"A discourse on the scientific nature of Hangul" (aka My Trip to Korea)

I'm still alive...apparently some of you have been wondering. I apologize for the seemingly eternal hiatus, but here is a gigantic post to sate your appetites for my horribly lackluster, mistake-ridden English. This post has been in the works for awhile...with more on the way soon.

At the end of November, I visited one Mr. Eric Wallin in South Korea. I took a half day on Friday, and had Monday (holiday) and Tuesday (my day off from working entrance exam Saturday) off, so I ended up with a nice long weekend. And Korea is so freakin’ close, it’s entirely doable. Getting from Ogaki to Chubu airport was almost as long as the actual flight to Seoul…er…Incheon airport. Less than a two hour flight, but there was still a full meal. Well played, Air Korea, you just earned some points. Before I knew it was in Korea and got through immigration, customs, etc. pretty quickly, probably due to the fact that I didn’t have checked baggage and that customs consisted of me handing someone my slip as I briskly walked past them. No questions, no inspection, one of the easiest customs setups ever (only to be outdone by China, which didn’t even have a person standing there to take a slip).
And it’s a good thing, too, since I only had about 7 minutes to spare to catch the 6:20 bus I had planned on taking to downtown Seoul. I was heading to Sadang station, where Wallin was going to be waiting for me near a coffee shop. Thanks to the Friday night traffic going into Seoul, though, the bus ended up taking a lot longer than Wallin had expected, so instead of arriving around 7pm, the bus dropped me off around 7:30-40. I didn’t see any station entrances, so putting on my best confused foreigner face, I ask the bus driver, “Sadang?” He pointed me in the right direction and without too much trouble I found exit 12, and the coffee shop Wallin was supposed to be waiting by…except there was no Wallin. I checked inside the shop as well, but he was no where to be found. I looked around a bit, but was sure not to wander to far from the meeting spot. Eventually I heard Wallin calling me and a teary-eyed reunion ensued. Turns out Wallin saw a bus pull away right when he arrived, and assumed the bus was early and I had been on that one. It was quite the opposite, but apparently Wallin had then thought he lost me and was all worried looking around for me. Aww…he really does care about me. Now that I’m in a brand new country, what do I do first? That’s right, we went straight to capoeira practice. One-track mind? Maybe. Anywho, we get there, only to find them in a circle practicing instruments. And this is after hearing Wallin complain about them never practicing music…was he lying this whole time? We joined the circle and Wallin’s story was quickly corroborated when I heard the quality of the music. The instructor was barely singing loud enough to hear him over the instruments, and I certainly couldn’t understand what he was saying. Granted, he is Korean, and thus Portuguese isn’t his native language, and a certain amount of slack could be given for being sloppy with words, but I wasn’t hearing any consonants whatsoever. Either everyone else couldn’t hear him, or they just didn’t care, because hardly anyone was singing. And one girl who had a tambourine looked like a freaking zombie. No energy, mouth not moving, and I swear the tambourine was striking her hand, and not the other way around. We stretched a tiny bit and then it was roda time. It started out slowly and built up, and it was fun enough in that I got to play against new people, but there was definitely a lack of dialogue/communication in their play.
And then the instructor…I don’t know if he just learned a different style of capoeira regional, but I almost couldn’t stand watching him play. He never had his guard up and was throwing these lazy kicks, and all around just playing sloppily, at least in my opinion. I realize I’m not hot shit myself, but if he’s supposed to be an instructor…
It would be a good place to improve acrobatics, though, as a number of the guys in the class were pulling off barrel rolls and folha secas over the mats after class, but that’s only a small part of capoeira. Anyway, long story short, I now understand Wallin’s frustration.


After practice, we headed off to meet up with a couple of Wallin’s friends. We found them outside a bar, but Wallin and I hadn’t eaten yet, so we went to a restaurant and grabbed dinner first. They had the heating surface in the middle of the table and we ended up getting chicken w/veggies. Lots of steam shot up and helped warm me up, seeing as it was a good 20 degrees colder in Seoul than in Ogaki. The food was spicy and tasted of kimchi, but I enjoyed it and it actually went well with the soju (standard Korean alcohol, approx. 40 proof) and crappy beer. Wallin apparently hates soju, but I didn’t think it was that bad. Then again, I’ve had baijiu (China’s standard spirit), which is at least twice as strong and three times harder to drink, so my scale may be a bit skewed. After chatting it up and getting a proper buzz going, we headed to the bar, which actually ended up being more of a lounge atmosphere, to meet up with Wallin’s friends, Jenna and Carrie (sp?). They apparently bought a bottle of wine to split, but it was so bad, they had Wallin and I help finish it off. Apparently in appreciation for taking one for the team and buying such a horrible wine, they were given a plate of appetizers/snacks. It looked pretty sketchy and they hadn’t touched it. I gave one of the “nacho” looking things a try and whatever they put on top (which sure as hell wasn’t cheese) was not pleasant. I then tried one of the mandarin orange wedges, which tasted vaguely of mint, nothing like orange, and was equally unpalatable.

After chatting about life in Korea vs. Japan, etc. for awhile, we called it a night. We headed back to Wallin’s apartment, where I got to sleep in a space that was…drumroll…centrally heated! That alone was pretty amazing. Wallin’s apartment itself is pretty spiffy as well. Everything looks relatively clean and modern…he has kitchen space…and a dining table…and a not ghetto bathroom. However, he also has a bug infestation, which I don’t envy him for. And earwigs at that, blech!

The next day we got a late start, but eventually headed over to a district called Insadong, which is by far my favorite area of Seoul. We grabbed some walnut paste filled donuts from a street vendor, and those were quite tasty and filling. There was a lot a souvenir shopping to be had, so the foreigner/tourist population in this district was rather large. We were in particular looking for an awesome teahouse Wallin had been to before. We ended up wandering down all these different side alleys, which at times felt like their own little maze and definitely had a distinct personality/atmosphere. I particularly enjoyed wandering down and exploring these side paths.

We didn't find the one he was thinking of, but in the process managed to find an even better one. And this tea house is my favorite place in Korea, beyond a shadow of a doubt. The inside was super warm and had tons of character. It had a very natural, earthy feel to it, and the coup de gras is that there were about 6 or so live birds chirping freely inside. They weren’t caged, so every once in awhile one or two would fly overhead across the room. And this is to say nothing of the tea, which was also incredible. Wallin raved about the plum tea, but I went with the citron tea, which was sweet and sour and incredibly yummy. There were even a bunch of citron rinds at the bottom you could mash for even more flavor. We were waiting for Jenna to meet us there, so once she arrived, we of course had to have another cup. This time I went with the plum tea, which tasted like candy and put me in a happy place. Soooo good.
There were also these puffed rice snacks that came with the tea. They had a slightly sweet flavor and I enjoyed those thoroughly, too. If I ever make it back to Korea, I AM coming back to this place.

