I Am Completely Serious

They make you do this when you get a student visa, I guess to make sure you’re not smuggling in any tuberculosis. (If that’s actually why they were doing it, I think Bruce Schneier would have words. It’s not like the god of tourists protects recipients of tourist visas from disease.) They sent some trucks with X-ray machines around for this, the trucks sat in the school parking lot and people formed whiny lines, and I took my bra off ahead of time so as to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible. I’m very grumpy about this.

As apparently I do not yet waste enough time on video games, I set up a World of Warcraft trial account last weekend. I have been running around being an Orcish warrior with a purely mercenary interest in geology. World of Warcraft espouses the controversial idea that orcs, however much that Tolkien guy went on about them, present an only slightly greater threat than does the cunning and ruthless zebracorn. That’s kind of a zebra-unicorn, I don’t know if you caught that.

My level-twelve orc has been repeatedly killed by level-thirteen zebracorns. This is in part due to my refusal to believe that I actually just got killed by a goddamn zebracorn, which means I have to go back and fight another one to make sure. They don’t even use the horn! Using the horn is basic unicorn strategy! They just step on you and snort, and I’m wearing all this armor and some of it’s magic, and it’s just really inappropriate.

The game has a lot of weird and unpleasant ethnic stereotypes. For some reason the trolls all have pseudo-Jamaican accents and a lot of voodoo-related catchphrases. Also, comical witchdoctors. The Tauren, who are big cow people, are supposed to be Native Americans. Their catchphrases are all seepy comments about living in harmony with nature, and they have placid-stoned-ish-sounding voice actors. There’s also an opportunistic merchant race with big noses, big ears, and nasal voices. The men have catchphrases like “Time is money” and the women say “Like see you later” in valley-girl-speak and appear to be wearing too much makeup. I wonder what that’s about.

Heteronormativity-san, agitated: Look what he’s doing! Sleep-san bought a drink from the vending machine and brought it in!

*Sleep-san is sitting at the other end of the table, drinking a can of coffee and looking grumpily at the menu on the wall.*

Me: – oh, yeah.

Heteronormativity-san, with great indignation: You don’t do that! You buy the drinks here!

Me: But he did! He has great power.

Heteronormativity-san: Yes, he did it…

Me: He plays by his own rules.

Heteronormativity-san, very unhappily: Oh, he does?

-

Maybe there are very strict rules about not doing this in Belgium, I don’t know.

(This conversation was actually in English, because Sleep-san doesn’t speak it.)

*We are making sentences in the form “The [thing] I associate with [person] is [thing].”*

Heteronormativity-san: “The color that I associate with Screech-san is -”

Screech-san: You stop right there! Right there!

Heteronormativity-san: “- is purple, because… which… whichever – is it whether -”

Biiru-sensei: Oh, because you can’t tell whether he’s a man or a woman!

Screech-san: SENSEIIII! Why?!

Heteronormativity-san: Right, right.

-

I’ve only met two regular teachers here who are married. One, Chiisai-Koe-sensei, is very timid and easily startled, puts incredible time and effort into making cute lunch boxes for her kids, and suspects it might be a little inappropriate for her to play Wii Sports. The other is Kaboom-sensei.

Kaboom-sensei is the only teacher I’ve ever heard complain about the school. I think she might be the only female teacher I’ve heard complain about anything with more volition than the Shinkansen. When she doesn’t feel like starting class yet, she talks about stuff that annoys her. Sometimes she turns these catalogs of irritations into cautionary tales, on the basis that she is a grandmother, and we young folk have a social responsibility not to annoy grandmothers. This week, she experienced something extremely traumatic:

“Someone in this class did a speech about girls who do their makeup on the train, right? Was it – it was Dragon-san! Oh, on the train today, I saw something really bad. There was a girl, and she was doing her makeup, and I thought, “Ohhhh…” – and then, she took out this pair of scissors! And she just cut across her bangs, like this -” (demonstrates, her expression tragic) “She was just cutting her hair in the middle of the train! Everyone, please, when you become parents, talk to your children! Tell them not to do things like this! As a grandmother, seeing that girl doing that… ohhh, it made me so sad!”

