My Thoughts on the Subject

Shiro told me that Hiroko's birthday is 1/5. I didn't know and Hiroko didn't want to make much of it, but I wished her well anyway and felt a little bad for intruding on her day.

First thing after breakfast I went on a さんぽ with Shiro and the dog, Kuro. さんぽ means 'walk.' They tend to go for a morning walk from about 8am to 9am. Later, Hiroko, Shiro, Kuro, and I went on a longer walk to くりひら station (where there is a grocery store, etc). We used a lovely path that is a secret, so I can't tell you where exactly it is located. On the way back, we passed a shrine with こまいぬ, guardian dogs. There are typically two at the entrance of temples.

Hiroko and Shiro live in a planned suburb community. It is pretty fantastic and I very much wish that I lived in a place as nice as this one. The whole area is pretty new. They live in the oldest part, 1-chome. Most houses are 1-30 years old. In the newest part, 4-chome (near where we went shopping), I saw more houses that were 1-5 years old. New houses are more western, with smaller windows and more triangular roofs. Much older houses take twice the land space of the new houses because land is more expensive. More emphasis is placed on garages and less is placed on gardens and yards.

In 4-chome, there is a (now empty) water reservoir that stores street drainage, etc. There are more under the ground of a park in 1-chome and by the river I walked by in the morning. They store water when it rains a lot to prevent flooding. Probably this is especially important in typhoon season. Hiroko said that in Tokyo itself, because the city is older, there is not enough water storage, so the basements of high rises often flood.

I tried a びわ fruit. We don't have びわ, but it tastes like a cross between a mango and an apricot. Hiroko says it has a single large seed, like a mango.

I also saw a persimmon tree on our walk. We bought one at the store, even though they are out of season. I tried some dried ones. They are totally different and taste like dried figs, but with much smoother textures. The fresh one was crunchy (out of season-ness?), but tasty.

In the morning, I must open 雨戸s (あまど) in my room. They are rain guards ('doors') that are basically metal shutters. We open あまどs in the morning, and have the heavier drapes open when the sun rises (lighter ones or blinds still closed/down). They are then closed around 4p to keep the rain out and the heat (what little there is -- the house is not heated) in at night. I have a はんてん to keep me warm in the house. It is basically a quilted vest tied at the front.

Today was left for me to get used to the area and to get over jet lag. I goggled at the sights on the morning and afternoon おさんぽ. I met "Kuro's friends," neighbors and their dogs on their own さんぽs, and completely failed at talking to them in Japanese. I saw the inside of a Japanese grocery store. And the really awesome bike and motorcycle locks outside. Japan is amazing!

The plane trip was long. I slept, intermittently. I watched Bottle Shock (I'd seen it), Eagle Eye, which ended up being better than I expected (I didn't expect much), and an episode of Numb3rs that I'd also seen already. Better than I expected. I hope there are different selections for my trip back, because otherwise I will be very bored. They fed us way too many crappy airline meals. The food wasn't too bad, just horribly unhealthy. Oh, and the sandwiches for the cold meal were completely frozen and gross.

Narita is nice. I walked with the people from my plane and there were no other large groups. We shuttled to the main terminal (very easy) and checked through everything. I was a little nervous when I needed to write where I would stay and I realized that Hiroko's address was only on my computer, in my checked bag. I wrote 'Residence of Watabe Hiroko' and left it at that, hoping that the question was basically just to make sure I wasn't sleeping on the streets or something. They accepted it just fine and I have a sheet that says I am certified to stay in Japan until April 4th.

Probably the first real difference I noticed in Japan was the cars on the 'wrong' side of the road. Okay, the terminal was unusually uncrowded and streamlined. Okay, people spoke in a foreign language a bit. Okay, the roadside curb area by the airport road was a rock garden. Okay, Hiroko gave me some grapefruit juice in a Japanese style bottle. We basically have those things in the US, too. But the US drives on the other side of the road than the rest of the world. It hit me that I was on the other side of the world.

Cars in Japan are cute, bubbly contraptions. Small, mostly. The streets are more narrow. There are road signs in circles rather than rectangles. I think the numbers are speed limits in km. The highway signs are in both Japanese and Romanji (which I later found to be extraordinarily common).

On the bus from Narita, we passed many things. Hiroko was very good about pointing out some of the highlights, including the Tokyo Tower and the Rainbow Bridge. I took no pictures and was pretty quiet for the ride.

