Here is another question for everybody out there:
What has no soul, no heart, or any ability to feel?
If you answered computer hackers, you are right!!
I feel that God must have a very pronounced sense of humor. You see, the day before I left for Japan, I took my laptop to the tech center at Ursinus and had them clean it. They removed all spyware, viruses, and any other problems that might plague my laptop. Now for the punchline, the day that I arrive in Japan, I boot it up, type in my first two blog entries, and go to my email account. While I am looking at my messages, the screen turns a curious shade of black. I scratch my head, hit ctrl-alt-delete, and to my surprise, it begins to reopen itself as if I had just restarted it. It reboots for twenty seconds and then the screen turned black again. Curiously, I manually restarted my laptop again, and the same scenario replayed itself.
Well, three rigourous diagnostic checkups later, I discover that my laptop has gotten a virus.
What kind of a virus you might ask? Well, it is a virus that gives you the following message:
System32/Drivers/Ntfs.sys
But wait, if my computer is dead, how am I typing this? Well, I am glad that you asked. My new roommate Hiroshi is letting me use his laptop to check my email and update my blog. I would love to tell you more about him, and my new dorm, and my new campus, but I feel that I have hogged his computer for long enough. I will post more when I get a chance.
Oh, and to whoever crashed my computer...
If you are reading this, let me ask you, what does it feel like to have no life?
This is Nate in Mitaka writing as just another gaijin.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
August 30, 2009
Here’s a question for you all to ponder: How do you avoid Japanese people?
Okay, let me try to rephrase that….
How do you get out of Japanese people’s way?
Let me explain, in the states, if you are standing somewhere and somebody needs to get by, it is considered proper manners to move out of their way. However, I have noticed that in Japan, it appears to be the opposite. If you need to walk by somebody, it is apparently your job to do whatever you can to avoid running into them. This has led to some truly awkward moments since I have arrived in Japan.
Have you ever seen the scene in “Duck Soup” where Groucho and Harpo mimic each other in the mirror? Well, I have reenacted this scene several times with various Japanese people as I move to the left to get out of their way while they move to the right. I back up and they back up. We both mumble すみません (excuse me) and then both quickly lurch forward trying to take the initiative of getting out of the way.
It must seem very comical to any onlookers.
Why do I bring this up? Well, it is a perfect example of one of my biggest problems here in Japan: how do I act? I don’t mean this as in “I am a gaijin, how do I not act like one?” I mean it in the terms of how do I act so that I do not interrupt the daily flow? Do I bow and greet the cashiers when they bow and welcome me in the morning? Do I approach the register from the left or right? Do I stand against the wall or in front of the register while I wait for my change when there is a line? How do I say thank you? How do I get the cashier’s attention? The guidebook says to say あの、すみません, but what if they don’t hear me? Do I say it louder or just wait for them to notice me?
Do I this?
Do I that?
Do I, do I, do I, do I, do I………………………
Oh well, at least Sauyma and Megan appear to be having the same problems. On another note, one of the most interesting things that I have learned is that you do not directly hand people money when you are paying for something. You put your money on a tray, hand them the tray, they take the money, put the change on the tray, and then they hand the tray back to you where you take the change and put it in your pocket. This reflects the Japanese notion of personal space and, dare I say, cleanliness?
Maybe I should mention the cleanliness a bit more. The Japanese are obsessed with cleanliness. This became readily apparent when we were handed warm washcloths with which to wipe and clean ourselves on the plane prior to takeoff and landing. Another one of the first examples of this that I found was how there were many people on the flight to Japan who wore white medical masks the entire time. Of course, half of them took them off once we landed.
I guess Japanese air, even the stuff that is choked with airline exhaust, is somehow more sanitary than American air. But then again, the masks made a repeat appearance on the train to the hotel, and on the streets of Tokyo. Maybe it is just a regular occurrence here in Japan. I will have to keep my eyes open in the future.
Not much else to report yet. My box of imodium remains curiously unopened and my body seems to have already gotten over jetlag. I guess after my chaotic summer schedule my internal clock has been beaten into submission. Oh, and I have realized that I hae jumped the gun on something. Yesterday I called Saumya the alpha female. Well, I was wrong. We have two alpha females. Saumya and Megan have formed a kind of diarchy with one subject in tow. It’s times like these that I remember my dad’s advice: Just nod your head and let the ladies lead.