She routinely throws weird stuff into normal class. She’ll explain colloquial terms for drunkenness and plastic surgery, and form example sentences relating to the other teachers. If asked to do so outside of class, she will be perfectly happy to explain the most natural way to deride the size of a man’s member. Some of the stuff she says would be a little much even in the US, and given the exaggerated peppiness most of the younger female teachers here affect, she can be pretty startling.

I feel like she’s a pretty good example of 1) how sexist Japan is, and 2) how serious it still is about revering your elders. Younger Japanese women are generally extremely, extremely careful to keep the stuff they say clean, and to be dressed nicely and have one of the six or seven approved haircuts. Kaboom-sensei, though, is a grandmother. She doesn’t have to do that shit anymore. She’s not a senior teacher at the school – but she’s older than the senior teachers, so they can’t censure her.

When Biiru-sensei comes into the room, the younger woman teachers (even Doom-sensei, who very politely doesn’t care) stop whatever they’re doing and pay attention to him. But Kaboom-sensei’s just as likely to ignore him and keep explaining whatever cuss word she’s decided we need to know today. And he just waits patiently, and uses polite-style language when she finally finishes making out her little list of Important Adultery Vocabulary and turns to talk to him. She has mysterious powers.

There’s a shopping center near the dorm called “Wing Town,” and in it is one of these cafes specializing in cuteness that Japan has a lot of, and it is called “Cat’s Cafe.”

A bunch of us went there today, and the whole time I was very concerned that my clone was going to show up in a shower of feathers and/or flower petals, rip my eye out of my head and eat it, and then disappear into another dimension wielding a massive sword and an unfathomable expression. Fortunately, this did not occur, nor did anyone become a vampire or lose their memory for reasons.

We ordered and consumed most of a bucket-sized 4000-yen parfait.

If you have eight people, this parfait is a slightly better deal than the cheapest individual parfaits, but not if you have seven. I calculated it out. Professor Layton is damaging my ability to engage in activities without doing math at them.

(Edited a couple times to fix the picture’s size. Flickr is maybe changing its interface around today?)

You’d think the people who localized Professor Layton would be paying attention to what the people who localized Phoenix Wright were doing. But I guess not. Evil women with mysterious doubles should clearly always be named Dahlia, and the double’s name should be that of a purple flower.

Anyway, this game is really cute, but I have to have scratch paper around when I’m playing it.

-

For writing class today, we made posters describing where we’re from, because language school is sort of like pre-school, but with more emphasis on vocabulary relating to intoxication. A scene from today’s class:

*I am dubiously considering the way I wrote “marijuana,” because I think it might be wrong.*

Great Artist-san: What is the kanji for “kami”?

Dragon-san: What? “Kami” for paper?

Great Artist-san: No, no, “kami-sama” – “kami” for God. I have to write “Brazil: God’s Country!”

Me: What?! No! America is God’s country! Don’t you people have TVs?!

Fuzzy-san: Hungary is obviously God’s country.

Great Artist-san: Is Taiwan God’s country?

Dragon-san, disgustedly: No.

-

I just upgraded WordPress in hopes that it will make comment notification start working. Thus far it seems to have broken my ability to preview in-progress posts and use the Open-ID thingie. Fuck you, WordPress.

The Student Affairs Office is giving me anger issues. My gas bill last month was a little under $30. This month – that is, the month I had no heat for a week – it’s $110. Continue reading “Post Consisting Almost Wholly Of Money-Related Rage”

To get from the school to my room, I usually use this underpass-thing that tunnels under the street and has on its walls an unattractive and geographically inappropriate tile mosaic of the ocean. Today, when I came up out the other side, a short guy wearing a dog collar was standing there waiting. He stopped me and asked in Japanese, “Do you speak English?”

“Hai.”

He said in what was clearly carefully rehearsed English, “I would like to take a picture with you.”

I said in Japanese, “Uh… why?” (“Uh” in Japanese being “anooo,” incidentally. Or “etooo,” if that’s what floats your boat.)

Still in English, and clearly from a script: “I am interested in foreign countries.” Then he mumbled what I think was the same thing in Japanese.

