the world. They need to be in order to elicit some sort of reaction.

Smartfm

I would like to officially thank www.smart.fm for helping me survive 8 long grueling hours a day without classes. Schools are on summer vacation, and I am at the town office once more, waiting for school to begin again on August 27th. Kate leaves on Sunday, so soon it will be just me in the town office for hours and hours of studying/preparing for classes and presentation/being on a computer. Smart.fm, you are my reason for being awake, giving me everything I need to be sufficiently entertained for the day. You are coffee in a digital world.

Ｊａｋｅ ｓｕｒｐｒｉｓｅ

Top 3 biggest surprises to Jake (that I had totally forgotten was surprising to me):
1) Women sitting in the backseats. The backseat left hand side behind the driver’s seat is a place of honor and you’ll often see women and their babies sitting in the backseat with the husbands driving in the front.
2) Men looking at cartoon porn in the morning before work, there is a surprising number of guys in convenience stores, getting their morning boost before heading off to work. If I saw anyone that I worked with there…well I haven’t.
3) The minimalist amount of water (shotglass size) that we get served in restaurants, which has led me to carry around my Nalgene bottle, wherever I go, if I even leave my apartment, this bottle comes with me. I am constantly thirsty here.