Days 11-12: 週末（weekend!)

[You can perhaps tell by these uncreative titles that my Japanese vocabulary remains limited. Oh well.]

This past weekend felt like a mini-vacation in itself, a break from the heavy studying material of the days before. Saturday morning, I woke up in a leisurely manner, to find instructions on the kitchen table written half in Japanese, half in English – for how to make pancakes! Okaasan had work in the morning, and set up the griddle and batter for us to help ourselves to a pancake breakfast.

Once home from work, Okaasan and I went to an afternoon concert, two sopranos and a pianist, half Japanese music and half Western classical. It was a short bike ride away, and rather enjoyable; interesting to hear a lightly different style, and a style I'm familiar with in a new context. During their encore they invited everyone to sing along.

By the way, bikes are everywhere here. Everyone seems to have one to commute with, and not just young folk.

Later in the afternoon, in the middle of running some errands, we stopped at a convent at the outskirts of the city, established during the Meiji period (once the ban on Christianity was lifted) and still active today. Visitors are not allowed inside the walls of the convent proper, but the outer court was a beautiful site that attracts tourists regularly.

Saturday evening, we finally got the chance to meet Okaasan's husband (Otoosan, as it were – "father") over dinner, along with Mariko and Kento. Dinner featured a bunch of different small plates, and we shared some sake to go along with it. Back at home, Kento, Mariko, Nick and I stayed up late and chatted while Kento and I worked on our homework.

I did NOT eat this

But I did eat this

And this

Come Sunday, I really didn't do much of anything but more resting around the house, and some studying. As I was working on updating my blog, Okaasan plopped a big bowl of ramen down in front of me – delicious (and especially because it didn't have many assorted items like squishy wheat gluten).

Then, in the evening, since the weather was nice and clear, Okaasan took Nick and me to Mount Hakodate (Hakodate-yama) to see the famous view of the city. We rode up the ropeway to the observation station at the top of the mountain and it was absolutely packed with people clamoring to get their own photo of the view as the sun sank into the horizon.

Before we left, we went to a less-packed area and got a different angle of the city below. Then, when I looked up – would you believe it? – the Big Dipper was right there above me, as if it had been placed there just for me. It was, well, surreal.

Well, the weekend is over now and it's back to work. Here's to more adventures.

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Days 8-10: 疲れていた（"I became exhausted")

Wednesday

By Wednesday, I was feeling pretty discouraged. I'm not quite sure why – I think the increasing awareness of my inability to communicate, especially in talking, as well as the knowledge that even the more basic level class I was in was not "easy." There's also something oppressive about the difficulty of the learning of this language, because it just takes so much time. It's not a quick fix, it's not a short burst of hard work, but a long haul of diligent work over several years to achieve anything resembling fluency, and I've only taken the first few steps. I suppose the things in life most worth doing require this kind of effort, and it definitely applies to whatever I'll want to go into with music and theater.

Each day, we've been going through about 2 chapters of the textbook in review, which means our quiz each day features several grammar points and about 30-40 new Kanji characters. Lots to remember. Even though there's lots of material, class itself goes somewhat slowly, somehow. I'm not sure what it is, I think I'm just used to the Yale style, which was pretty much consistently engaging and always moving. (Plug for the Yale Japanese program – excellent professors and methodology, I definitely took it for granted!).
For lunch, a group of us decided to go to the nearby sushi place, Kaitenzushi. It's a chain of restaurants that have the conveyor belt of sushi that goes around, and you pick out what you want. The color of the plate indicates the price. While I was there, I sample the Hakodate melon, which is so very juicy and sweet, and also infamously expensive (they go for $20-$30 a melon… !)

Now, I decided to join under the impression that this sushi was somehow affordable. This was a very, very false impression. Someone got their information wrong. I ended up spending about $26 just to not be hungry, and though it was very, very delicious, my wallet was definitely hurting. Then, of course, I reminded myself that I'm being funded for this whole trip and I don't really have much room to complain – and hey, maybe I could consider this a cultural outing. At any rate, it will be back to the $5 lunch meals for the next several days...

Well, anyhoo, after lunch we stopped to dip our feet in the public footpath right outside the restaurant. (Please don't ask me why the water is that color… I'm just assuming it's minerals or something.) While there, a few local high schoolers started up a conversation with us, and it was so great to talk with them, even despite my broken speaking ability. It's these kind of interactions – and great people - that make this whole thing worthwhile, I think. I'm a grammar nerd, and I think the kanji are beautiful and cryptic, but when it's said and done I love the door this language study opens up for me to an entire society of people that would otherwise be forever at a distance from me.

