Zach's Adventures in Japan

Japan: Day 42 – July 26

27 Jul 2010 1 Comment

by Zach 「ザック」 in Japan Week 6

NIHONGO OF THE DAY:
saigo hi – last day ;_;

Today is my last full day in Japan with my host family.

It’s pretty sad, but it’s also been a blast so it’s not all bad. Plus, maybe one day they’ll come visit us in America or if I go back to Japan, I can meet them again.

I woke up, watched Ikuei school another team 28-1 in baseball (it was ridiculous, and it was also a really good school that was playing against Ikuei too – they’re just extremely good), ate lunch and relaxed.

Yuya had school, Kenji had work, and Ayane was swimming with her friends, so it was just me and Hitomi. We didn’t have much to do, and Hitomi told me she had to go to the bank before it closed (do banks in America close at 3:00PM too? haha), so I was all alone. Oh well, I just watched TV and relaxed. Plus, it was worth it, because when Hitomi came back she had Mr. Donut’s. Delicious.

For dinner, Ayane, Yuya, Hitomi, and I had ramen at a real fancy restaurant thing. It was pretty good, but spicy! I’m not sure what was in it but it was throat-burning. But delicious.

After that we returned home, I packed up all my stuff (*sniff* I promise I won’t cry), and got myself ready for departing tomorrow.

I’m going to be leaving the Shimokuni house at 9AM on Tuesday, and I will arrive in America at 9AM on Tuesday. MAGIC!

I’ll miss my host family, they’re truly kind and nice people. Kenji is really funny. Yuya has this subtle sense of humor that one day people will discover and he will be really popular. Ayane is loud and boisterous and peppy and likes a ton of things that Sara likes. Hitomi is very kind, unselfish, and always does all my chores so I’m super grateful to her.

Mata aimashou!

Japan: Day 41 – July 25

27 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment

by Zach 「ザック」 in Japan Week 6

NIHONGO OF THE DAY:
Daiko – taxi service for people who have drank alcohol and need to get home

Ah. It’s been really fun, but sadly my trip is coming to an end soon.

Today, we tried to stay low-key and relax because we were all tired from the past week of doing stuff. So I stayed home, had cup noodles for lunch, and talked to Ayane and the other family members a little. I went online, I watched TV, and relaxed.

At 5PM, some friends of Ayane and their mothers came to our house for a barbecue. The first thing they said to me when I went downstairs (the mothers)? “IKEMEN DESU!” Jeez.

Anyway, we prepared the side yard, brought out the food, and had a barbecue. The two moms couldn’t speak English so they spoke in Japanese to me – I understood some of it. I tried to answer their questions as best I could.

While eating we did miscellaneous things, like practicing English with Ayane and her two friends + the little brother of one of the friends, doing Japanese tonguetwisters (I’m pretty good at them), doing random Japanese games like Janken (rock paper scissors) and other fun things.  It was just a good time.

At about 10:00 the moms had to leave because the Daiko taxi service came. Daiko is basically like this: You drive your own car to the party or destination, then when you want to return home when you are slightly drunk, the Daiko car comes to the party. The Daiko car has two people in it. One of those people gets out and drives your family back to your house, and the other person drives the Daiko car behind. Then when you get back home, the two go back in the Daiko car together and back to their agency or whatever. It’s pretty interesting, not sure if the US has something like that.

After that I was exhausted so I watched TV, took a shower, ate ice cream, and went to bed.

Japan: Day 40 – July 24

25 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment

by Zach 「ザック」 in Japan Week 6

NIHONGO OF THE DAY:
Yutte – speak

Today was really low-key. I relaxed at home until lunch time. We went to Sendai Station and got some food – I had tempura udon. Then we wen shopping for some omiyage for a few hours, looked around the station for interesting things, tried lots of free food, then came home. I took a nap, watched TV, and relaxed.

For dinner we had Gyoza and salmon. We talked about some things – whenever Kenji is around dinner is always a lively discussion.

After dinner I relaxed some more and enjoyed myself. I may as well… only a couple more days left!

Sorry for the uninteresting post, but today was a pretty laid back day

Japan: Day 39 – July 23

24 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment

by Zach 「ザック」 in Japan Week 6

NIHONGO OF THE DAY:
mata aimashou – let’s meet again!