See, if he had given me some kind of slightly sensical answer – like, if he’d said he was working on a photography project for college or something (he looked about twenty to me – which, uhh, now that I think of it probably means he was at least twenty-five) – I’d actually probably have agreed. It might be true! And if I’d said no to that, afterward I would have felt very Yellow-Peril-American about refusing to let the Japanese guy take my picture possibly-for-school.

However, to me, an interest in foreign countries does not intuitively lead to a desire to have your picture taken with girls.

“Sorry, I’m busy right now,” I said in Japanese.

He nodded, attempted no more English, and returned to his post at the top of the stairs.

So at least he’s not a pushy guy in a dog collar who waits at the end of the underpass for girls to get out of class.

(I will be so happy if it turns out this guy did like everyone does and confused Screech-san for a girl – I’m positive he’d agree to be in the picture. But 1) Screech-san’s Korean and 2) I think he left by himself today, so there wouldn’t have been any immediate cues in the form of race or language to label him as a foreigner. And this guy’s thing probably doesn’t apply to Asian girls anyway.)

-

I finally have heat again. They had to completely replace the heater. The new one has a remote control, which is obviously thrilling. If I ever sat anywhere but the desk, which is right next to the heating unit, why, then, I could carry the remote control over there with me and change the settings should the temperature grow uncomfortable!

For the first time since grade school, I have no acne on my face.

Japanese diet + showering ever 3-4 days + using olive oil instead of lotion = clearly magical

(I have, however, gone back to using shampoo once a week – the baking soda was taking too long to rinse out, and the point of this whole hippy bathing exercise was to conserve water. But I can apparently only tolerate a tiny bit of shampoo without my hair and scalp getting completely dried out. I think I’m going to start using the vinegar again as insurance against that.)

-

In other Japan Is Good At Stuff news, my heat is still broken, but they gave me a space heater until it’s fixed. This space heater appears to date back to the Korean War-era manufacturing boom. It is smaller than a CRT monitor. But the room is so well insulated that this plus the sun coming in is enough to keep it pretty much completely warm.

Student Affairs Office! You guys said someone was going to fix my heat this morning! And I still don’t have heat! And my last class was at 4:30, and my dorm’s a fifteen minute walk away, and you close at 5:00! Screw you!

It snowed again today, by the way!

I’m going out to buy an electric blanket now, and tomorrow I’m going to stand there and hold up the receipt and just glare!

-

Two hours and some later: This just sat here and didn’t post before, I guess? I have an electric blanket now. I had to walk all the way to Jusco.

Toda, Biiru-sensei came over to me during a break and told me in English that I needed to rewrite the second part of my speech. He usually only breaks out the English when someone’s gotten sick on the floor, so clearly this was a subject of some real concern to him.

My original plan was to write a fire-and-brimstone sermon about the coming of the anti-consumerist messiah The Bear From Space (aka, Uchuu Kara Kita Kuma). I was going to exhort humanity to cast away their “foolish television programs and fine Daiso products” and reform their lives before the Bear From Space arrived to eat them. I had written some notes: “bear doesn’t like cars/tiny dogs/plastics/bentou with trademarked stuff/Centrair,” “bear eats earth/just people? (monkeys inherit?)” I had drawn a small monkey.

What I’m saying is basically that I felt I was exercising restraint.

Also, I did this thing today where we go in and tell the local grade-schoolers about where we’re from, and they were terrifyingly cute. They had costumes and had memorized a dance and gave us strings of about a million origami cranes. I have hung mine up on a hook on the ceiling, but I’m going to need to find a better way to display it.

I didn’t have time to do my presentation, since the Canadian guy’s was really long, but I will be going back next Friday to teach the ten-year-olds of Okazaki all about fried squirrel brains, the stupid hats at the Kentucky Derby, and how you have to swear you’ve never fought a duel before you can become a lawyer. It is possible that my idea of what others should know about my native land is not the most common one.

We’re required to write a speech in Japanese for this speaking contest the school has. Apparently it’s not optional? I had a sore throat and was feeling kind of gross the day it was due, but nonetheless worked very, very hard on it. When we got them back today, it was gently suggested to me that my speech Would Not Do.

