Thoughts from Kyoto - January 9

A cool jenga-like game with shougi pieces.

My room. That's a heater on the floor that keeps me sane in the winter.

My bed, which is sort of a mini-bunk with a place to hang clothes and put stuff underneath.

Totoro alarm clock!

A sign of civilization.

I’ve moved in with my host family – though not completely, since my luggage isn’t here yet. Somehow, I have a feeling that this semester will be totally awesome. The commute hasn’t gotten any shorter, but the family seems very nice. All of the guides regarding study abroad strongly recommend staying with a host family for a full experience in a new country, and I think that this is definitely the case. Sure, I’ve only been here for about an hour or so but already I feel taken care of.

Contrary to my expectations, the family is rather young, which is surprising because most Japanese houses are fairly small, thus leaving little room for foreign students until the kids graduate from college and leave the house. So sometimes you’ll have host fathers and mothers that are 60,70, even 80 years old. Interestingly, for mine the parents are roughly 40, and they have a daughter and son – 13 and 11 respectively. Now the really badass part is that apparently, they’ve been doing this for 13 years. How awesome is that? This really means a lot to me (their experience) because I’m bound to make a ton of cultural and everyday mistakes, and knowing that the family has probably seen it all before just makes it a more forgiving environment with room for growth. Maybe I’m just good at seeing blessings.

I’m really in Japan. This still blows me away. Ever since my host mother picked me up from the Kyodai Kaikan, I’ve been constantly speaking Japanese, and it appears that this will basically be the case for my entire stay here, as I don’t think English is going to work *at all*. There are a lot of sentences and words that I don’t understand, which is entirely to be expected given my limited language ability, but I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by how much I *am* able to understand. At least, I think I understand – maybe I’ll find out the hard way tomorrow that I didn’t actually get the correct directions to the train station or something. Regardless, my family has been doing everything they can to make me feel comfortable in a new place – shortly after we arrived at the apartment, the boy (Shouma) showed me how to get to the train station (roughly a 7 minute walk or so), pointing out various useful landmarks to help me remember the path, as well as how to buy a ticket to my destination. If I survive this, my Japanese is going to be SO much better, particularly casual speech. You really improve for real once you’re tossed into an environment where you have to use your limited language abilities or else. Depending on how hard you’ve been studying, you might find that you’re actually way more capable than you thought you were (though the reverse is certainly also a possibility). At first I used the polite form of speech, which is what I’m most comfortable with – but as I interacted more and more (with Shouma in particular) I realized that it really does seem somehow awkward, and I’ve now begun my feeble attempts to use casual speech forms more and more in the proper context.

I’m definitely going to make a crapload of grammatical mistakes, but again, isn’t that why I’m here? Trial by fire – what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Random thoughts so far:

-Dang, the travel distance from Kyodai to my place is quite impressive.

-I have now seen a real-life kotatsu – these things are made of pure awesome. They are everything that I thought they would be, and more. Okay, that may be exaggerating it a bit, but so far I’ve been constantly impressed with Japan, whether it’s how they deal with the density and small size of the country by using space very efficiently, or how they cope with the cold in a resource-poor country – the kotatsu is an example of that, and the philosophy of heating individual rooms when necessary, and packing layers onto people. Obviously, none of this is uniquely Japanese per se – there are distinct similarities with Taiwan, especially in regards to handling winter, but all of these factors come together to create something distinctly special about this place. And I’ve only been here for 3 days.

-It’s funny what you take for granted. Cell phone, wireless internet access, transportation, the ability to understand and be understood…

-School cafeterias are really cool. It’s not like at the University of Michigan where you had a meal plan and swiped your card to get into a buffet-style cafeteria, but rather you choose what you want to eat from a huge variety of options: rice, ramen, soba, udon, soups, drinks, mini plates of vegetables, etc. and then go up to the counter. The pleasantly surprising part has been the fact that it’s actually affordable. While dinner yesterday was mad expensive, apparently there’s also really cheap Japanese food too – I got a bowl of curry udon for 304 yen today, which is about $3.20 in US dollars. I feel like I’m in food heaven.

UPDATE: Okay, it’s official. Japanese home-stay dinners are AWESOME. Delicious stuff, with lots of little plates and stuff, miso soup and tea…

-Something I feel a little bad about is the fact that since my main luggage hasn’t arrived yet I can’t give my omiyage (gifts) to the family, and that feels somewhat odd since it feels like you’re supposed to give them to the family shortly after you arrive out of politeness. I’m sure they’ll understand.

-So I definitely have a *long* way to go as far as becoming proficient in Japanese goes – at dinner today we were talking about jet lag and time zones, and the parents were describing how even though Okinawa and Hokkaido are in the same time zone, the sun comes up and goes down at a seemingly different time – I felt like I understood roughly 50-60% of the conversation, if that much. Either way though, it was quite an interesting experience attempting to discuss and talk about everyday things. This family really gives me a good vibe – the way they talk about things at the table, and the sense of warmness.

-They have a Wii and DS. Why am I not surprised? ^_^