I could only chat for a few minutes before heading back to the school building, which I so regret. But I had signed up for another Oral Proficiency Interview with a professor, this time 30 minutes long. It's optional, to gauge our ability, and then I'll do it again at the end of the program to gauge my improvement. It went fine – I was ranked as Intermediate-Mid (not bad, I suppose) – but each time we would get into a topic, conversation would hit a clear standstill when my vocabulary just ran out. I can't really speak about anything in much depth at this point. For instance, when asked about what was going on in the news, I mentioned Iraq; she asked what about Iraq, and about all I could say was "There are bad people… who are doing bad things…. because society."Profound, no? Nuance is something I am not yet capable of. I will get there gradually, I suppose. Man, it is so hard. In English, I so appreciate the ability to manipulate the language, to get inside it and crawl around and explore its crevices, to recognize the subtle changes that come from choosing specific words and their ordering (Thank you, Andrew Ehrgood and English 120). Maybe one day I'll get there.

Still feeling pretty discouraged, I decided to walk home for a breath of fresh air, and to get a sense of all of the city I was passing by each day in the tram. It's a long walk! I walked for about an hour and a half, then hopped on the train for the last few stops. I passed some pretty, and interesting, sights on the way.

Yep, KFC

Thursday

Thursday was a better day. After class, I got a peanut butter donut from a nearby bakery (maybe that's all it takes to make the day good? hmm…). Then, our activity for the day was a forum discussion at a local high school English class. We walked up to Nishi high school, perched at the top of the hill, removed our shoes at the door, and got to talk in small groups about our dreams and what it means to live in a global society (pretty ambitious topic, eh?). The English teacher, whose English was slightly choppy but understandable, said it was his dream to raise up students who could speak English out in the world. He's doing a pretty good job.

On the way back home, Nick and I and another friend were talking in English, and it was actually really great. Nick (my house-mate here) and I had previously decided we'd do all our communicating in Japanese, but it's difficult, and prevented us from getting to know each other too well. It also just got me frustrated when my Japanese was clearly less experienced, etc. But this gave us a chance to break some of the ice, and once we got a home, a delicious meal awaited. Okonomiyaki, pancake-like things with vegetables inside and topped with bacon-like meat. She made tons, and I could only eat two and a half (along with the squid sashimi, salad, and soba noodles on the side).

Afterwards, she pulled out a home-made fruit liquor she had made years before, from plums, Japanese sake, and sugar. We sampled a bit – it was very, very sweet (delicious).

Friday

Finally, Friday arrived! It felt like at least two weeks had gone by, due to the density of classes each day. During class, I gave a presentation on my hometown (we each have to over the course of the next few days), and talked about Forest Park, the Muny, and the Arch. For lunch, I had a delicious curry-rice from the HIF kitchen, but it didn't fill me so I went and got a thing of noodles from the convenience/grocery store nearby. The food there is very cheap – I'll probably be eating there more often.

(There was also an ice cream bar, not pictured) :)

After lunch, we had a mandatory lecture by a professor of Japanese from England. The talk was moderately interesting, he talked about his background, stumbling upon the Japanese language, and (briefly) on some approaches to the language classroom. Afterward, I participated in a research study one of the professors was running, then I headed back home and got myself an end-of-the-week congratulatory snack. (I haven't had chocolate for a while!)

Later on, after dinner, Okaasan showed us how to make the plum-drink she had showed us the night before. She doesn't really drink them, but likes to make them, she said. Then, to cap off the evening, we went to another local onsen, and there I was able to relax a bit, before snoozing right when we got home.

All in all, a tiring first week. Lots of different emotions, changing with each day. We'll see what the coming weeks bring. It is my continued goal to maintain this as something that is spiritually and emotionally rewarding as well as intellectually – to get my head out of the textbook and keep learning from real life and people here.

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Days 6-7: 勉強 (studying)

Well, the vacation is over. It came to a screeching halt on Monday morning with the start of classes, and I've been struggling to stay on track since. Well, OK, that's actually a little dramatic – and I do hope the vacation isn't truly over, because if I only wanted to study, I could have stayed at Yale to do that. And that seems to be the viewpoint of the Light Fellowship as well; they aren't paying for us to come to Asia and sit in our room with a book all day. At the same time, a certain level of performance is expected, and I really do want to learn and improve. There is just a lot of material for me to review/learn/catch up on, and I'm not quite sure how to approach it.

At any rate, I'll try now to recap the past week, the first week of classes. My goal is that every day while I'm here there should be something blog-worthy, though I won't be able to blog in detail every day. It's incredible how much my feelings have fluctuated over the past week, from excitement to anxiety to stress to insecurity to frustration to happiness and around again (it would have been good to document them as they happened, but alas…). I am definitely very aware of my limitations in communicating in this language – it's a tangible barrier I meet in every interaction, inside and outside the classroom – and I'm learning to be OK with where I am (after just 9 months of study, I have to remind myself) and embracing the opportunities to learn from mistakes I make.