Bullshit. It’s a great speech. Here, look, I translated it for you guys:

Continue reading “The Terrible Secret”

Apparently Common Knowledge In Japan: pickled plums are the ultimate hangover cure; fish is good for your skin; coffee makes you smarter (I suspect this of being the result of someone’s Really Good marketing campaign); milk makes kids grow bigger (probably an American company’s marketing campaign); you shouldn’t take a bath when you’re sick.

I think I’ve figured out the origin of the last one. People get sick more in cold weather, people in Japan mostly bathe at night, and Japanese apartments mostly aren’t heated very well. I think it would be more effective if they came up with some superstition regarding not bathing in the winter.

The point of this post is to bitch that my apartment’s all cold and I showered last night and now I’ve got a cold or something.

The teachers have little files about us that they put notes in. As I have discovered, these notes are occasionally compiled less for purposes of information than for revenge.

“So do you prefer to be called “Hime-sama”?”

I’m back in Japan. My flights left on time and arrived early. Both of them.

This is totally insane.

Stuff did go wrong, but only at the very beginning and very end of the process. You’re supposed to show up three hours early for international flights – in my case, FIVE AM – but Northwest’s desk in Cincinnati didn’t open until 6:00 AM. So I got Mom and thegeekgene and Uncle Tall out of bed at 4:30 AM for no reason.

After I got checked in and got through security at Cincinnati, I looked at the monitors and only saw Delta flights on there. I asked a security guard nearby where the Northwest flights would be. She stared at me incredulously for ten seconds and then said, “Ter… minal… two.” (I was at terminal three.) I asked another employee the same thing, and she, again, stared disgustedly at me and said, “Terminal two.”

I ran to terminal two, slighly panicking, and began to Really Panic when I got there and saw that the security line there was already ridiculously long. I got in line and waited for about ten minutes. When I got to the desk where the guy checks your ticket and passport, I said, “This is where I’m supposed to be for Northwest flights, isn’t it?”

Long, incredulous pause. “No… That’s… terminal… threeeee.” He pointed to a plastic sign nearby, which had an arrow pointing back towards terminal three, and listed the airlines that used it, one of them being Northwest. The sign for terminal two did not list Northwest.

Since clearly the human beings in the airport are too busy pausing and knitting their eyebrows in consternation to answer questions, I put my trust in the large piece of blue plastic and went back to terminal three. I asked yet another employee where I went for Northwest flights. The conversation:

TSA Person 1: “…no, we only got Delta here -”

TSA Person 2, interrupting: “What? No! Northwest and [other airline] take off from this terminal! What are you saying to her?!”

Me, very suspicious: “…but they haven’t given me a gate number, and it’s not on the monitors… the monitors here are all Delta -”

TSA Person 3: *takes my boarding pass, studies it with great passion and intensity, then looks off into space bravely* “All right. You’re going to be o-kay. What you’re going to do is, you’re going to go on that train there, get off at the first stop, look that way -” *points* “- and go up the escalators. That’s where your flight’ll be.”

So I went through security again. (“Back again! So you had so much fun the first time you decided to give it another go?” “Indeed, sir!”)

Person #3 was exactly right, and I found my gate with half an hour to spare. I suspect that he and Person #2 were freak survivors of the TSA’s dizzying employment turnover rate, and the other people I talked to hadn’t worked there long enough to figure out that, despite the “Delta” signs everywhere, not everyone going through there was on a Delta flight. (Though why they had never been briefed on that, when people are obviously going to be asking them for directions…)

After that, things went ominously smoothly until I got to Nagoya and had to go through Immigration. I knew that I wasn’t technically supposed to be signed up for six month’s worth of classes stretched across two 90-day tourist visas, and so was prepared to say that I, you know, was just planning to hang out and stuff, and wasn’t sure where I was going to stay yet, maybe I’ll crash at Don’s place, you know?

This sort of answer, it turns out, is not acceptable.

