1: Kids are pretty much free range here.
I've probably mentioned this somewhere in a previous blog post, but you see little kindergarteners all alone on the train all the time here. You see little kids in groups of two or three wandering around town together after school gets out. You see little kids taking the bus alone. While I know the community does a good job of taking care of the kiddos as a whole and bad stuff practically never happens here, whenever I see a tiny human walking around all alone, it's a real battle not to go over and ask them where their parents are and if they're okay. I know then I'd be the creepy one, though, so I don't, but it's not easy.
2: Junior high school and high school students have way too much pressure put on them.
The older of my two homestay sisters (I'm pretty sure she's somewhere in between the last year of junior high and the second year of high school; not positive where, though) never, ever has any free time, it feels like. She has school every day Monday through Saturday, and oftentimes doesn't get home till after I've gone to bed due to clubs and daily cram school, too. Plus, whenever she finally gets home, she still has homework to do (and almost all day Sunday, her one day off, is spent doing homework). She seems to be really brave about it and doesn't seem to mind too much (she's practically always smiling whenever I see her and seems passionate about her studies, at least), and I know that once she hits college, her life will be a heckuva lot easier, but I'm still a little frustrated on her behalf in the meantime. At least she doesn't have a baito (part-time job) to worry about or a bunch of household chores to do like some kids around her age, but then again, many kids her age go to the five-day public schools instead of a six-day private school. Her younger sister, who's in grade six now (the last year of elementary school), only has class five days a week (since she's not in junior high yet) and doesn't go to cram school. While she does have soroban and piano lessons every week, at least she's usually home by the time we eat dinner on weeknights. They both say they love school (Aya-chan's (the younger sister's) spring break was a lot longer than Rimi-chan's, and by the time break was over, Aya-chan was complaining that she wanted to go to school again), but it's still a little frustrating to me to see kiddos younger than both of my high-school-aged brothers in one case and younger than my little sister in the other having to constantly put their nose to the grind so hard. I'm proud of them both, Rimi-chan especially, but I really wish the poor things had more time to relax. It's currently Golden Week, and even though neither of them have school, poor Rimi-chan still has a daily school club she has to get up early for every morning. The whole thing is just a tiny bit ridiculous, I feel like.
3: Outside of Hirakatashi, the rare times you see a fellow foreigner, aside from clueless tourists, of course, everyone just kind of... instinctually nods at each other like "yup. You're not from here, either. Sup?"
I've discovered online this is actually referred to as the "Gaijin Nod" by some people. I've only had this result in an actual conversation once; yesterday, actually. I was on the train to Nipponbashi in Osaka (not to be confused with Nihonbashi in Tokyo; they're both written the same in Japanese/kanji but pronounced differently) to watch a bunraku (puppet theatre) play, and I glance up to see that right across from me is a guy who's sticking out like a sore thumb almost as much as I am, aside from the fact that his entire outfit isn't decked out in bright pink.
What can I say; it's a happy color.
We do the Gaijin Nod and smile a bit, and I go back to staring at the floor and waiting for my stop (there's not much outside scenery when you're actually in the subway), but glance up again to see he's walked across the car to talk to me.
"Which country are you from?" he asks in a heavy accent with a bright smile.
"Amerika," I answer out of habit, and then correct myself, "The United States."
He grins even bigger. "Ah, I'm from Liberia."
We had a nice chat about our experiences in Japan while waiting for our stop (we both ended up getting off at Nipponbashi). The second he learned my name was Elizabeth after asking, he excitedly asked if I'm Christian, and told me happily that he is too. When I asked his name, what I heard was Momo, but I'm sure I'm probably spelling it wrong. He told me that he got his masters' here in Japan and that now he's looking for work, but the fact that while his spoken Japanese is fluent, he can't write it, is making it pretty difficult. When I told him I can write all the kana and a couple hundred kanji (I can read around a hundred-ish and can understand almost four hundred thanks to heavy self-study this semester), he said that I must be very smart, which made me laugh a bit. We parted ways at the station and didn't exchange contact information or anything, but it was still a nice conversation. It just really stuck out to me because you almost never are approached by strangers here, which I hadn't fully processed until yesterday.
4: Amerika is actually not the official Japanese name for the US.
I learned this by accident the other day while flipping through my homestay's daily newspaper (yeah, those are still going extremely strong here; it's one of the "readingest" countries in the world). The official name is actually Beikoku, which means...
Drumroll please...
Rice Country.
Yeah, it made no sense to me at first, either. Turns out that back in the prewar days, America/the US (which was officially then pronounced "Amerika") was written as four kanji (the Chinese-sourced pictographs) that could be read in such a way that sounded like Amerika. One of those kanji was the kanji for rice, which can also be read as "bei." So, they yoinked the one kanji out of the classic name once they started writing "Amerika" in katakana (the syllabic system used mainly for foreign loan words and names), added the kanji for "country," and bam, you have Beikoku.
So I'm technically Beikokujin (Rice Country-ese, literally Rice Country Person). Which made me laugh a bit.
5: Getting eyeglasses is about a billion-point-five times easier here.
I learned this by accident today.
Since my homestay isn't allowed to feed me lunch on weekdays, even over breaks, as part of the homestay agreement with the school, I ended up in downtown Hirakata (since I can get there for free using my bus pass) to grab lunch at the station Lotteria (a Japanese burger joint) and wander around the stores there (there's a massive book shop I like to spend time in, even though the English section is very small and I'm not fluent enough to really read any of the native material, sadly). One of the shops I stepped into after seeing something cute in the window was an eyeglasses place. I was looking at some of the frames (which were all priced really affordably) when a shopkeeper stepped up to me.
"Which ones do you like?" he asked (in Japanese, of course).
I pointed out a pair. "These are cute, aren't they?"
"Oh, yes, very cute."
He had me try them on, and I ended up trying on several pairs. I was thinking to myself, I can't get a pair; I don't know my prescription by heart, or how to properly communicate it in Japanese, and it might take too long for the new pair to arrive so I might be gone by then.
Turns out your average random, tiny Japanese eyeglasses corner store:
A: Has a little machine that they stick your current glasses in, it scans them for like ten seconds, and boom, they have your exact prescription.
B: Can have a new pair of glasses ready for you to pick up in an hour.
C: All this for about $45 for the cheapest (but still really high quality) frames.
$45 for a brand new pair of frames with prescription lenses and a case.
So yeah, I'm currently sitting here in my room wearing a brand new pair of really cute glasses I didn't originally intend to get today, but I'm not complaining. They're adorable, a style I see girls my age around here wearing a lot (in the decently rare cases that you actually see a girl around my age wearing glasses).
Also, when I told the female shopkeeper who rang me up that in the US it takes around three weeks to get a new pair of eyeglasses, she was totally floored. "That's so long!" she exclaimed emphatically in shock more than once.
As I told my friends, I guess Japan is just truly magical in many ways.
One thing I know for sure: I really, really don't want to leave.
No comments:
Post a Comment