We attempted to go to the imperial palace that day, but due to our late start, and the fact that they apparently close at 4pm, we had to abandon that and go to plan B. This involved unexpectedly stumbling upon a new, free to the public exhibit about Hangul, Korea’s writing system, which is so FREAKIN scientific, you won’t be able to handle its awesomeness. Or at least that’s what they would like to have you believe. For some reason, Koreans take what I believe to be an inordinately large amount of pride in Hangul. I think it’s cool that have pride in their writing, don’t get me wrong, they are just very in your face and over the top about it. There was a volunteer interpreter who started explaining some of the exhibit to us. First sentence out of his mouth? “Hangul is really scientific!” *facepalm* It is certainly easy to learn (an hour on a website the night before I left was enough for me to be able to read signs/sound out words) and simple to write (no 22 stroke symbols), but there is just no end to the pro-Hangul mania. And of course they drew a comparison, saying hangul could better approximate English words than katakana, the Japanese writing system for adopting foreign words. Whatever you say, guys. To be honest, neither is perfect, and which one does a better job depends on what individual word you pick. Despite being overkill, I did kind of like the emphasis on science. They even had some navigational/astronomical tool on the 10,000 Won bill. “It’s science!”

Wallin then proposed heading to this tower that supposedly had a pretty sweet view of Seoul at night. Sounded like an all right plan. Then we got there and were in line for the cable car when we realized we were pretty much the only non-couple there. Apparently this is quite the popular date spot as well. Of course, for all I know, this could all have simply been a ploy by Wallin to try to get in my pants. He kept giving me that look, like he wanted to hold my hand. It also turns out that Korean women have a similar high-pitched annoying scream/squeal, one that I swear every girl let fly when the cable car jerked a little bit and left the platform. It's like they'd never been on a cable car before. And even if you hadn't, what were you expecting?! Of course it is going to be hanging over nothing, with a rather large drop to the ground. That's the point! Yet this was apparently reason for everyone to scream. We got to the top, at which point Wallin wanted to attached a padlock to the fence, symbolizing our love. And then he saw a place indoors that would make a mold of a couple's clasped hands, and wanted to do that. I realize he's not having the best of luck finding Korean women he's interested in, but this was getting ridiculous. In all seriousness, though, the view was spectacular, and I managed to a pretty decent shot of the night skyline.

After that excitement, Wallin and I took a stroll down this river that runs through Seoul while Jenna met up with Amy to do some shopping. Apparently the city fixed up the river area a few years ago, and it is a really nice place to stroll through. They had a lantern display going on, so there were some interesting decorations to look at as well. We wandered through one of Seoul’s marketplaces (I believe this was the “wholesale” one, so pretty cheap). After not buying anything, we were going to meet up with Jenna and Amy…who had apparently been drinking…outside, in 30-something degree weather. I can tell I’ve already been away from Wisconsin too long because for second I thought that was weird. Way to represent Wisconsin, ladies. It took a couple subway transfers to reach them, but when we did, we found they had consumed a bottle of wine…each. We also saw empty wrappers from chocolate and Camembert cheese. Apparently, this was supposed to be their dinner. Not a smart choice. We dragged them along to a proper restaurant. Jenna wanted to keep drinking, but Amy wisely slowed down. I did my best to drink most of the bottle of soju, but my efforts were squashed when Jenna ordered another bottle, held on to it, and proceeded to drink from it. Yeah, your imaginations aren’t far off…nothing good is going to come of this. The meal itself was, well, fatty. We were at a grilled meat place, and whatever we ordered was at least 60% fat. It’s a good thing the alcohol kicked in and I stopped caring, otherwise I don’t think I could’ve put down much. The grease was tasty enough, but that much fat just isn’t appetizing.

After this meal, the four of us planned to grab a taxi over to where another friend of their group was hanging out. On the way there, Jenna passed out in the backseat, and when she woke up…yup, she started puking. We got out of the cab right away (thankfully it mainly went on her bag) paid the good man (who was laughing at the whole situation) and let Jenna finish cleansing the system. Amy decided she would go with Jenna to find her a hotel for the night. This all happened quite quickly and Wallin and I soon realized we should have jumped in the cab with them. Why? Because we soon got a call from Amy saying they had to stop that cab as well for further “evacuation.” It got real interesting, because when Amy was paying the cabbie, Jenna just ran off. So she is now wasted and by herself, wandering Seoul. If that’s not a recipe for disaster, I don’t know what is. Wallin and I just decided to wander random around where we thought their cab would’ve headed, in hopes of maybe running into Jenna. Thankfully, after about 15-20 minutes, we got a call saying Amy had found Jenna and gotten her into a hotel. Whew, crisis averted. We stopped by to drop off her half puke-covered bag, which I had been carrying the whole time.

With Jenna securely in a hotel room, the three of us headed to Hongdae to meet up with the other friend of theirs. We ended in a bar/hookah bar/club that actually have a pretty cool cave-like interior. We found our own little alcove seating area and took a breather after all of the hullabaloo. Thanks to the ladies, Wallin and I found ourselves on the dance floor. Yeah, picture Wallin and I dancing…not pretty. They had a decent, if not odd mix of music, with random techno, followed by Nirvana, followed by “Rock Around the Clock.”

No one really cared to drink given the previous craziness, but Wallin ended up buying a beer just because he felt bad that none of us had bought anything since arriving at this place. We hung out a bit longer then decided to call it a night and headed back to Wallin’s place. Amy also crashed at Wallin’s place and ended up making us breakfast in the morning. I forget what they are called now (English fail) but she made the toast with an egg in the middle. I also think I drank a gallon of the orange juice Wallin had on hand. We also got a late start this day (noticing a trend?), but eventually headed toward the palace to rectify yesterday’s mistake. Amy headed back home to the countryside, but we met up with Jenna (now alive and well) for the palace.




This was pretty cool and the grounds were expansive. To be honest, this stuff all starts to look the same, so I was trying to find characteristics that were different from Japan and China. What makes this thing Korean? The degree of curvature on the roofs seemed a little more severe, and they used the green a heck of a lot more than I’ve seen anywhere else. I was also struck by one of these old style buildings having a chimney attached to it. It makes sense in terms of heating the place, but I’d just never seen that combo before. There was also a museum on the grounds that had a lot of interesting stuff about Korean culture (which I’m pretty clueless about other than Taekwondo). They had an exhibit on traditional Korean clothing and a bunch of old tools/implements…including the “placenta chamber.” Yeah, you read that correctly.
Apparently they though burying the placenta after birth would lead to an auspicious life for the child. Go figure.

On Monday, I got a late start and climbed the large hill next to Wallin’s place. It was a really nice wooded path and maybe took 45 min to get to the top. What was distinctly Korean, or at least something I had never seen before, were the little exercise stations located just off the trail. Every so often I would come upon one of these, where there were always a number of elderly folks deluding themselves into thinking they were getting exercise. At best, most of the equipment could facilitate some light stretching. The most noteworthy contraption being the spin platform that you rotate on while holding onto a steady post. A very…unique phenomenon, if anything. After getting back down the hill, I attempted to find a subway station and head to the old Olympic park, but I got turned around and ended up just exploring the surrounding area, and then killing time at a café until Wallin got back from work. We hit up capoeira again that night, and then I headed out early the next morning. On the bus back, there was a suspicious looking statue as we approached the airport. Way to keep it classy, Korea.