Oh well, this is Nate in Tokyo writing to you as just another gaijin.
Okay, let me try to rephrase that….
How do you get out of Japanese people’s way?
Let me explain, in the states, if you are standing somewhere and somebody needs to get by, it is considered proper manners to move out of their way. However, I have noticed that in Japan, it appears to be the opposite. If you need to walk by somebody, it is apparently your job to do whatever you can to avoid running into them. This has led to some truly awkward moments since I have arrived in Japan.
Have you ever seen the scene in “Duck Soup” where Groucho and Harpo mimic each other in the mirror? Well, I have reenacted this scene several times with various Japanese people as I move to the left to get out of their way while they move to the right. I back up and they back up. We both mumble すみません (excuse me) and then both quickly lurch forward trying to take the initiative of getting out of the way.
It must seem very comical to any onlookers.
Why do I bring this up? Well, it is a perfect example of one of my biggest problems here in Japan: how do I act? I don’t mean this as in “I am a gaijin, how do I not act like one?” I mean it in the terms of how do I act so that I do not interrupt the daily flow? Do I bow and greet the cashiers when they bow and welcome me in the morning? Do I approach the register from the left or right? Do I stand against the wall or in front of the register while I wait for my change when there is a line? How do I say thank you? How do I get the cashier’s attention? The guidebook says to say あの、すみません, but what if they don’t hear me? Do I say it louder or just wait for them to notice me?
Do I this?
Do I that?
Do I, do I, do I, do I, do I………………………
Oh well, at least Sauyma and Megan appear to be having the same problems. On another note, one of the most interesting things that I have learned is that you do not directly hand people money when you are paying for something. You put your money on a tray, hand them the tray, they take the money, put the change on the tray, and then they hand the tray back to you where you take the change and put it in your pocket. This reflects the Japanese notion of personal space and, dare I say, cleanliness?
Maybe I should mention the cleanliness a bit more. The Japanese are obsessed with cleanliness. This became readily apparent when we were handed warm washcloths with which to wipe and clean ourselves on the plane prior to takeoff and landing. Another one of the first examples of this that I found was how there were many people on the flight to Japan who wore white medical masks the entire time. Of course, half of them took them off once we landed.
I guess Japanese air, even the stuff that is choked with airline exhaust, is somehow more sanitary than American air. But then again, the masks made a repeat appearance on the train to the hotel, and on the streets of Tokyo. Maybe it is just a regular occurrence here in Japan. I will have to keep my eyes open in the future.
Not much else to report yet. My box of imodium remains curiously unopened and my body seems to have already gotten over jetlag. I guess after my chaotic summer schedule my internal clock has been beaten into submission. Oh, and I have realized that I hae jumped the gun on something. Yesterday I called Saumya the alpha female. Well, I was wrong. We have two alpha females. Saumya and Megan have formed a kind of diarchy with one subject in tow. It’s times like these that I remember my dad’s advice: Just nod your head and let the ladies lead.
Oh well, this is Nate in Tokyo writing to you as just another gaijin.
August 29, 2009
As I lie here in a tiny bed in a tiny room in a tiny hotel, I find myself fuming in anger. The anger is not directed toward the Japanese heat, the 14-hour flight, or the signs of early onset jetlag. No, the anger is directed towards my nose, the very nose that betrayed me when I got off the plane at Narita Airport today. The very nose that revealed me as a gaijin, or “foreigner,” as sweat drip-dropped off it and onto my traveler’s checks as I feverishly tried to sign them all. It appears that my nose has somehow become the primary viaduct for all of the sweat that my head and face manages to produce. Instead of stealthily running down my neck and burying itself into my shirt or spreading itself out into a fine sheath of stick on my face, all of my sweat seems to race towards my nose where, like a neglected faucet, it coagulates into bulging opaque drops. These drops managed to gain the attention of my fellow students, travel agents, currency exchange kiosk employees, and native Japanese. And with their attention gained, they yell, “Gaijin! Gaijin!”