Today was my last day going to Shukoh Ikuei school. In the morning, I wrote up an English speech to say, and at lunch I let Yuya translate it to Japanese for me since it was a bit too hard for my level.

In my afternoon classes I practiced the Japanese and filled out an evaluation form about how felt my stay was and whatnot. It was pretty normal of a day, except at lunchtime it got out that it was my last day and suddenly everyone decided to start caring about me (great on the last day) so I got a bunch of people approaching me and talking to me. Kazuma about the touhou music, that one guy with the hair who asked me about sports all the time, the one handshaking guy, Saki and her crying friend, the trumpet guy, the cheerleader leg brace girl, etcetera. So it was a bit more fun than usual to at least talk to some people.

One interesting bit was in Japanese Social Studies class, we pushed our desks together into groups. I was with Yuya and a couple other people and they were discussing the age limits for things like voting, drinking, driving, etcetera. They had to think of some sort of argument and present to the class; should these things be available at 18 years old (USA style) or 20 years old (Japan style). They asked me what I thought and I said 18 since that’s what I’m used to, except Yuya mentioned that in the US you can get a driver’s license at 16 and everyone went crazy. They asked me if I had one but I had to disappoint them with a “no.” Hey mom, if you’re reading this, things could have been different. I could have said “yes” and they could have praised me as a God (well, okay I’m exaggerating but still it would have been cool, hint hint).  My argument was that at 18 you leave the house usually so that’s when you should get your full rights, except drinking at 21 because it can screw up your brain so you might as well wait until your brain is fully developed before you start messing with it.

One girl asked me, “how old do you have to be to drink in the USA?” I said 21, and she replied, “Demo sa, minna nonde iru ne.” which roughly translates to, “yeah, but everyone drinks anyways, right?” Those silly Japanese have us Americans all figured out… but actually it’s pretty true, how in America it’s really easy for high schoolers and even easier for college students to drink, so I guess her joke was true.

At the end of the day I made my speech and the people were of course all impressed at the Japanese part even though I didn’t write it and it was just Yuya’s translations yadda yadda. We took a class picture and a bunch of girls decided to ask me for my email address even though they didn’t speak English and I barely speak Japanese but it’s all in good spirit. I said bye to a bunch of people and departed!

I took my evaluation and the pay-as-you-go cell phone Elydah gave me to Ayelet to deal with, got on the bus and said goodbye to Ikuei for the last time.

When I got home I ate unagi, watched Totoro in Japanese, and tried to relax in this heat. 3 more days…

Japan: Day 38 – July 22

24 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment

by Zach 「ザック」 in Japan Week 6

NIHONGO OF THE DAY:
gyutongu – Cow Tongue

I woke up early from heat. It’s getting really, really hot now that rainy season is over. I’m glad I’m not in Tokyo, jeez. It must be terrible there.

After an hour, Kenji, Ayane, and I departed. I was really excited to see Sony Sendai Headquarters!

Right before we were going to drop off Ayane at school she realized she had no classes in the morning so she got out of the car and walked back home, haha.

Anyway, Kenji drove me for about an hour to the Sony HQ in Takajo City (near Sendai, where Ikuei is). My first impression of it was that it looked way different than SCEA. This is because it’s a manufacturing plant and not a business development headquarters, so there was lots more buildings but less highrises.

We got out of the car and went into one of the office buildings quickly to escape the heat. Kenji took me to the top floor where he showed me a huge cafe. It was really elaborate, a huge cafeteria room with lots of chairs and a few restaurants and a really nice view of the city since the walls were glass. Kenji ordered us some drinks with his ID card – I got a coke and he got tomato juice, but what’s more interesting is the fact that he could buy stuff with his ID. More on that later, though.

After that we went down one floor and waited at his office room until the tour guide lady came and found us. She seemed to speak some English, but she clearly wasn’t fluent or even as good as Kenji (who admittedly is pretty good) so she would speak to me in a hybrid of Japanese and English and Kenji helped me understand things I didn’t get.

She took us to a theater room where I found a seat with a really cool Sony pen (score!) so I sat there and got ready to watch the video.

It wasn’t really the most exciting thing, but I learned about the history of the Sendai plant and what it’s purpose is; basically, it’s 60 or so years old and is the leading manufacturing plant of magnetic tape for tapes and cassettes and optical media like blu-rays. Before you ask, yes cassettes and tapes are still used often because apparently they are quite reliable and have a certain picture that TV broadcast stations and professional recorders need or something. Either way the bottom line is that the tapes and cassettes are still in large demand, just not on the consumer level. That’s where optical media comes in, like DVD and now, blu-ray. So that’s the plant’s purpose – creating the media.