Roller Coaster

The next weekend (Nov. 7-11) I headed into Tokyo because I had the JET program's CIR Mid-year training seminar to attend. That lasted Mon-Wed, so I popped in early on Saturday to spend the weekend in Tokyo and Chiba. I took the bullet train to Tokyo, and quickly realized again why I'm not the biggest fan. People! And far too many of them. I couldn't even find an open coin locker to dump my stuff off. I scoured the station and then just ended up waiting like a hawk near a bunch of them until someone came to get their crap. I was supposed to be meeting my friend Elfo/Maggie/Margie (all one person), who I trained capoeira with back in Madison. She's currently studying abroad in Tokyo, so we met up Saturday afternoon. I met her in Shinjuku station, after sniping a coin locker, we met up with another random friend she had met the week beforehand while giving out "free hugs." Typical Maggie. We met Shousuke and headed off to Yoyogi Park, where there happened to be a festival of sorts going on. Yoyogi park is one of the few patches of green in Tokyo proper, and thus one of my favorite places. We wandered the park and then found the "festival," which was really more of a hippie flea market with concert performances. They also had a bunch of ethnic food stands/carts (reminded me of Madison...)where I had some awesome ginger chicken.

They also had a big banner where people could freely paint random doodles, so Maggie and Shousuke took the opportunity to showcase their art skillz. After this we walked a bit away from the main area only to find people doing capoeira under the walkway! And they happened to be the group Maggie has trained with a couple times, so we joined in the roda. It was a ton of fun getting to play with some random people and definitely made my day, if not the entire trip. Night fell, and we returned to the stage area where there were now a ton of little votive candles all over. We took it upon ourselves to create a smiley face with them...good fun.

Then some street musicians came and did some impromptu music, only to have some random trashed foreign lady join in with her harmonica. And then some random dude stood in front of them and did some combination of tai chi and Michael Jackson imitation dancing. This same dude did the same thing before at the capoeira roda. I think he might he been a bit touched in the head. Overall, it was an amazing day, and I was psyched to get to hang out with Maggie again!

I then left to meet up with my friend Erica in Chiba prefecture since I was crashing at her place until the seminar on Monday. We decided to take it easy that night and just grabbed some Italian for dinner. Feeling particularly hungry/glutinous, we each ordered two pasta dishes. The carbonara was pretty tasteless, but the spicier tomato and cheese spaghetti was tasty. The next day found me posing as a Canadian. Erica and her co-worker Adam signed up to be interpreters for a Chiba prefecture tour aimed at foreigners. Sunday was Erica's turn to do the proper interpreting, but Adam was supposed to go along as well. Seeing as I was in town, and Adam didn't really want to go, I went incognito and pretended to be Adam from Toronto. We started out heading to an aeronautical science museum, which was pretty cool, but considering I grew with EAA in my backyard (woo hoo Oshkosh's one claim to fame! *I refuse to acknowledge the existence of Country USA, besides the fact that it would be a claim to infamy if anything at all*) I had seen a lot of similar stuff before. We then stopped at a local market, where I bought a squash paste filled pastry, which was quite tasty. Unfortunately, the person doing the stone roasted sweet potatoes was all out, or I would have been all over that.

We then headed to a smaller city in the prefecture for their Naniwa festival. Naniwa are little statues that are put around the tomb of important folks. There are to protect the tomb, but they are also often used to recreate the scene of funeral. It was a charming little festival and then had some unique local foods for sale.

I tried some sort of purple speckled noodle, which I suspect was partly made of a purple colored potato. The texture was a bit odd, but it tasted fine, and was certainly the most visually interesting noodle I've ever eaten. We also found some "carrot jelly" dessert that a local family was selling. I picked up a bunch of this stuff as a souvenir treat for my co-workers. It tasted pretty similar to pumpkin pie filling, just with a different consistency.

They had a little parade and then Erica grabbed some oknonomiyaki and ate that on some steps away from the hub-bub. Erica couldn't finish it all, so I was eating the remainder when some old ladies came up the steps, one of whom, looking at me eat, said "My, you are skilled with chopsticks, aren't you?" I HATE being told this. And Erica hates this even more. Of course I can use chopsticks. Just because I'm a foreigner doesn't mean I have some predetermined tendency towards chopstick ineptitude. I'm human, I have the same five fingers on my hand that you do. Beyond that, I don't sit there and complement every Japanese person I see using western utensils, "Oh wow! You're really good at eating with a fork, that's amazing!" No, I don't even think twice about it. I understand she's a sweet old lady just trying to be nice, but it reflects an underlying ignorance about the rest of the world that pervades far too much of Japanese culture. It also is part of a Japanese concept called "tatemae," which is basically disingenuous politeness, but that's a rant for another post.

The festival done with, we popped over to Narita-san, which ended up being a pretty cool temple, and we even got a guided tour. There was a cool turtle shaped rock formation that fittingly had a bunch of turtles hanging out on it. I was a big fan of that, not sure why, but it struck me as awesome. After the tour Erica wanted to find this place that sold soft serve ice cream with a hint of local honey mixed in. We found the place, and the ice cream was worth the walk. The store sold all sorts of fruit infused honey, and had diluted some samples with water to make a really refreshing beverage. I was tempted to buy either the blueberry or citron honey, but I didn't bring a ton of money with me for the trip and the bottles were $14, so maybe next time.

After we got back from the bus tour, we headed to Chiba city and had some amazing ramen for dinner. We then caught the cheaper, late night showing (at 8:15pm, mind you)of the movie Pirate Rock, which tells the story of a particular pirate radio station's battle with the British government during the 1950-60s-ish...I think. Either way, the characters are over the top and the antics that ensue are quite hilarious-definitely suggested viewing.

The next day marked the start of the CIR training conference. We registered after lunch and were then treated to a wonderfully mildly boring presentation/group activity session about how to internationalize at a deeper level, and while having more fun. Unfortunately, I got seated next to some jackass from the Philippines who insisted on speaking in English and wasn't even trying to contribute something constructive to the conversations we were supposed to be having. So any value the session may have potentially had was squelched by my nimrod partner. I also ran into an old friend of mine from study abroad who is apparently also doing JET, but way up north in Akita prefecture. It was great to catch up a bit with him, plus he is moving down to Shizuoka prefecture to do some graduate study on a scholarship he got, so that would make a trip to hang out with him more viable.

That night I met up with Alaina (a fellow JET CIR), Sarah and Phillip (who teach English in Chiba on a different program), who are all grads of the Japanese department at UW-Madison. We grabbed dinner at a Thai restaurant in the local train station and basically shot the shit for a good while. I hadn't seen Sarah in a couple years, so it was great to see her again. Alaina and I had both learned that the hotel we were staying in had an artificial onsen (hot spring bath) on the 4th floor, so after dinner we both headed straight back to the hotel. It was amazing. In addition to a couple bigger baths with water jets, there were little personal round baths made of stone or wood. One longer bath even had log armrests and headrests, so it was like sitting in a recliner while soaking in this bath. If that's not the definition of relaxation, I don't know what is. Needless to say, it helped wash away the stress from the conference. The next day was full of workshops, five in total. I went to one on translation and then one on interpretation. Then we had the workshops that were mandatory for first year CIRs. These were a joke. The one on "business manners" covered basic material that anyone who knows enough Japanese to be a CIR has learned four or five times over in the past. Yes, I know the different degrees of bowing, how to exchange a business card, and the basics of how to use polite speech. It was like reverting to second-year language class, and a complete waste of time.