What do we pursue? Some, allured by the Saturday morning cartoons of their youth, come to Japan to search the streets of Harajuku in the hopes of discovering an anime nirvana. Others may come seeking respite in its ancient temples from an unbearable Western lifestyle of power lunches, corporate haircuts, and backbreaking deadlines. The specifics don’t matter. The reality of it is that everyone who comes to Japan arrives with a purpose. They want to seek something, discover something, touch something unknown to them that they think they desperately need.
As I lay on my stomach with my traitorous nose picking up the ghosts of cigarettes past, I find myself wondering, “What the hell am I doing here?”
No seriously, what am I doing here? I could have learned about Japan and Japanese culture at Ursinus. I could have learned about anime on the Internet. I could have sought solitude in church. So why am I here in Japan? Well, maybe I should consider how and why I am here in the first place.
Well, one of the reasons I went to Ursinus was because they promised that I could go to Japan for a year if I worked hard enough. So I went to Ursinus, worked and scrapped my way to the top of my class. Well, second of my class. One of two people that I am going with is Saumya Kurup who is the top of my class and is for all intensive purposes the alpha female of the group. But more on that later…
So, two years at Ursinus have brought me the promise of ten months at the International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo, Japan. The ten months will be shared with two other Ursinus students, the aforementioned Saumya and another girl named Megan Ormsby. All three of us love Japan and are thrilled to go and can’t wait and yadda yadda yadda.
Well, that explains why I am in Japan, but I still don’t know why I wanted to come here so badly. Japan was my motivation for Ursinus. But what was my motivation for Japan? Hopefully I will figure it out in the next ten months…
In the meantime, since I am sure that my parents are dying to know how my trip was, I guess that now is as good a time as any to talk about it.
Well, when we arrived at the airport, we greeted each other, said (several) goodbyes to our families, waded through security and customs, and piled onto our airplane. The flight was going to last for over 12 hours. My survival on the long flight was due to two things: in-flight movies and my Hanukkah Nintendo DS.
First, the in-flight movies. Yes, that means that you will have to wait to discover what the heck a Hanukkah Nintendo DS is. Consider it a kind of insurance to make sure that you keep reading.
Okay, where was I? Right! In-flight movies! Each seat was decked out with screens attached to the back of the chair in front of us. We could select movies out of a surprisingly well stocked library. Seriously, I have never seen a movie library that has simultaneously offered both Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” and Ford’s “How Green Was My Valley.” Needless to say, I was in heaven.
I watched three movies during my trip. The first was おくり人, or, as it is known in the States, “Departures.”
It was the first Japanese film in over fifty years to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. It definitely deserved it because I was crying throughout the entire film. As a great lover of Japanese cinema (as can be seen from my personal film library which includes Kurosawa’s “Ran,” Ozu’s “Tokyo Story,” Mizoguchi’s “Ugestu,” three movies by Suzuki Seijun, and a Teshigahara Higoshi boxset) I can confidently say that this is probably one of the only Japanese movies to come out in decades that could hold up against the godfathers of Japanese cinema. Seriously, it should be seen by everyone.
That means YOU Mom and Dad!!!!!
No seriously, go see it now. I’ll wait. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Anyway, after that cry fest, I decided to see something lighter. And by lighter I mean Sophie Coppola’s “Lost in Translation.” Seriously, the world should enshrine Sophie Coppola and Wes Anderson for reviving Bill Murray’s career in the 2000s.
After two masterworks of cinema I decided to round my experience out with another classic, the eternal masterwork “Dodgeball” with Vince Vaughn and Rip Torn. Oh, how that movie brings me joy.
Anyway, the second thing that helped me survive the flight was my Hanukkah Nintendo DS. Why is it a Hanukkah Nintendo DS and not just a regular Nintendo DS? Well, it lasted the entire 12 hour flight. Yes, I played on it while I watched movies. What? I can multitask!! My Nintendo DS has always had a charge of 5 hours tops. Well, I am still playing on it on my second day here in Japan. Such is the stuff of legends…
Anyhow, when we arrived at Narita Airport, we went through the usual rigmarole of going through customs and getting our luggage. Customs didn’t give the ladies any trouble but they held me up. I suspect feminine wiles were involved….