After the movie I got to see the exciting part – the Sony Showroom! But first I had to look at the wall of history and manufacturing info of magnetic tape and blu-rays (whopee!), and I also talked to the tour guide lady a little. Apparently she went to Riverside on an exchange for a year and loves San Francisco, but then again who doesn’t? After talking to her for a bit, I got to the really fun part.

Basically on the showroom I got to see a bunch of new Sony Tech but I’ll highlight the best stuff;

3DTV – This is crazy! It’s way better than the 3D Avatar movie I saw because of one main reason: the Avatar movie had weird 3D coming -at- me, like a popup book or something. This 3D was more like going into the screen, like real depth! It was really cool and now normal TV is boring

OLED – I never saw OLED before so I didn’t know what the big deal was (Sorry dad)… until now. I saw a small 10″ OLED screen (it costs $400 bucks for that small thing…) and it was the most beautiful picture I’ve seen on a screen to date! Apparently this is because there’s no backlight and the OLEDs emit all the light themselves, which means you get real true blacks (unlike LCD) which makes the picture look even more real! Also because there’s no backlight, it can be really thin. The screen I saw was 3 millimeters thick.

ROLLY – a weird egg-shaped device with seemingly only one button. Click it once, the egg ‘hatches’ and music beings to play, streaming from your PS3 or PC. Click it twice, and the egg begins to dance, pivoting on it’s little track (akin to those rollers you might find on a war-tank except cutely put on an egg shaped stereo). I was wholly unimpressed until I realized there was more than meets the eye. The ‘track’ actually functions as buttons, responding to the way you roll it. Want to skip to the next song? Roll forward. Wanna reset the current song? Roll backwards. Want to increase volume? Pivot right. Decrease, pivot left. Etcetera. Despite this I wasn’t all the impressed, it reminded me of those horrendous iPod dog things we have in our house (why do we have those my god) but Kenji was really interested and said he wanted to buy one .

After seeing some other things in the showroom I was taken to see the manufacturing of Blu-ray disks and magnetic tape, which was fun, and then the tour was over.

Kenji took me to Tagajo castle ruins. Tagajo is a city based around an ancient castle that used to exist 1300 years ago. I got to see the ruins (despite the insane heat) even though it was, as implied by the noun ‘ruins’, mostly just rocks and grass, it felt strangely spiritual. Like a link to the past. You don’t see 1500 year old history in America, so it’s interesting.

After that, the strangest part of my day. Lunch.

Kenji had been talking to me about food the other day, and using his subtle Japanese ways he talked about how Americans don’t ‘challenge’ themselves’ enough when they eat, which basically meant “I’m going to ask you to eat something weird so please say yes” (I’m an expert at Japanese subtlety now). That strange thing was cow tongue.

Cow tongue seems strange at first but in reality, it’s not all that different from the rest of the animal. I went to a restaurant whose whole menu is based around the cow tongue since it’s a delicacy in Sendai. When it came, I was surprised – it looked like any other beef cut, albeit marinated in some sort of sauce or something. “Itadakimasu” (Let’s eat!), and that was that. I ate it, it was delicious, it tasted like regular beef but a bit more chewy. I finished the whole plate. I’m glad I tried it – my host family was a little worried I wouldn’t like it but all’s well that ends well.

After that, Kenji took me back to Ikuei where I diddled the rest of my day away, enjoying physics and econ in Japanese.

Then I came home, had a low-key dinner, took a much needed shower, and went to bed.

Japan: Day 37 – July 21

22 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment

by Zach 「ザック」 in Japan Week 6

NIHONGO OF THE DAY:
iregire (I think) – out of stock
shyukuriimu – Cream Puffs

I woke up and went to school. I didn’t have anything to do (as typical) in class so I wrote up some drafts for my postcard to grandparents and a draft speech for my last day of school on Friday.

Overall this day was boring. Very,very boring.

When I got home though, I showed my draft postcard to my host family and they were pretty impressed so they helped me fix it up. I practiced a couple times then wrote it on the real card and didn’t make any mistakes… until I got to the envelope. On the return address I began writing “217 Aber-” when I realized it was the wrong address. I was so nervous I’d making a writing error that I wrote the wrong address. It’s okay though, I just whited it out and wrote the real address.