That night again involved dinner with Sarah and Alaina, but after dinner I received a call from Jon saying an e-mail was sent out with a rumor that all but one CIR job would be cut for next year. Great. And consider the ALT jobs are being slashed by over 70%, I had reason to believe there was a decent bit of credence to this rumor. This obviously put me in a horribly stressful mood, and after viewing the e-mail myself using Alaina's computer, we decided some Mario Kart on the DS would help. And indeed it did. Alaina and I played a good 30-something races, and what do you know, afterwards my headache was pretty much gone and I felt much more at peace about everything. Note to self: Mario Kart makes everything all better. Another dip in the onsen further calmed my nerves. Also, random nerdy note: The hotel room ceiling lights looked like the Triforce from the Legend of Zelda series. If I ever have a house, this is what my lighting will look like. Too awesome.

The final day we had a two more workshops, one of which was about how to give a good presentation. Ironically, it was the worst, most sleep-inducing presentation of the entire conference. After the workshops, I consulted with other folks from Gifu regarding the rumor, and the two who actually work at the prefectural government office hadn't heard anything about it, and checked with their Japanese co-workers, who also hadn't heard of such cuts, so hopefully my job is safe for next year. Yes, for those who don't know, I'm planning on staying a second year if my job is available. A couple of us from Gifu headed back together, but first stopped in the Shibuya district of Tokyo for a pizza buffet lunch at none other than Shakey's Pizza! I have fond memories of bringing my report card in for free tokens during elementary school. This place didn't have all the games, but the pizza was pretty tasty-that is, when the toppings weren't Japanified. I made my way through squid and onion pizza, as well as bacon and pickled ginger pizza, but was finally rewarded with good ol' pepperoni and onion, and then sausage and tomato. Finally, a few long and crowded trains later, I was home. I don't think I've ever been more happy to be back in Ogaki.

Current Update: I just got back from a long weekend in Korea visiting my friend Wallin. It was an excellent time and I hope to cover that trip in the next post. Unfortunately, that may not be for a while as I will be hunkering down for the final studying/cramming before the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) on Dec. 6th. I failed the thing by 3% last year, so hopefully this time it'll be revenge.

An addendum

So I realized that I forgot the events of November 1st in the previous post. A number of us had been invited to a drum circle...yes, you read that correctly, a drum circle, by our friend Eri. Apparently her mom heads up the thing. Being the morning after Halloween, most folks were nursing a hangover, but a few of us made it out to the drum circle. I certainly wasn't expecting to find this in Ogaki, and was pleasantly surprised since it reminded a lot of Madison (although this was far too organized of an event for your standard madtown hippie circle) and I had a chance to practice some of the capoeira drum rhythms. In addition to drums, there were all manner of bells, shakers, etc. This may have also been an event partially for mentally handicapped people, as there were a number of special needs kids, one of whom was rocking out some sweets riffs on a electric guitar, which actually made for a nice complement. There were folks from age 5 to 90 (and in typical Japanese old lady fashion, I wouldn't have guessed her to be a day over 75). After the drum circle, we stopped for lunch at an Italian place and then went searching for a green tea parfait that one of Rock's students had suggested to him. We found the place, only to find out they were sold out. Epic fail. Later that evening, Rock realized he didn't have his camera and must have forgotten it at one of those restaurants. Dominique wasn't feeling well, so she gave me the keys to her car to run Rock around and find his camera. So I finally got a chance to drive in Japan! The weather was absymal, and rainy, night driving is annoying no matter where you are, but I also got to try and adjust to driving on the other side. What felt even more odd, though, was having the gear box on my left side. It was a manual car, and shifting with my left hand, although doable, felt less than natural. Thankfully, though, we managed to find Rock's camera without incident, and I got a satisfy my curiosity in regards to driving in Japan.

Current Update: It was Ellie's birthday, so we all went out to Gifu for dinner and drinks. I played a few games of pool, albeit on a frustratingly small table, and talked a bit with this random Japanese business guy named Junji. He was buying people drinks and chatting everyone up in Engrish. On the train back, I commented to Sarah that Junji probably has a wife and kids but comes to the bar most nights after work instead of going home. I later found out from Rock, who knows Junji a bit better, that that is pretty much the case. Ugh...how depressing. This certainly reaffirms my decision/desire to not settle down for awhile, but sometimes I hate when my jaded prognostications prove true.

Odds and Ends

The next weekend I had to work on Saturday because the entrance exam and interviews for the graduate school were happening. Apparently, part of the interview (i.e. the last 30 seconds-2 minutes) consists of an English proficiency check, by way of a few random questions. They suggested I start off with an easy question and progressively ramp up the difficulty. So I started off asking "What city are you from and what is it famous for?" A surprising number of them couldn't understand the word "city" and even more couldn't understand "for" at the end of the sentence and what function it served. An unforeseen potentially awkward situation came up when one of the applicants was from Hiroshima. For the sake of consistency, I had to ask the same questions. Thankfully, the dude ignored the elephant in the room and said Hiroshima is famous for okonomiyaki (japanese savory "pancake" mess). After that interview, though, one of the professor on the panel asked me it sounded weird to say Hiroshima is famous for the atomic bomb. "No, no it's not. You definitely wouldn't say that." He seemed to already have an idea that something was fishy about the statement, and was asking for corroboration, but still...awkward.

The day went by relatively quickly, as the rest of the interview period was the applicant giving a presentation on what they hope to do research about, or what type of art they hope to create. There were folks from many fields and it was semi-entertaining to try and grasp what they were going for. Everything from flash animators, to photographers, a programmer who created real time feeds of twitter posts and display them in interesting manners, to musicians...with one lady in particular wanting to create music from a female's perspective that captures their sense of eroticism. Good luck with that. Sadly, once she mentioned eroticism in music, all I could think of was music by "Peaches," but maybe she's going for something a little more subtle, and a little less raw. Far too many of the presentations, though, seemed to lack a point or true direction. I though this may just be the scientist in me, but even the professors on the panel were quite skeptical of some of the applicants. Still, though, an interesting enough day at the office, and I get to take a vacation day off later for coming in on Saturday. So I'll be using this to help create a four and a half day weekend and go visit Wallin in Korea. Woot!

The next weekend was Halloween, which ended up being pretty low key. A number of folks were going to a bar in West Gifu that I didn't particularly enjoy the first time I went there, and as is the case every year, I didn't really have a costume prepared, so it would have been odd in that sense. I later found out a few folks went into Nagoya for some all you can eat/drink party at some bar. It turns out I could have had some really drunk J-girls hitting on me (as was the case for Rock and Ozzy)...dang, guess I missed out. Grandpa Collin was out in full force and so I just went out to eat with Jon, Sarah, and Anna at...drumroll please...Stamina-taro. So we again stuffed ourselves silly. I threw on the mask Wallin gave me from Korea for some makeshift Halloween attire, and that thing is NOT comfortable to wear. After the meal we took some Halloween puri-kura (picture booths) and got some spooky pictures. My green shirt, however, was the approximately the same shade as the green screen background, which made for some especially odd photos.