We met up with two representatives from ICU, Ayaka and Miyuki, who helped us navigate Japan’s labyrinthine train system. Meeting them was a clumsy experience, what with Japanese hands unaccustomed to shaking and American backs unaccustomed to bending. But we communicated well and they were extremely helpful and kind.
We said our goodbyes and checked into our rooms. This is where we came in, with me lying on my bed typing furiously away. I didn’t have long to type before Megan and Saumya came to my door and announced that they were going out. Reluctant to leave my bed after a long day of being uncomfortably crammed into planes, trains, and heavily laden automobiles, I consented and we hit the town.
With our pockets full of freshly converted yen, we were eager to find some kind of food. We discovered that the best, and cheapest, way to get a good dinner in Japan is to go to a department store and pick up a ready-made meal. One of the things that the Japanese love is fresh food. At night, before they throw out the food that they prepared in the morning, it goes on sale for half price. So, we treated ourselves to 洋食, or Japanese food. I got a combination of fried rice, noodles, and three meat sticks. I call them meat sticks because I have no idea what kind of meat they were. The first was beef, or at least I thought so for the first two bites. Then, by the time the third bite came along, I realized that it wasn’t meat at all. It was mushrooms…
There really isn’t anything else to say about my first night. After food came sleep and after sleep came indigestion. Well, such is to be expected. This is Nate from Narita writing as just another gaijin.
August 29, 2009
As I lie here in a tiny bed in a tiny room in a tiny hotel, I find myself fuming in anger. The anger is not directed toward the Japanese heat, the 14-hour flight, or the signs of early onset jetlag. No, the anger is directed towards my nose, the very nose that betrayed me when I got off the plane at Narita Airport today. The very nose that revealed me as a gaijin, or “foreigner,” as sweat drip-dropped off it and onto my traveler’s checks as I feverishly tried to sign them all. It appears that my nose has somehow become the primary viaduct for all of the sweat that my head and face manages to produce. Instead of stealthily running down my neck and burying itself into my shirt or spreading itself out into a fine sheath of stick on my face, all of my sweat seems to race towards my nose where, like a neglected faucet, it coagulates into bulging opaque drops. These drops managed to gain the attention of my fellow students, travel agents, currency exchange kiosk employees, and native Japanese. And with their attention gained, they yell, “Gaijin! Gaijin!”
No matter how hard I try to deny it, I am just another gaijin. I am just one of a multitude of foreigners who travel to the Land of the Rising Sun every year in order to pursue….something….
What do we pursue? Some, allured by the Saturday morning cartoons of their youth, come to Japan to search the streets of Harajuku in the hopes of discovering an anime nirvana. Others may come seeking respite in its ancient temples from an unbearable Western lifestyle of power lunches, corporate haircuts, and backbreaking deadlines. The specifics don’t matter. The reality of it is that everyone who comes to Japan arrives with a purpose. They want to seek something, discover something, touch something unknown to them that they think they desperately need.
As I lay on my stomach with my traitorous nose picking up the ghosts of cigarettes past, I find myself wondering, “What the hell am I doing here?”
No seriously, what am I doing here? I could have learned about Japan and Japanese culture at Ursinus. I could have learned about anime on the Internet. I could have sought solitude in church. So why am I here in Japan? Well, maybe I should consider how and why I am here in the first place.
Well, one of the reasons I went to Ursinus was because they promised that I could go to Japan for a year if I worked hard enough. So I went to Ursinus, worked and scrapped my way to the top of my class. Well, second of my class. One of two people that I am going with is Saumya Kurup who is the top of my class and is for all intensive purposes the alpha female of the group. But more on that later…
So, two years at Ursinus have brought me the promise of ten months at the International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo, Japan. The ten months will be shared with two other Ursinus students, the aforementioned Saumya and another girl named Megan Ormsby. All three of us love Japan and are thrilled to go and can’t wait and yadda yadda yadda.