I was pretty proud to seal it and Kenji told me three things.

1) Tomorrow I’m going with him to Sony in the morning for a tour of the “Sony Sendai Technology Center”
2)  For lunch after that, I’m going to eat cow tongue
3) I can mail my postcard at that time too

I wasn’t so sure how to react to that, a mixture of excitement, fear, and anticipation (especially to that second bit) so I just took a shower and went to bed.

Japan: Day 36 – July 20

22 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment

by Zach 「ザック」 in Japan Week 6

NIHONGO OF THE DAY:
Makudonarudo – guess, I dare you.

I woke up, relaxed at home because it was an off day for school for Yuya because of the NYSE performance. Hey, I’ll take it, any day where I don’t have to go to Ikuei is a good day . Just kidding (or am I?)!

For lunch, we went to McDonald’s (as promised). I had a Teriyaki burger. It made me feel just as sick as the burgers from McDonald’s in America do, so I guess it was at least an interesting change in pace. After that I went shopping with Hitomi in the mall while Yuya got a haircut.

One interesting tidbit. Might just be my area, but since I’m in a suburb of Japan it’s very American in that there isn’t really a downtown to Tomiya city – it’s all residential. There’s a few convenience stores and clinics here and there, but almost everything you’d need from gas to groceries to movie theater to shopping mall to food court to haircuts to basically everything is in the two big malls adjacent to each other, called Aeon and Jusco (the leading mall brands, I’ve observed). So if you want to get anything done here, you’re going to be going there. That’s where I saw Allietti, that’s where I’m talking about when I say “grocery-shopping” and unless I specify a special place, it’s where I’m talking about when I say “doing fun activities” in general.

After that we went home and I relaxed and watched Japanese TV. Otherwise I didn’t do much, I just enjoyed myself and talked to my host family.

Oh, and it’s the start of week six… my impending return is coming close… am I happy or sad?

Japan: Day 35 – July 19

19 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment

by Zach 「ザック」 in Japan Week 5

NIHONGO OF THE DAY:
Jibun – yourself (make it yourself, etc)

I woke up really, really late today, but it was okay because we didn’t have many plans. It was before lunch at least so that was good. The whole family had lunch together and it was this delicious baguette with maybe eggs and some small pieces of meat on the baguette slices, but I have no idea what it’s called. It was good though.

After that, Ayane told me that Allietti, the new Miyazaki movie, came out today, so she wanted to see it. Sara had mentioned it to me in an email so I didn’t want to miss a chance to rub it in her face when I get home, so of course I agreed to go. We got two tickets (Hitomi didn’t watch it with us, she just drove us) and I went and saw it.

My first impression was that I was able to understand the plot almost completely, and I could understand some of the dialogue. I was really surprised at myself and how much I understood. It was really beneficial to see because not only did I learn a couple new things, but I learned a lot about how to use the words I already know (for instance, I knew “Atatakai” is hot drink and “Miruku” is milk, but when you combine them it means warm milk, that’s a very basic example and I learned much more than that but I don’t want to write a novel on Japanese on my blog) and utilize them correctly in speech. So that was really good.

My second impression was that the movie was lightyears better than Ponyo, but is probably not one of my favorite Miyazaki movies. I’d rank it middle tier. It’s quite good, but Miyazaki has done some amazing things so it’s hard to compare it to the likes of Spirited Away or Howl’s Moving Castle.

The movie was quite long but after it was done, Ayane and I went to the mall and looked around for some things to buy as souvenirs.  Then Hitomi picked us up and we went home.

For dinner, we had make-your-own (Jibun) Temaki (hand rolls, aka, we made it with our hands). It was really delicious and I’m getting used to the taste of raw fish. Raw salmon and tuna is delicious.

More importantly though I had a really good conversation with Hitomi, Kenji, and Yuya about lots of things ranging from how my school system work to learning Japanese to the types of food we like to Chinese culture stuff to all sorts of other things. It was truly a fun conversation and I really enjoyed talking to them and getting to know them better. I really like my host family and the fact that they know English. Of course, I practice Japanese a LOT and they speak to me in Japanese a LOT but being able to talk in English about some things is great too.