That next Tuesday, we had the day off for culture day, and it turned out that Nanzan University (where I studied abroad in Nagoya three years ago) was having an event for past study abroad students along with their homecoming festival. I wouldn't have gone, but my friend Pao, who I studied abroad with, is back in Japan for grad school in Osaka and was coming into Nagoya, so we decided to go together. She also had got in contact with our Japanese language teacher from that year, and so we met up with her as well. We chilled a bit at the event and then our teacher treated us to lunch at an Italian place near the campus. It was a bit odd to talk with her outside of a class context, and it was much less stressful now that we weren't her students. I actually rather enjoyed the conversation overall. She was oddly adamant, though, about me not abandoning my chemistry major to do work strictly related to Japanese. She insisted if I did so, I would "become just like everybody else." This seems like a bit of an overstatement, but I think I have an idea about what she was trying to say. I really do enjoy chemistry as well, but I can't see myself abandoning Japanese and working in a lab all day long. She suggested a interesting idea to me...going to grad school for chemistry-in Japan. Now this thought had occurred to me before, but she said I could apply for the Ministry of Education scholarship to pay for my Masters Degree studies, and it is more of an opportunity to meet a professor, who will have a network of folks he can introduce me to, which could turn into a job. I have been trying to figure out how to properly marry my two major into some job I enjoy doing, and this seems like a more promising path to that end than I have been able to come up with on my own thus far. I'm just not entirely sure I wouldn't be miserable doing grad school without some folks to properly vent to. I think the natural depression that coincides with grad school coupled with the fact that one never quite feels like they belong in the society and that it's hard (at least for me) to make friends with Japanese people (I will go into this in a later post...).
At the very least, that is one possible pathway I am considering at the moment. The rest of the day, Pao and I hung out around Nagoya and did some shopping in Osu. All in all, it was great to catch up with an old friend and a solid trip to Nagoya. Yes, I realize there are no pictures in this update. As Captain Murphy would say "Too bad."

Next Post: Mid-year CIR training conference (a.k.a. A giant waste of my time)

Current Update: I've had some distressing news today. One of my good friends here is going to have to leave the program early and is in fact heading back to the U.S. next Monday. This is coupled with the recent news that ALT positions in the prefecture will be cut from 30-something to 7 next year due to a lack of budget. This means that should I stay here another year on JET, all of my current friends will be gone, or at least relatively far away. This has been weighing somewhat heavily on my mind this past week. More on these unfortunately developments later. In lighter news, I went to Nagoya today and got to eat at my favorite Italian place from when I studied abroad. Nothing like food to make you feel better!

The Last Samurai...part deux

I could very well have also titled this post "a weekend of gluttony." It started out on Saturday with Jon and I heading to Bellmart, the Brazilian grocery store where we pick up the acai berry paste for our breakfast concoction. It also happens to have a small restaurant attached to it, which serves some amazing food. After having a late breakfast, I still decided to order the lasagna, as I was actually craving some Italian. Apparently there is a brazilian (or at least just this place) twist on lasagna-namely, no tomato sauce and then a layer or two of deli ham in the middle. It wasn't what I was expecting, but it had loads of cheese, which kept me happy. We also bought ground beef to make tacos that night...but after getting back home I got a message from Ellie (who lives several towns east of us) saying her and Anna would be in town to go to a buffet restaurant and wanted us to come along. A huge warning flag in my head went up as the only buffet restaurant that came to mind was Stamina-taro, and I was not in any shape to thrown down at that place after the massive lunch at Bellmart. I asked Ellie if that was the intended destination, but she didn't know. Jon and I meet Ellie and Anna at Ogaki station to find out that Anna had had a different, apparently healthier buffet place in mind, but after hearing about Stamina-taro, they wanted to go there. I couldn't believe it was happening myself. Stamina-taro twice in the span of 10 days...this is not what a sane person does, especially considering I wasn't anywhere near hungry.

Thankfully, stamina-taro is good 45-50 minute walk from the station, but even after that I wasn't even close to hungry. I tried more sushi this time, but mainly hit up bowl after bowl of Purple, with a little bit of green tea and orange sherbet just to mix it up. I was let down, though, seeing as they weren't putting out the seasoned fries that I gorged on last time. I also noticed that the Purple is seasonal, so it won't be around forever. NOOoOoOOo! I was beyond stuffed...and not exactly proud of my decision making that day, but whatever, Anna and Ellie don't get into town too much and it was fun catching up with them.

That being said, we did end up hanging out with Anna and Ellie again the next day, but this time we all made the trip out to Sekigahara, where my friend Ozzy lives. The "trip" is actually a mere 10-15 minutes on the train going west, but it was my first time heading out there. Sekigahara is the site of one of the most famous battles in Japanese history, and this battle basically sealed the deal in terms of the Tokugawa clan seizing power and being able to set up their shogunate. Once a year, the townsfolk do a re-enactment/dramatization of the events preceding the battle and then the battle itself. So we all went to see that.

It was quite cool in that the garb all the performers wore was rather detailed. We found some of them rehearsing before the real deal in a side area of the park and watched for a bit. We asked for a picture with them, and then one guy let us hold an old fashioned teppo musket/gun. While I was holding the gun, the one guy put his helmet on me, which made for quite the photo opportunity. At the same time, I know it looks ridiculous on me-something that Tom Cruise was apparently blissfully ignorant of when he made The Last Samurai. I have a beef with that movie...and Tom Cruise...and especially Tom Cruise trying to speak Japanese-my ears bleed uncontrollably at his every utterance.

We eventually made our way to the open area where the main event would be going down. They started it off by firing the old fashioned guns off numerous times, and then had an entire play/re-enactment of the battle of Sekigahara. They had the pre-battle strategy meetings and whatnot, too. The actual battle scenes left a bit to be desired, but these are mainly locals, not professionals, so I'll give them pass. Besides Ozzy, who lives in Sekigahara, Anna and Ellie came as well. It turned out Ellie had a friend back from university coming to Nagoya, and so we ended up meeting her and having dinner in Ogaki at Chorky's, the american-style diner, which rounded out my weekend of gluttony.

A most epic weekend

Before I knew it, my birthday was creeping closer and closer, and partially out of laziness and general lack of social coordinating skills, I hadn't really spread out the word and planned anything big. We threw together some dinner plans a couple days beforehand and sent out the info, but ended up not getting a huge turnout, which was fine by me. Another reason for low attendance may also have been, oh...the freakin' typhoon that was scheduled to hit Gifu on my birthday. They were hyping up Typhoon 18 something fierce and said it had the strength of another past typhoon that ended up killing/injuring thousands. I didn't quite believe it, but people at work were concerned and told me I should come to work an hour early so I'd be at work by the time the typhoon's brunt was supposed to hit. I smiled and nodded, telling myself I'd play it by ear. It wasn't looking good, though, as when I left work that day, it was already pouring pretty hard...and I had forgotten to bring my rain gear that day, crap.
Shortly after arriving home I received a call from the apartment building coordinator telling me where the emergency evacuation site was, and that I would need to bring my own food if it came down to going there. A couple of us decided to grab bags of granola just in case, and headed to the nearby grocery store. The bread section was a freakin ghost town. They had some bakery donuts, etc. left, but loaf bread was nowhere to be found-that in and of itself was a bit surreal.