I want to write down everything and have every memory recorded. I have decided to be satisfied with continuing to find wonder in what I encounter.

Staying with Shiro and Hiroko is different than I expected. Hiroko or someone else will accompany me everywhere. I am a child in this world. I'd like to think that I could get around with my Japanese if necessary. I was feeling pretty good about taking on the airport. I am extremely fortunate to have people with me, but I wasn't counting on it when I planned my trip.

I don't think that I have left my hosts with a good impression of my fluency in Japanese I am to shy to speak up most of the time, and I tend to try the things that I think are more challenging, but I end up being awkward. Now lots of things that I already know are being explained. Actually, this is good, because there isn't too much that they assume that I do know, so a lot of the things I don't know are being explained as well.

I was more tired than I expected and went to bed very early. Intermittent sleep doesn't quite do it for me, I guess. My time shift will be less dramatic because Shiro and Hiroko have breakfast around 6:30 or 7am and I was used to staying up relatively late. (And I had stayed up on Friday doing last minute grad school apps -- most are due on 1/15. I'll do the rest when I get back.)

So I'm in Japan right now. I've been keeping a daily record that I will post here piece by piece.

I promised myself a trip to Japan when I decided not to study away. As this is the last winter break in my undergraduate pursuit, I figured I'd better hop to it. Unfortunately, the Fall 2008 semester was absolutely horrid. I was delayed by my Fulbright application and then even more by three fairly awful colds. I despaired several times, including in November when I forgot my birth certificate at school only to return and not be able to find it. However, things worked out. One of our France exchange students recommended a website for last minute flight deals. I bought tickets less than a month from my departure date for a very good price. They happened to be nonstop and I nabbed a window seat for the way back.

My trip was planned for a 1/3 departure date and a 1/17 return date. I left JFK at 11:30am and arrived at Narita airport the next day at 3pm. I will leave Japan on Saturday 1/17 at about 7:30pm and time travel to New York City, arriving at about 6:20pm on the same day. My passport wasn't secured until after I bought the tickets and I had no idea where I would stay at first, only the tentative knowledge of a few hostels with theoretical open slots.

I finally stopped procrastinating about emailing relatives and emailed one person: Hiroko Watabe. Hiroko stayed with my mom's family when my mom was young. She went to college in Minnesota and then graduated from the University of Maryland with one of their first computer degrees. Fortunately, Hiroko does not delay with email like I do. Strange, because I am more wired, but I do procrastinate. She immediately responded that if I was going to be in Japan, I should stay with her and her husband, Shiro. They have been immensely welcoming.

The accounts that follow are my notes from each day.

Sunday I took my brother to visit my grandparents, who, by the way, are completely awesome people. It was a nice visit. They celebrated his "graduation" in May and we had a good time. On the way back, the car broke down. I shifted gears and I don't think the clutch disengaged. I pulled to the side of the road and got a ride back to my grandparent's house. Ebs was an angel and drove the 2.25 hrs down to pick up my brother and I, call AAA for a tow (my AAA service has been canceled since I went off to college with no car), and drive back to PA. We dropped off my brother so he could get some rest before school today and then the two of us waited for the tow truck driver to catch up (he took the longer, slightly easier route) so we could lead him from the highway to the car dealership. Then we were wired last night and didn't go to bed immediately. Everyone was awake this morning around 6:30, so we're all pretty grumpy.

To add to the grumpiness, I've hit packing failure number 2. The first was in forgetting my suitcase, which foiled hotel swimming plans on the way down. This failure foiled my goal for today. I had one major goal -- get my passport. I need it soon, if my travel plans are going to work. Of course I forgot both my social security card and my birth certificate. I guess I'll get pictures, then submit next week. Maybe even with the rush payment I was hoping to avoid.

In compensation, I will finish a paper, run errands, maybe get my picture taken, send an important email I've been putting off (make that two), and take care of some other things. Mergle.

Today was a little bit of adventure, a little bit of downtime, a little bit of shopping, a little bit of cooking, and over all a pretty good time.

I left Olin yesterday evening in a spectacularly arranged pickup by my brother and Ebs, on their way back from making some college visits. We camped out in a hotel last night and woke up early this morning so Ebs and I could get some exercise in. Trend setting exercise for the holidays -- we rock!