After that, I took a shower, relaxed, and went to bed!

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that today was a national holiday so there was no school, and tomorrow there’s also no school because of the performance on Sunday, so that’s why I had free time.

Japan: Day 34 – July 18

19 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment

by Zach 「ザック」 in Japan Week 5

NIHONGO OF THE DAY:
Sumimasen – excuse me tall german tourists please get out of the view (that’s my interpretation)

Today was  an interesting day. I woke up late, of course because I always wake up late but that’s besides the point. I had a hybrid breakfast and lunch and then we packed up and drove over to the New York Symphony Ensemble performance. I met up with the Shukoh Ikuei kids and we all sat down in the theater together. I couldn’t seem to find Yuya so I sat with some of his friends.

The first half of the performance was to be brutally honest, utterly boring. The songs were really bland and I don’t know why anyone would choose to play those. Nevertheless I didn’t sleep because I didn’t want anyone to think I was being disrespectful or something. At intermission, I had no one to talk to so I kind of sat around and pretended to be part of the group, which wasn’t too bad. I was reading some of the English stuff in the program book they gave us.

The second half was much more interesting. First of all, some Ikuei kids went up with the symphony and played what I think were Mandolins together with the NYSE.  It was pretty interesting to watch. Then, to my surprise, I saw some Ikuei kids with real instruments going up to sit with the NYSE as the mandolin kids left. Yuya was among them with his violin! They played some songs together and I was really impressed that Yuya got to go play with them on stage. He must be really good at violin. He got to shake the conductors hand too (the conductor shook hands with all the students that were in the front).

I was really impressed and enjoyed the rest of it which strangely included “We Are the World” by Michael Jackson – I’m not really sure about the music selection in context to the type of instruments but it was fun to hear nonetheless.

After it ended I, along with the other Shukoh boys, helped take down all the set and stage stuff, then I went out and Hitomi and Kenji took me home. All in all it was pretty interesting to see the performance but I wish they had played some better songs.

On the way home we got a little bit of food and I had one of the best fried chicken things I’ve ever eaten from a 7-11 in Japan. Not really sure I was ever expecting myself to say that but it’s true, it was delicious (maybe I was just hungry?).

When we got home, Kenji told me that we were going to go to  see Hanabi, fireworks. In Japan, fireworks are used on many holidays and are pretty significant unlike in America where it’s usually only Fourth of July and maybe New Years. In Japan, Kenji told me you may see fireworks every week depending on what time of the year it is, because they signify celebration and whatnot.

Anyway, we went to a small city that I forget the name of (it’s adjacent to the one that Ikeui is in) and we ate a fancy Italian dinner sort of thing. Once again something I wasn’t expecting to do in Japan. Then we went out to the crowd (there was TONS of people, more than I’d ever seen in one place before. It was -very- crowded) and watched the fireworks for an hour or so.

The more interesting thing to me, though, was the town itself. It’s hard to explain but it kind of reminded me of all those typical cities you would see in the Japanese dramas – sort of pre-modern developing Japanese bayside city that’s full of all kinds of people yet not completely industrious. It’s really hard to encompass what I mean in words especially since it’s something unique to what I’d thought about Japan, but it’s sort of a town that you can tell was developed in the 70s or 80s perhaps, so it’s starting to become aged, but it feels slightly modern as well. There’s a nice small bay on the side as well, it’s such an interesting town.

Anyway, after that we went home and I fell asleep because I was so tired. I sleep too much, I think, but on the bright side I don’t get tired during the day!

Oh, and PS: The “NIHONGO OF THE DAY” is a joke that comes from when I was watching the Hanabi at the festival and there were these tall German tourists (and when I say tall, I mean, VERY tall. Like 6’6 maybe?) who were walking around and decided to stop and watch the fireworks right in front of these Japanese families sitting down. They got upset but the German’s didn’t understand what they were saying and their backs were facing them, so they didn’t react. One of the families sent a couple of the little Japanese girls to ask them to sit, so the girl goes up and in a cute little kid way angrily repeated “SUMIMASEN! SUWATTE KUDASAI!! SUMIMASEN! SUMIMASEN!!” over and over (it means, excuse me please sit down) but they weren’t even turning around. Eventually their translator guide came to them and heard what was going on so she took them away, but we (Ayane Hitomi Kenji and I) found it hilarious to watch from the side.