Yet even after all of this, I woke up the next morning to simply a cloudy sky and barely a drizzle. Thankfully, the typhoon had stayed south of Gifu prefecture (although where it hit, it did hit hard), so I had no problem getting to work, and the weather even cleared up a bit later in the day, so the dinner plans were back on. It ended up being a small group of 5 of us-mainly the Ogaki crew-Rock, Sarah, Jon, myself, and then Ozzy from Sekigahara (who is pretty much part of the Ogaki crew). Rock had told us of a magical all-you-can-eat restaurant called Stamina-taro. And they aren't lying, you NEED that stamina during the 90min. you are given to take full advantage of the grill your own meat (at your table), salad bar, noodle salad, udon, yakisoba, fried chicken, shrimp, fries, fruit, cakes, puddings, sushi, COTTON CANDY, crepes, ice cream...and I know I'm forgetting plenty.

Ozzy was an absolute grilling machine and somehow managed to eat 4 plates of meat, seemingly without slowing down one bit. I had some meat, and tried the potato and noodle salads, which were a taste straight from an American-style backdoor cookout. I also gorged on some of the most amazing seasoned steak fries I've ever had.

I also tried the sushi, which was decent. At this point, though, we were all getting a little loopy from the food/sugar, and, just for the sheer absurdity of it, I decided to pioneer a new culinary delight-grilled sushi. Yeah, it makes no sense-that's the whole point. They also had amazing grape sherbet, which we all just referred as "Purple." I swear Purple tasted just like the old Kool-aid flavor Purplesaurus Rex, anyone else remember that? That stuff was amazing. Eventually we all hit our wall, but not before making Stamina-taro wish they had never let us in. I sincerely doubt they made much, if any, profit off our visit.

That Saturday, we decided to trek up to Gifu castle, which rests atop a somewhat sizeable mountain. We met Rock's friend Duncan, who lives right near the base of the mountain in Gifu city, and headed up.

It was a nice hike with plenty of pretty nature, and it ended up taking about an hour to reach the castle. This was definitely about the journey, not the destination, as Gifu Castle was nothing terribly special. The view from the top of it was pretty spectacular, as you could even see Nagoya. The inside was modernized and consisted of a modest museum. The hike back down went much quicker and we went in search of a restaurant that Rock wanted to visit. After getting slightly lost we arrive at the place only to find out that it is closed in the middle of the afternoon. We decided to screw it and hopped on a bus back to Gifu station, where we randomly met a few other JETs on our way to an Indian curry place.

The next day was absolutely epic, as it was the infamous Jumangoku festival in Ogaki, which basically consists of various groups/organizations carrying portable shinto shrines in a parade, while progressively getting more and more drunk. As fate would have it, the city hall always enlists the help of local area JETs to help carry their shrine. So we all gathered near the city hall, donned our festival happi jackets and proceeded to the parade starting area. Various groups were already getting down to business, and by that, I mean drinking. We also had, quite literally, a cart of alcohol being towed along with our shrine the whole time. We broke into the beverages and did the initial group toast, promising to do (and drink) our best.

The group next to us was taking it to the next level, as they had made a circle, and were one by one entering the circle to drink a bowl of sake. Rock saw this and wanted in, so he approached them and had a go in the middle of the circle. It looked like a lot of fun, so I wandered over and was soon in the middle of a circle of middle-aged Japanese guys, screaming at me to drink. It went down quickly and without a problem (thanks to my time at UW-Madison) and was an excellent experience, not a mention a nice little kickstart toward inebriation. And we had nothing to do while waiting for the parade to start...so we kept drinking. Nothing like being buzzed at one in the afternoon...yikes.

The parade lasted about two hours and was a blast. We rotated in shifts for carrying the shrine, shouting "wasshoi" to help coordinate the constant heave-ho-ing of the shrine. It felt great to actually be a part of the event and be stared for a reason other than being a foreigner (although that was probably still part of it).

After the parade ended, there was the traditional throwing of rice paste chunks from atop an elevated platform. Everyone in the crowd below attempted to catch them and/or scramble to grab the ones that had hit the ground. Despite certain deficiencies in hand-eye coordination, (not sure why that was...) I managed to snag four of them out of the air, and I was relatively pleased with that number.

After that was an enkai (a large group party typically at a restaurant) that, earlier in the day, I had presciently decided to forego, as I figured I wouldn't really need anymore alcohol and didn't feel like dropping $30. Instead we all killed some time back at the apartments and then headed to Chorky's Diner (a 1950s syle american diner that serves proper burger, fries, shakes, and whatnot) for the birthday dinner of our friend Eri. We pretty much took over the place, with some random dancing even breaking out between the booths.

Despite the early onslaught of booze, I stopped after the parade finished and was actually in decent shape when I went to bed. Thankfully, the next day was a holiday and we were all able to properly and fully recover from the day's festivities.

Current Update: I had to work Saturday this weekend for the admissions exam/interviews, and spent today skyping with Maria and the capoeira folk in Madison and then watching UFC with Jon et al. It was great seeing people from capoeira again, but I can't help feeling a bit bummed that I'm not in Madison right now for the batizado. A little capoeira music ought to do the trick...

Silver Week Slackin'

First off, thanks Aaron for the advice, I think I'm going to adopt that policy next time I'm asked about Japanese women..."I think they're good." End of subject. Although I fear that might lead to follow up questions. A couple nights ago a guy in my capoeira class asked me that question when he was giving me a ride back to Gifu station. He then of course asked what kind of women I like in general, and I'm pretty sure his head nearly exploded trying to understand my response.

Anywho, the next big event was the so-called "silver week." Japan has an annual string of holiday in April/May called Golden Week. A lot of people go traveling and it's a pretty big deal. Well we had three holidays in the fall line up this year, and so people were dubbing it "silver week." This meant I had a five day weekend (yay government job!). Unfortunately, I didn't have re-entry permit yet, or I might have accompanied Lauren on her trip to Korea and visited Wallin. But I still made a decent time of it. Jon and I decided to take a trip to Nara, which was the capital city a long, long time ago. It's main claims to fame are the giant Buddha which is housed in Todaiji, the largest wooden building in the world. Apparently they had to rebuild it after a fire, and the original building was even larger. This is hard to believe, as the current structure is an incredibly impressive sight to behold.

On our way to Nara we had a couple transfers and it was maybe 3 hours total one way.
At the last transfer, a rather frazzled older foreign lady came up to us and asked us if this was the train to Nara. We assured her it was the correct train and ended up chatting with her all the way to Nara. She was apparently here on some military related program, but she basically is assigned to different countries for 60 days at a time and runs programs/classes/workshops or something of the like for the troops. It sounded like a pretty neat gig and good way to see the world. We parted ways at the station since Jon and I had yet to eat lunch. We were looking for tempura, but ended up bailing once we realized it was going to be $20 for a lunch that had a few pieces of tempura and wasn't going to fill us up. We grabbed lunch at a random place that had some tasty looking fried foods. My lunch consisted of some pork, lotus root, and another random vegetable. The real awesome part of this place was that rather than the standard green tea or genmai tea, they had a pitcher of ice cold rooibos tea, a variety of red tea which I absolutely love. On top of that they even had thousand island dressing, which was an unexpected little taste of America. On that note, though, I am going through ranch dressing withdrawals. Mmm...