After a drive that lasted until early afternoon, we arrived at Ebs' house only to find the place more messy than they'd left it. The cause? A squirrel we found camped out on Ebs' chair. A friggin squirel. It could have been there for three and a half days. We trapped it in Ebs' room. Then we looked at each other and had no really great idea of what to do about it. I figured it might be time to experience calling animal control like the people on the news do when they find crazy African snakes or mountain lions in their houses. Squirrels seemed far more likely to bite than the bats of summer '07.

Turns out the phone book only lists private companies as animal control. We called some friends and consulted, and then Ebs and I ventured in. We figured we'd open up the window and keep it in the room, then go shopping for poison. When we got to the room, the squirrel was between us and the window. It darted for the window as we closed in, then it started running and jumping around the room. Ebs struggled with the screen and finally just popped it out, and we scatted the squirrel out the window. Bye bye squirrel. Now we need to get some wire to block where we think the squirrel got in from. A friggin squirrel!

That adventure taken care of, Ebs and I ventured out of the house so my brother could get some work done. We figured we'd go to a local vineyard Ebs discovered, Stargazers Vineyard, for their Dornfelder Day. We missed that, but did crack open a bottle of the Stargazers Dornfelder that Ebs had on hand after dinner. Dornfelder is a relatively new grape from Germany that is exceptionally hardy and whose wine possess fantastic flavor. I wasn't familiar with Dornfelder until today, but I very much enjoyed Stargazer's Dornfelder and I will happily drink more of it in the future.

I also cooked egg rolls and spring rolls today. It turns out Ebs has been experimenting with them. We hit the Asian market and I got to roll some egg rolls. How great is that? I'm adding the baked spring rolls with the awesome spicy mustard sauce to the array of foods to make when I'm cooking once again. I don't think my metabolism could handle the fried food all the time and the baked ones were also fantastic. Yay cooking!

I caught Speed Racer for the first time (at long last). I promised Ebs we could watch it together, so we did. After hearing so many bad things about it, I thought it was pretty good. The style was a little off-putting (and I'm still wondering if it was more expensive to stylize it that way than it would have been to do more realistic special effects), but it was cute. And I'm definitely a Christina Ricci fan.

All in all, it's been a pretty productive day. I even managed to get a little work done! And my brother showed me his SAT scores and I am proud of him. I hope he gets into the college he wants and (in my opinion) definitely deserves.

Happy Holidays Everyone!

I'm just getting over my cold. I have this persistent cough that hasn't let up for the past two weeks and I'm acting like a freshman in my musings about why I could have possibly thought Olin was the right place for me. I can't hack it. But sticking it out is the only way to ever hack it, so even though I am completely out of pants and wondering what this sleep thing is, I think I'll stick it out. Pass, no graduate, right?

My friends are creeping me out a little. Two friends engaged and one set of friends married -- all in one week!!!! People keep telling me it's that time in life. I guess. People are going separate ways. It makes sense to commit now, so you can plan to be in the same general area or at least feel confident that you will keep in touch. Still scary as anything. I want to live my life. This probably includes doing some crazy single-person things after college. (Although a talk last night really hit home the fact that I've been doing crazy things all along.) I also see myself getting married some day. Still no kids, but I guess I could be persuaded. Maybe. But when the heck would marriage happen? Now I say late 20s, early 30s is good... (I guess? How does one even plan for that kind of thing?) but when I'm that age, will I doubletake and think the same thing I do now? That it's way too early? I don't know. It's darn scary and I'm freaking out a little.

Senioritis strikes again. Vitamin C's "Graduation" and all that crap. I'm both ready and not ready for the real world. Scared? Of course, a little. I think next semester will make me miss school more, because, if all works out, I'll be taking fewer credits and my schedule will be more free-form. Can't wait. Until then, I've got work to do. At the very least, I've got secure some clean pants.

Apparently starting senior year means I don't blog. Oh well. The last post I was working on (that you can't see, neener neener) was about Michael Phelps and the Olympics. I started before the Olympics and kept updating Phelps' medal count until the thing was over. Sigh. I should probably work on posting faster.

Note to add to my list of things I will miss from the summer: Watching dry erase marker dry instantaneously in the sun. It looks really cool.