The woman who was glancing over people’s forms before they got into the line told me, “Well, you’d better decide on a place fast! Think of a cheap hotel.” Except that they needed an actual mailing address. And I had no addresses for cheap hotels. The only Japanese mailing addresses I had on me to write down were the school’s, and that of an Indian restaurant, at which I have never dined, for which I nonetheless inexplicably possessed a business card.

Finally, I just put down the school’s address and got in line. The guy looked at the address, looked at my previous tourist-visa stamp and scoldingly told me, “This is only a temporary visa. For the second time you’re taking classes, you must have a student visa!” “…yes… I know, I’ve already applied for -” “All right. Remember, you promise you’ll have it next time! Remember your promise!”

So, he let me into the country because I promised I’d have the right visa next time. I love Japan. (Though this is possibly not something I’d get away with if I weren’t a tiny white American girl.)

(Also, after giving it much thought, I decided the only thing I actually needed to declare for customs was “<1.0 oz. perfume.” I am the most harmless gaijin you ever did see.)

And then I got my bag and got on the bus. I made it back to the room at exactly 8:20 PM Japan time, 6:20 AM US time. So, if we’d gone to the airport an hour later, the whole process would have taken almost exactly twenty-four hours. This is unprecedented.

And now I have eaten Mystery Fried Meat from the konbini, (seen a photo from More-English-san’s holiday trip to a maid cafe, decorated with colorful stickers,) unpacked, bathed, and put on the ridiculous pajamas, and I am going to bed.

Tomorrow I go to the United States of America. On a PLANE. Four days before Christmas. I have like five or six good luck charms I got people as presents in the bag, though, so I should be okay.

I realized after class was over today that they never returned my brilliant story that I wrote ten minutes before it was due last week. The assignment was to write about what we thought the future would be like. Mine was called “Uchuu Kara Kita Kuma,” or, in the Common Tongue, “The Bear From Space.” Spoilers: The bear eats us. I made this really detailed diagram and everything.

Man. I want that thing back.

The writing assignment before that one was to describe an “embarrassing mistake you made.” Mine was written from the point of view of Heero Yui. If airport security were ever to get hold of this exemplary work of fanfiction, I would never be allowed to fly again, and would probably become the subject of hideous military medical experiments. “She exploded a plane full of pacifists, blew herself up, and didn’t die? While dressed really badly?!… The United States needs this capability.”

Did I mention I’m kind of nervous about this Christmas plane thing.

Today, Kurogane-sensei came in, produced a ninja costume from the 100-yen-store, and ordered Great-Artist-san to put it on. After he had obeyed, and she observed approvingly, that he “looked just like a real ninja,” she put on a movie called Nin x Nin: Ninja Hattori-Kun. This movie appears to be about a simple country ninja who goes to the big city to fight crime, moving into the bedroom of a deeply unimpressed little boy because he doesn’t understand about rent. He also talks to a ninja poodle that can walk on its hind legs.

Kurogane-sensei proceeded to make extremely earnest commentary about what the movie was teaching us about the life of the ninja, occasionally asking questions:

Ninja Hattori-kun is hanging from the ceiling above the little boy’s bed while his oblivious mother scolds him for sleeping late.

“Ninja can climb walls. This is because they train very hard. Have you done that sort of training, Z-san?”

“Yes. It was hard!”

“Oh, of course. Ninja training has to be hard.”

Ninja Hattori-kun is fighting a guy in a mask in the forest while making doofy faces.

“The life of a ninja is a hard one. The ninja are constantly doing battle. This ninja is fighting a tengu. You will notice that he can run much faster than a normal person.”

Ninja Hattori-kun climbs a phone pole to avoid a presumably-malevolent delivery man, and for some reason comes back down without his clothes.

“Ninja are very good at hiding – they’re spies, so they have to be. What else are ninja good at? Do we know?”

“…They can jump really high.”

“Yes, they practice jumping a lot.”

She was completely deadpan through this whole thing. I kind of wonder if some of the teachers here get enough sleep.

Getting through half a textbook in a-month-and-a-half makes me feel all productive. (even though I already technically already studied most of the stuff in that book…) I am slightly grumpy about the fact that this means I just spent another $50 on textbooks. Though that is two whole books, which is pretty good compared to American textbooks.

