FLAMINGO HAS LANDED

All right, people- get hydrated, use the bathroom, get a snack. This is going to be a long post.

AND SO IT BEGINS

My Japan experience started out with three days of orientation in Tokyo, which quite frankly I think is just a means for the program to give us a few last words of wisdom and allow us to get over our jet lag a bit.  Otherwise, orientation was completely uneventful (unless you count the 6.1 magnitude earthquake that awoke me our first night, followed by two slightly lesser after shocks over the following couple of days).  That said, I have no complaints about being put up in a swanky Tokyo hotel for a few days.

A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

I live in an old school Japanese neighborhood, about a 20-25 minute walk from school.  When I say "old school," I mean that the houses are in the traditional Japanese style:

The street I live on is stone, suspended above two streams that flow on either side down from the mountain.  I suspect these are irrigation lines for the rice fields and gardens around town.  The acoustics of my room are such that I can hear the water burbling at night and in the mornings, which is wonderfully Zen-like.  Up the hill is a gorgeous Buddhist temple, which includes a small graveyard: 

Up the mountain, about 3.2 km, is a castle, which is said to have a magnificent view of the valley.  I attempted to head up there on Sunday, but got lost around kilometer 3, and had to return home.  Castle - 1.  Me - 0. 

My apartment is quite spacious, with three rooms: the kitchen, a sort of living room/office, and my bedroom.  Off of the kitchen is a small (think airline bathroom sized) bathroom with a toilet, sink and shower, and a tiny washing machine.  Yes, everything is smaller in Japan.  The kitchen and the living room are western style, which means that even though they have beautiful paper screen doors, the floors are wood. The bedroom, on the other hand, is Japanese style, again with the screen doors and windows, and a tatami floor.  I really, really love my apartment and the area it's in, and having compared it to the living spaces of other JETs in the vicinity, I think I've lucked out beyond imagining.  

The kitchen

My airline-sized bathroom

Le boudoir

The living room

CULTURE SHOCK

Before coming to Nara, I had been warned about culture shock at orientations pre-departure, Tokyo and Nara, not to mention the stack of program materials that were sent to me over the course of the summer.  I listened to JETs, past and present, talk of being reduced to tears over mix CDs their friends had made for them, getting lost while riding the train, or simply being overwhelmed by the heat and a new job and trying to figure out life and establish a routine.  I was fairly confident that culture shock wouldn’t be an issue for me.  My reasoning consisted of: I am so happy and excited to be here, how could anything go wrong?  I was essentially made impervious by my love of Japan.  This, of course, is the kind of hubris that tempts the gods to smite you.

When I breezed into my local grocery store on my second day in the prefecture, I was first struck by how small it was, and then by the fact that everything was in unintelligible Japanese.  In retrospect, I realize that this should have been fairly obvious, seeing as how I live in Japan.  However, I had thought that I could guess what things were based on pictures on the packaging.  Instead, I found myself staring at coolers of strange fish, inscrutable sauces, and trying to divine if the bag I was holding contained salt or sugar.  I paced relentlessly through the (4) aisles of the store, and am confident that I freaked out more than a couple of people when I stood frozen for several minutes, clutching a bottle of what I thought could be soy sauce, inwardly spiraling into a black tizzy of despair.  How was I going to feed myself? I saw my future spanning before me, a continuum of carrot sticks and grilled chicken UNTIL THE END OF TIME. 

It’s no small thing that the source of my meltdown was my weakest point: my stomach. For those of you who don’t know, I. Love. Food. And I defy any (hungry) person to not feel a sense of despair when they realize that they are going to face seemingly insurmountable challenges in fulfilling one of their primary human needs: to feed themselves. Think about the vague nervousness you feel when you’re about to choose a chocolate from an assorted box, but have no idea what’s inside, and amplify that to an infinite power. It’s enough to make you go catatonic. Eventually I calmed down.  I bought a few things I recognized and could cook, and resolved to do more research into kanji before returning to make my next purchases.

That said, if the Japanese language were Jeopardy!, I'll take Japanese foodstuffs for the win, Alex.  I can't say "I don't speak Japanese" in Japanese, but I can pretty much name every type of fish, noodle, dumpling, fried food and other miscellaneous ingredients that come my way.  This is the one area in which I have an edge over the other JETs, many of whom speak excellent Japanese, but for whatever reason can't tell red bean paste from sweet potatoes. 