My apologies for my complete and utter negligence of everyone's blogs. I tried to catch up this morning, but mostly skimmed.

Senior year is crazy. I'm overloading, of course, but this time I either need things to graduate, need things for after I graduate, or am not at all willing to give them up. Next semester could be a lot more relaxed. Maybe.

Today the Olin Bubble drove me a little crazy. I really need to get off campus and do something social. I haven't hung out much with some of the people I like to hang out with very often. You probably know who you are -- I miss you! I'm a little sick (second serious cold of the semester, darn it) and have been overworking, so I haven't done a lot of getting out. Gah!

I've been making lists in my head for a while now. I can never remember everything at the same time, so I'll start up some lists that will be continued in future posts (probably).

Things that I will miss at the end of the summer include:
-The mockingbirds in the parking lot at work that sing car alarms and lock beeps. It's sad and entertaining at the same time.
-Making my own food and planning my own meals.
-Going to the gym almost every day.
-Feeling both in shape and shorter than usual compared to people around me. (Even though Jendy and I are still tied as the tallest girls in the Takahashi clan other than Michi.)
-The distinct lack of concrete deadlines. I still have a lot to do, just no solid due dates (yet).
-Time to walk to a bar, drink, walk back, and do nothing for the rest of the night.
-Visiting relatives.
-The Nice Girl.
-The Cute Guy.
-Many of my co-workers. Heck, I'll miss working in such a young office in general.
-Driving myself wherever I need to go.

Things I definitely WON'T miss:
-The guy who often sits next to me on field work chewing noisily. He smacks his lips and chews with his mouth open and it sounds absolutely DISGUSTING! I've never had a peeve about that sort of thing before, but with these noises, I usually want to either throw up or cringe like there are fingernails running over a blackboard.
-Maryland's summer heat and humidity.
-One or two people interactions that make me think I'm living in The Office and they just haven't gotten around to telling me yet.
-Apartment drama.
-The hood.

Tuesday evening my Aunt Yuko (and her husband and two kids) hosted a ton of local relatives at their pool. Guests included Aunt Suzanne and her three kids, my Aunt Denise with her husband and three kids, my Aunt Nobuko with her husband and two kids, my mom and my stepfather. I arrived as soon as possible after work and jumped in the pool for about five minutes before leaving to get some dinner. At dinner, my cousin Kei pointed out that one of my eyes was red. I said it was probably a bug bite or chlorine reaction. People standing around looked at me, said it was probably fine and would go away on it's own. I swam for quite a while later, and took a shower. When I finally took a look at my eye, there was a giant red spot in the white of my eye, sort of like the image below, except a lot of it was underneath my eyelid.



I freaked out. People looked at it again, and most of the adults said it should be fine. I stand there worrying about driving back that night, whether I needed to go to the emergency room, what to do about work the next morning, if I somehow had a blood clot or other serious health injury to deal with, etc. However, after independently confirming what people told me, it seems like my eye thing is a subconjunctival hemorrhage, i.e., a broken blood vessel in the eye. Apparently it's as close to nothing as you can get. A smoke and mirrors issue. It looks bad, but is apparently trivial (and even common, though I had never heard of it before). The medical recommendation is to do nothing and wait for it to go away, which it should in about a week.

Wednesday morning I was still pretty freaked out. I also felt pressure behind that eye, and that freaked me out more, because none of the websites say anything about that and it isn't supposed to be at all painful. I called work and said, "I can't come in today; my eye is bleeding." How weird is that?

I was in today and did fine. No complications. It looks much better, but I'm sure I could still freak out a little kid with it. I never expected to have hemorrhages, no matter what kind, at 21, even if it is a trivial kind that afflicts people of all ages. I spoke to my mom, and she says that she gets them, too, so maybe it was caused by some inherited factor. Or possibly by all the heavy lifting I do at work or at the gym. Or something. At least my preferred method of dealing with medical complications (ignoring them until they go away) was the correct one in this case.

Also, I caved and finally got some Caladryl today for the vicious mosquito bites and poison ivy that have been plaguing me.

I'm not playing the catchup game right now. I haven't posted because I've been busy and haven't felt like it, but I hate playing catchup and I refuse to do it right now. Right now my life is going through a series of highs and lows. Hopefully it will average high. I just wanted to get a post in and assure people that I am, at least in some tenuous fashion, alive. More news later -- peace out.