Apparently Sanrio’s licensing fees are generally too high to allow for the Daiso to sell Hello Kitty merchandise. NOT THAT I’M BUYING ANY OF elongated_tito‘s PRESENTS AT THE 100-YEN STORE OR ANYTHING.

Yesterday, when I walked out of Zigzag (school-owned restaurant/bar/thing where I buy lunch when I’m too lazy to pack something) with the fried-chicken-and-soy-sauce-and-rice-thing they had that day, a bunch of grade-school kids in their little yellow crossing-the-street-safely helmets were marching through the parking lot. A little boy saw that I was holding a plate, ran over to look, and, said, “Wow!” Then, to make sure that everyone in the vicinity understood his feelings on the subject, he said it again, louder: “Wow!”

He was completely correct. Those people are very good at frying meat.

I wonder if maybe that small Japanese children feel less reticent about observing me and making commentary than they do about the larger, more intimidating-looking-type foreigners. A couple weeks ago in the grocery store, I heard a girl pointing out to her mother that I was “just looking at the tofu.” She was also completely correct – I was, in fact, just looking at the tofu. Possibly for upwards of a minute. I was a little tired.

Today Z-san (Swedish) got very excited about American Christianity: “They have these, these really big churches, that are like stadiums, and there’s a big movie screen in the back, and the preacher gets up in front of the movie screen and is projected so he’s huge, and he says, “…sigh. Oh, Jesus.”"

He then put his hand over his heart and swooned. He was also very pleased by the existence of faith healing.

Remember, Dad – no matter how weird you think Japan is, the rest of the world thinks the US is even weirder.

(Great-Artist-san, who thought I was Catholic because I knew when All Saint’s Day was, got very nervous about this turn of conversation because he thought I would get offended and probably shoot someone with my concealed American Gun. I assured him that I, too, thought American Christians were kind of weird. He also got annoyed with Kuma-san (Swedish) for saying bad stuff about Satanists, and patiently explained the precepts of Satanism to him. For once in my life, I was not the only person in the room defending the Satanists.)

The Japanese say “in the black” (kuroji) and “in the red” (akaji), which mean basically the same things they do in English. However, apparently, in French a person-or-group who is “in the black” is cheating on their income taxes. This caused Heteronormativity-san (Belgian) a good deal of cultural shock when we did an exercise in which a “typical” girl told her “typical” mother that she didn’t care if her husband was poor if he had a sense of humor, and her mother counseled her to marry a man who was kuroji. I imagine that, until I re-explained it to him, Heteronormativity-san for a few moments reconsidered his deeply subtle assault on Japan’s female population.

I am going to Ise on Sunday. I will try not to, you know, pollute it. If I can even pollute Ise. If it’s Japan’s holiest site, do I even really have the necessary power to pollute it? I’m not a very high-level American, I don’t even have a van. Well, I’ll wash my hair Saturday night anyway, just to be careful.

1) There is a Rue-san in my class. She even looks like Rue. I keep having to exert myself not to call her “Rue-chan.” She is six or seven years older than I am, so it would possibly not be appropriate.

2) Sometimes grouchy, disdainful cats wander around in public places in Japan. People crowd around them to pet them and take pictures, ignoring the huge flock of crows sitting on Nagoya castle in the background, or the Daiso employees trying to get across the aisle with a cartful of ceramic bowls. The cats merely walk on, slowly, tolerantly, reminding themselves that these creatures, too, have their place in the world.

Sensei: What will the weather be like tomorrow?

1: – “what was the weather yesterday?”

Sensei: No, tomorrow.

1: Uhhh… no.

Sensei: “No”?! That’s not the answer!

2: There will be no weather tomorrow. Today, the earth will die.

Sensei: Really? Why?!

2: *shrug*

-

Today we also did the thing where we passed around pieces of paper and each wrote one line of a story. Except the pieces of paper were for the timelines of our teachers’ future lives, which I think all will agree was a dangerous idea.

The stories were all unusually cohesive for this sort of exercise, and also all extremely grim.

Continue reading “(Today it rained again.)”