After lunch we headed toward Todaiji and Nara park. While wandering the grounds outside of Todaiji, we happened upon some sort of event, as a bunch of chairs were set up with a number of folks already waiting in their seats. We stood around trying to figure out what it was when some dude came up and explained to me that they were doing a demonstration of the yagi, a traditional spear-like weapon that also has a couple small blades perpendicular to the pole. Apparently they only do this demo once a year and it was happening in 10 minutes. Jon and I thought we had hit the jackpot and promptly grabbed seats. The program said they would be demoing the 14 basic techniques, 14 "secret" techniques, and then 7 combination techniques. And this wasn't free sparring in any sense of the word, they a bunch of very rehearsed exchanges, which would be fine, if they were using actual weapons. Instead they were using completely wooden practice weapons, which took away from the excitement. Also, about as complicated as it got was parry, thrust. I'm pretty sure the parry-thrust combo isn't a "secret" technique. Sorry, guys. None of the demos really seem to show off a whole ton of skill, so it was overall rather disappointing. But we did have a bit of sunburn to show for it after an hour in the sun.

We hit up a small museum after that, and then headed into Nara Park proper, where we met up with Nara's other claim to fame, "wild" deer. So there are a ton of deer roaming all over Nara park and at this point they are all extremely domesticated, since the big thing to do there is buy these special crackers and feed them to the deer. Well it seems over the years of domestication the deer have developed a sense of entitlement. The minute you are even in line to buy the crackers, the deer are on your ass like white on rice. And they are aggressive. While just waiting in line I had one biting and pulling on my back pocket flap, and then he started headbutting my leg. And this dude still had little antler nubs that packed a punch. The little bugger even landed a glancing blow to the digital camera in my cargo pocket. Thankfully it still worked fine. Once I obtained the cracker I had an "entourage" of 10-12 deer and had to work quickly and carefully to feed them all without getting my fingers nipped.


I managed to get rid of the crackers without too much incident, but soon after saw a Japanese guy who made the mistake of not holding his ground. It was quite the sight to see this dude throwing crackers while running away from a pack of deer.

We also came upon one deer who had a glazed over eye. It was a little freaky, but the deer also looked kind of badass because of it. I think that deer might be the Highlander...or something. I also respected the older deer who just sat there, not begging or headbutting for food. Their jaded, stoic expressions said "I'm too old for this shit."


We then hit up Todaiji itself, which is an amazing sight from the outside. The sheer scale of it is mind numbing. Upon entering we checked out the main attraction, the giant Buddha. It was definitely very cool, and very big, but I saw a boatload of buddha while in China, a number of which were more impressive. The background behind the buddha was quite intricate and well done and offered more to look at. As we wandered toward the back of the buddha, there was a relatively long line that had formed. One of the pillars in this room has a square shaped hole through the base of it. They say if you can crawl through this small square tunnel you will have good fortune. It looked pretty small, but taking pride in being a scrawny pale guy, I had to give it shot. So I probably waited about 20 minutes for a chance to crawl through a hole. Yeah, sounds enthralling, I know. While waiting I saw a number children make it through, and one adult made it about halfway, but then needed his buddy to pull on his arms to get out. After seeing that I had some worries. But when I got down there I went in on the diagonal and scooted through without a problem. Thanks to Jon for the camerawork on this one.

After that we headed up an incline path to this shrine that had an incredible view of Nara. We chilled up there for quite awhile soaking in the view. Then we went exploring some of the forest paths, and found a section lined with stone lanterns, which was very cool, if not a bit surreal and eerie. It felt like a bit a time warp and served as another one of those "yup, I'm back in Japan" moments.

At this point we had worked up quite an appetite and decided to grab dinner on the way back to the station. We had initially thought of staying a night, but to be honest, we covered everything we wanted to see there in one day. We grabbed dinner at a random restaurant where I had Mega Omu Rice-flavored rice covered with egg and demiglaze sauce topped off with some fried goodies.

We didn't know the train schedule well, but left early enough where we thought we'd be safe, even with two transfers (one at Kyoto, another at Maibara). The Kyoto transfer was fine, but when we got a Maibara, there were a ton of people waiting on the platform, which is very suspect, given the size of the station. It turns out the trains were running 20-25 minutes late, which pretty much never happens. It was definitely my first time experiencing such a heinous violation of the time schedule in Japan. We looked at the schedule and soon realized that the time delay was actually a godsend, as without it, we would have missed the last train back to Ogaki. I wasn't anticipating the last train back to be 9pm, that's for sure. So we narrowly dodged having to spend the night in po-dunk Maibara, without a place to stay (there is next to nothing at this stop).

Obviously a bit tired due to turning Nara into a day trip, I just chilled on Sunday, but Jon had mentioned how the weather would be perfect for disc golf. And in our handy little region guide it mentions that a nearby country actually has a course although it is, quote, "a little smaller than those in America." I was surprised the concept of disc golf had even made it over here, so we decided to make that our adventure on Monday.

We took a train about a half hour north to the small town of Ikeda. We had hoped that since they have a course, somewhere in the town along the way to the course, there would be a place selling discs, as in America, nearby gas stations often sell them. When we actually arrived in Ikeda and started walking a few minutes, we quickly lost hope. There was next to nothing. It was a good 25 minute walk from the station, and along the way we stumbled upon one of the most ridiculous (yet awesome) things I've ever seen...and egg vending machine. Yeah, you know you've hit the country when you see a freaking EGG VENDING MACHINE. I still can't get over it.

We eventually reached the sign for the disc golf course we had seen in our guide, but were stil sans discs. So we decided to stop at this nearby cafe to get some soft serve ice cream. We were pleasantly surprised since they had green tea ice cream, which was made from the tea grown in Ikeda town itself, and according to the menu, is a variety you can only get at that cafe. And it was definitely some of the best green tea ice cream I have ever had. We then asked the lady running the store about where we could buy discs. She had no clue but suggested we inquire at the nearby sports complex. We did so and found out there really wasn't a place to buy discs, but that they rented out frisbees for free. So although not proper discs, it was still a nice deal.

We get to the park to find that the "course" is 6 holes randomly strewn about a bit of open green space, which is shared by many families and couples tossing baseballs, having a picnic, or just laying around enjoying the weather. That and the "holes" were maybe 70-80ft long whereas a standard hole should be 300+. So it was a bit disappointing, but we still had fun with it, making up our own "super holes." I let one toss get away from me, and wouldn't you know it, it was heading straight for this couple lying on a blanket. My instinct was to yell "fore!" but I quickly aborted realizing they won't have a clue what I'm saying, let alone know it is directed at them. So I just watched in half-horror as the disc nailed the guy right in ribs. 10,000 points! I ran over and apologized profusely, the whole while his girlfriend/wife was laughing her head. She seemed to think it was the funniest thing in the world. I didn't feel quite as bad after seeing her reaction. Later they got up from their blanket and were gone for quite a while, leading Jon and I to posit that was probably getting some sympathy action after getting hit-so I basically did him a favor.

The park itself was top-notch, and the weather was amazing. It's not often you have that much open space in Japan, so it was a nice change of pace. I took the opportunity to practice a little capoeira, complete with music via my iPhone-that thing sure is handy sometimes! We eventually called it a day and headed back to Ogaki. The last two days of silver week were spent chilling and relaxing after we realized our Wednesday plan of heading out east to a waterfall we could jump off of required a car to get to the destination.