A, B, C, D, E, F, G....

As you may have surmised from my anecdote about the grocery store, I don't speak, read or understand any Japanese.  I'm working on this, slowly but surely.  Japanese has FOUR sets of characters: kanji (seemingly infinite in number, very formal, and related to Chinese characters), hiragana and katakana (fewer and more informal than kanji), and romaji (the Roman alphabet).  JET offers a correspondence course starting in November (yes, November) to help JETs learn Japanese.  However, all the materials are in romaji, which makes them effectively useless since ALL THE THINGS here are in kanji or, if you're lucky, hiragana/katakana: signs, labels, computer keyboards, etc.  I'll break this down for you further.  Romaji would help me the most to retain Japanese, since I'm a visual learner, but even if it helped me build my vocabulary, I still wouldn't be able to navigate the country on my own.  Alternatively, the truly best way for me to learn would be to memorize hiragana/katakana first (which will only allow me to read maybe 40% of everything), and then slowly work my way through kanji.  But honestly, it's all just a bunch of squiggles to me.   There is a rock and a hard place, and I'm sandwiched in between, gibbering in a weird Japan-glish mix that often features random words from Spanish and Mandarin (which is really weird, since my Mandarin knowledge is nonexistent). 

SUMIMASEN!

Day 1 of work can be summed up in one word: "Sumimasen" ("Excuse me").  As new teachers, but more importantly, the new gaijin teachers, the faculty is eager to meet me and DL, offer assistance, and for us to like them.  We are approached  3-5 times a day, with someone saying "Sumimasen...," even when they are doing us a favor, like dropping a small snack on our desks.  Each sensei  (teacher) has a different level of English proficiency (which in many cases is nil), but we somehow manage to communicate.  I'm pantomiming things to a point that it's become an aerobic workout.  Over the course of several conversations, I was asked multiple times about what my hobbies are.  As I swapped activities with the teachers, I realized that hobbies are the most Japanese way of expressing individuality.  In a culture that emphasizes community over the individual, one's hobbies are a modest means of signaling what you're interested in, and what sorts of skills you possess.  I feel very unaccomplished in comparison to these gardening, musical, artistic, and athletic people. 

JAPANESE CULTURE 101

In my first 3 days in my village, I found myself the recipient of a multitude of kind acts from virtual strangers.  First, from the teachers and school officials who took us to dinner and lunch, helped us register as foreign residents, set up our bank accounts, and this coming week will help us iron out Internet and cell phone plans.  Then from  Art sensei, who bestowed upon me a bookmark with a woodblock print of a samurai that he made himself. 

Then Literature sensei, who has offered to teach me to cook Japanese food.  Then Vegetable sensei, who brought me three large grocery bags of okra, onions, cucumbers and potatoes after I expressed an interest in his garden. 

Kocho-sensei (the principal), offered to take me and DL on a hike in the mountains later this year to see the fall colors.  One of the gym teachers invited us bowling this week.   And when we casually stopped by the library to say hello, the librarian brewed us apple tea and started stuffing us with snacks.

On Friday, DL and I explored my neighborhood.  We bowed and said "Konnichiwa" to everyone we encountered.  I greeted an older lady, and she handed me a plastic fan, said a few (to me, unintelligible words) and walked away. 

We went on further, and it started to rain, and neither of us had any rain gear.  We stopped to consult a map, and out of nowhere, a man came up to us from across the street.  We stood aside, thinking we were in his way, and he pressed an umbrella into DL's hand and said, "Present! Present."  And then hurried off. 

It strikes me that Americans pride themselves on being warm and nice.  Moreover, there's a significant contingent who pride themselves on being good Christians.  And yet I can't envision anyone in America acting with such unprovoked good will towards not only perfect strangers, but even stranger than strangers, foreigners.  I've always heard the Japanese characterized as reserved and polite, but they are demonstrative in their own way.  And in a small town, where everyone could easily be suspicious of us, the people we've met have been nothing but gracious and welcoming.  I'm humbled and a bit mortified by everyone's generosity, kindness that I haven't warranted and can't fully repay.