Well, that explains why I am in Japan, but I still don’t know why I wanted to come here so badly. Japan was my motivation for Ursinus. But what was my motivation for Japan? Hopefully I will figure it out in the next ten months…
In the meantime, since I am sure that my parents are dying to know how my trip was, I guess that now is as good a time as any to talk about it.
Well, when we arrived at the airport, we greeted each other, said (several) goodbyes to our families, waded through security and customs, and piled onto our airplane. The flight was going to last for over 12 hours. My survival on the long flight was due to two things: in-flight movies and my Hanukkah Nintendo DS.
First, the in-flight movies. Yes, that means that you will have to wait to discover what the heck a Hanukkah Nintendo DS is. Consider it a kind of insurance to make sure that you keep reading.
Okay, where was I? Right! In-flight movies! Each seat was decked out with screens attached to the back of the chair in front of us. We could select movies out of a surprisingly well stocked library. Seriously, I have never seen a movie library that has simultaneously offered both Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” and Ford’s “How Green Was My Valley.” Needless to say, I was in heaven.
I watched three movies during my trip. The first was おくり人, or, as it is known in the States, “Departures.”
It was the first Japanese film in over fifty years to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. It definitely deserved it because I was crying throughout the entire film. As a great lover of Japanese cinema (as can be seen from my personal film library which includes Kurosawa’s “Ran,” Ozu’s “Tokyo Story,” Mizoguchi’s “Ugestu,” three movies by Suzuki Seijun, and a Teshigahara Higoshi boxset) I can confidently say that this is probably one of the only Japanese movies to come out in decades that could hold up against the godfathers of Japanese cinema. Seriously, it should be seen by everyone.
That means YOU Mom and Dad!!!!!
No seriously, go see it now. I’ll wait. ……………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………
Oh my gosh! Wasn’t that old man hysterical?!?!
Anyway, after that cry fest, I decided to see something lighter. And by lighter I mean Sophie Coppola’s “Lost in Translation.” Seriously, the world should enshrine Sophie Coppola and Wes Anderson for reviving Bill Murray’s career in the 2000s.
After two masterworks of cinema I decided to round my experience out with another classic, the eternal masterwork “Dodgeball” with Vince Vaughn and Rip Torn. Oh, how that movie brings me joy.
Anyway, the second thing that helped me survive the flight was my Hanukkah Nintendo DS. Why is it a Hanukkah Nintendo DS and not just a regular Nintendo DS? Well, it lasted the entire 12 hour flight. Yes, I played on it while I watched movies. What? I can multitask!! My Nintendo DS has always had a charge of 5 hours tops. Well, I am still playing on it on my second day here in Japan. Such is the stuff of legends…
Anyhow, when we arrived at Narita Airport, we went through the usual rigmarole of going through customs and getting our luggage. Customs didn’t give the ladies any trouble but they held me up. I suspect feminine wiles were involved….
We met up with two representatives from ICU, Ayaka and Miyuki, who helped us navigate Japan’s labyrinthine train system. Meeting them was a clumsy experience, what with Japanese hands unaccustomed to shaking and American backs unaccustomed to bending. But we communicated well and they were extremely helpful and kind.
We said our goodbyes and checked into our rooms. This is where we came in, with me lying on my bed typing furiously away. I didn’t have long to type before Megan and Saumya came to my door and announced that they were going out. Reluctant to leave my bed after a long day of being uncomfortably crammed into planes, trains, and heavily laden automobiles, I consented and we hit the town.
With our pockets full of freshly converted yen, we were eager to find some kind of food. We discovered that the best, and cheapest, way to get a good dinner in Japan is to go to a department store and pick up a ready-made meal. One of the things that the Japanese love is fresh food. At night, before they throw out the food that they prepared in the morning, it goes on sale for half price. So, we treated ourselves to 和食, or Japanese food. I got a combination of fried rice, noodles, and three meat sticks. I call them meat sticks because I have no idea what kind of meat they were. The first was beef, or at least I thought so for the first two bites. Then, by the time the third bite came along, I realized that it wasn’t meat at all. It was mushrooms…
There really isn’t anything else to say about my first night. After food came sleep and after sleep came indigestion. Well, such is to be expected. This is Nate from Narita writing as just another gaijin.
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