Current Update: I attempted to make Ad's peanut butter pie. I couldn't get the cream whipped properly by hand, so the filling wasn't quite as fluffy. I brought into work this Friday (I would've brought it on my actual birthday if it weren't for the typhoon) and a couple of my co-workers mistook the oreo crust for black sesame. Odd.

Internationalize this!

So I left off yesterday lamenting my lack of Japanese friends, so I was pleasantly surprised when one of the graduate students randomly came into the office where I worked and asked if I wanted to grab lunch with him. His name is Furukawa Koichi and he does research regarding using the internet and classroom exchanges with underdeveloped countries to increase international consciousness. He was particular interested when I told him about the distance learning Japanese language courses I took back in high school. Another time when we grabbed lunch he was asking me what I thought about news coverage in the US and what station most people watch, and which one I prefer. I don't have a particular news station I like so I gave a vague answer. Then he asked me what I thought about FOX, and I told him straight up what I thought of their fear mongering, supposedly "fair and balanced" coverage. This was apparently a lead-in question as he pulled out his laptop and started showing me clips from the documentary OUTFOXED, which I guess made it all the way to Japan. I had been meaning to watch it at some point, but this was the first I had seen of it. He was basically asking me if what they were claiming was accurate. He has also seen the documentary Jesus Camp (highly recommended if you haven't seen it already) so we started talking about religion and whatnot. Overall a really interesting guy to talk to, and even if it's only one person, it's that sort of deep conversation across cultural borders that I feel foments international understanding. I feel there is only so much I can do to "coordinate international relations" from my office desk.

Furukawa-san is also a past participant in JICA (Japan's equivalent of the Peace Corps) and spent a couple years in Syria. He was kind enough to invite me to a weekend gathering of JICA alumni for a workshop and a barbecue. I figured it would be other folks his age (i.e. only a couple years older than me) and a good chance to meet Japanese folks who have a broader perspective and some interesting experiences under their belt. I was a little put off when I met Furukawa-san at Gifu station and the other folks waiting were all in their 50s or above. It was a little awkward at first. I rode in Furukawa-san's car up to the cabin we were staying at, which was about an hour north. The cabin itself was amazingly nice, complete with an old school coal/ash cooking pit.

After checking out the place, we all set up some tables and then had a workshop that was supposed to help us examine our experiences abroad and better relay what we had learned to other people. The brunt of the workshop involved taking a picture and making up questions about the pictures to ask the others in our group to get them to imagine what the circumstances of the picture might have been. Then we gave them the answers and what we learned from the situation in the picture, or how it changed our way of thought. Although overall not terribly interesting, it succeeded a bit in getting me thinking about my experiences abroad. One lady in our group came to the realization that her consciousness as a Japanese person was lacking, and that she needed to form her identity as a Japanese person properly in order to bring "Japanese flavor" to the internationalization table. I don't know if I agree completely, but I liked the idea, mainly because I myself certainly don't spend much time, if any, thinking about how I identify as an American. Being abroad, it is extremely easy to lose touch with your home culture/identity. That and I'm not exactly the stereotypical American, either. I don't care much for hamburgers and don't watch a ton of big name movies. In other words, my finger isn't on the pulse of American pop culture. I'm fine with that, but I hadn't exactly thought about how that affects my ability to internationalize. I'd prefer to think it enhances it, as I'd much rather break the stereotypes they get of us through the media than reinforce them.

Anywho, after the workshop finished, there was much FEASTING! There was a barbecue with some high quality Japanese beef and chicken, garlic soaked mussels that were out of this world, along with tons of side dishes and alcohol to boot. Being an international crowd there was a number of treats, including chocolate from Ghana, marzipan from Spain, some funky sweets from China, and dried mango from Burkino Faso. To be honest, I didn't care for the chocolate and the candy from China was super sketchy and robbed my mouth of all saliva. There were a number of half-eaten Chinese candies, so I wasn't the only one. The marzipan was super tasty and the mangoes...well, they were mangoes. I was more excited just because they were from Burkino Faso, which has one of the best named capital cities ever. I don't mean to be name dropping, as I'm going to be complaining about that later on...

Everyone there was extremely kind and one guy I talked with while making a food platter was fun to talk to, and he talked a mile a minute. I appreciated that he didn't slow down or pull any punches just because he was talking to a foreigner. Later on in the evening we all gathered around and folks did their formal introductions and talked a bit about their international experiences on JICA and in general. It was mildly interesting at first, but many of the older guys felt the need to give their whole life story and didn't know when wrap it up. It wouldn't have been that bad, but it seemed to devolve into a pissing contest about who has been to the most places/done the most things.

Later in the night I somehow ended up talking to this random older guy while snacking on leftovers, when he started talking to me about Japanese women. Namely, how although he had been to all these different countries around the world he believes Japanese women are the most appealing. He claimed they were extremely nice and submissive and always tried to "build others up" and serve. Wow, way to completely pigeonhole your country's entire female population into one personality. It also didn't help that most of the reasons or traits he listed as being positives I don't find terribly desirable. So I just smiled and nodded, pretending to agree with everything he said, as I didn't feel like debating with a half drunk old dude.
Much later into the night I talked extensively with a pair of older guys, one of whom was a chemistry major, coincidentally enough. He had been in South America testing the water supply and working on ways to clean it up. That sounds like an amazing experience and an application of chemistry that has meaning behind it and doesn't leave you stuck in a lab everyday. As interesting a conversation as we were having, somehow the topic of Japanese women came up again and they asked what I thought of them. I really didn't want to answer this question since most Japanese women I've met aren't even close to my type and I didn't want to offend them, but also because THERE WERE STILL WOMEN IN THE ROOM. Yeah, let me just sit here at talk about them as if there aren't within earshot. So I hemmed and hawed without giving an answer until they finally gave me a way out with "Oh, so it's a difficult question?" Yeah, that's it. Then they proceeded to tell how there were a number of cute women at the workshop and that I should "find one I like." I'm pretty sure almost all the girls there were over 30, save for one who was about my age. She even spoke English to a certain extent, but she talked to me in a vaguely condescending and deliberately slow manner, possibly due to the fact that's she a teacher, but her tone and manner irked me to no end.

I crashed on the floor, caught a few zzz's and woke up to fresh fruit being cut in the kitchen. And then we had more grilled meat...yeah, for breakfast-it was awesome. Clean up commenced, I waded briefly in the nearby stream, and by noon-ish we were on our way home. It was quite the interesting weekend, and a marathon of Japanese conversation, which is always a good thing. I came back with the impression that despite having been abroad, a number of them still lacked a certain multicultural awareness or sensitivity that comes with growing up in a nation as diverse as the US (not that Oshkosh is a shining example of diversity, but still...). At the core they remain Japanese. And as much as I feel I've hit the stage of "biculturalism" there are certain aspects in which I remain stubbornly American. That may be a post for another time...

Current Update-For Maria and others wondering, I acquired ring worm on my knee from jujitsu class. I didn't have a gi yet and was wearing shorts to class. I got mat burn on my knee which was then directly exposed to all the lovely nastiness that grows in a sweat soaked jujitsu mat, including, apparently, ringworm. I'm taking a break from jujitsu until it clears up, which is not wholly unrelated to the fact that I've pumped out two updates in two days.