Monday

Monday morning came bright and early, but my body woke up naturally around 6:30. It has been doing that on its own, who knows why (because you know I'm not a morning person)… I guess a result of the time change in coming here. Okaasan set us up with a hearty breakfast – all of which was pretty amenable to our American taste buds (cereal resembling Frosted Flakes, fruit, egg + ham, croissant w/ homemade jam, and coffee to start out the day).

After breakfast, we gathered our belongings together (I was running a bit late getting ready, surprise) and Okaasan showed us the way to school for our first day. The commute is actually pretty easy, especially compared to some friends who live out in the rural stretches of town. From our front door we walk about a block to the nearest tram stop (a street car that runs through the city – I love it), then ride for about half an hour, then walk a few blocks uphill to get to the HIF building.

Walking to school

The uphill isn't so bad, but then walking up the four flights of stairs to the classrooms reminded me that I haven't seen the inside of a gym for two years… I'm thinking this summer will help me get some exercise. Once we arrived, we got our class placement; I'm in B-組 (B−gumi), the second of six levels, which is where our Yale Japanese professors wanted us to place coming out of our first year. The day began with a tour of the facilities, and then we had our first of 3 Japanese classes in a row, with breaks in between.

Osaka-san shows us around the building (here, the cafeteria) 

B-組 classroom

 In class we're using a different textbook than we use at Yale, and I don't like it quite as much, but it will do fine. We spent the first few days of the week reviewing the first half of the textbook (some of which was new and some was review for me – it's a second year textbook), and over the course of our first month-long "semester" we will finish the book before moving to another one. In general I have a lot vocabulary and kanji (chinese characters) I need to catch up on, but I'm comfortable with many of the grammar structures. [That isn't very interesting, is it? Sorry…]

For lunch I headed to the HIF kitchen, where there is a daily selection of a few items, including a daily special bento box. Today's featured chicken in some sort of sauce (sorry, not very detailed), miso soup, etc. It didn't quite fill me up, but for $5 it's a pretty good deal. The building is shared with Japanese students studying Russian, so over the course of my time here I should chat with some of them.

Lunch special at the kitchen

After lunch, I wanted to explore the area a little bit, and I ended up wandering inside the Catholic church right nearby. There are several churches and shrines in the Motomachi area, where the HIF building is. I wondered inside (no pictures were allowed, sorry), wondering about how this church came to be, then sat inside and prayed in the peaceful silence of the sanctuary.

Hakodate Catholic Church

One of many beautiful shrines

I then tried to find a city center I had heard of where there was free WiFi, and it was actually quite close, but I turned around about 4 times trying to find it. With my blonde hair and all, I surely stuck out as a lost foreigner. But once I arrived at the Machizukuri center, it was a splendid place to study, with John Coltrane playing from the speakers. I ordered a cup of coffee (a little expensive, but I forgave myself. I have $8 budgeted to spend on lunch each day, so I had a few dollars left over).

Studying at the Machizukuri center

Around 5:30 I got up to go home so I could make it home by 6:30 dinnertime. Of course, I got off the tram at what I thought was the right stop… but was actually a stop early. After walking around for a bit in the drizzling rain, confusedly unable to find Okaasan's yellow house, I turned to my iPhone for navigation help. Thank God for the iPhone and the data roaming I get from my T-Mobile plan! When I did get home, awaiting us was a splendid shabu-shabu dinner. Various meats and vegetables are placed into a pot of boiling water in the middle of the table, and you pick what you want with your chopsticks and wave the food back and forth in the water (hence shabu-shabu, the sound it makes – kind of) before taking it out, dipping it in a sauce, and eating immediately. We sat and ate as Okaasan sat across the table and kept the food coming.

This was followed by hours more of studying. Every night's homework includes a few written worksheets as well as studying for a daily quiz. Earlier in the day I spent a lot of time on things I was already supposed to know, so I had all of the work due the next day still to do…  I soon realized I needed to rethink this approach.

Tuesday

Tuesday came and it was much the same routine, only this time I spent my pre-breakfast hour cramming and scrambling to finish the homework I had left unfinished (does that sound familiar to anybody who has witnessed my past 15 years of education?). We're still in review-mode in class, so some of it is slow-going, but there's generally so much material that I have plenty to learn. At the end of the school day, we had our first small group about our Independent Study projects. I hate big, open-ended tasks, but I'm trying not to agonize to much over this. I'm thinking I want to study some aspect of Japanese traditional music, and maybe learn a specific instrument.

The view out of our classroom

Snack at tea-time

Lunch at the HIF kitchen – delicious pork at the middle

After class, we had a cultural class on Japanese traditional music – what do you know. Unfortunately, I didn't find it to be the most interesting, but that may be just because I couldn't understand much of the Japanese, and they didn't go into to much depth into the music. At one point the leader of the class taught us a bit of a very popular traditional Hakodate folk song, the Esashi Oiwake.

Explaining Esashi Oiwake

At the class, reporters from the local news media were there, and they asked some students to be interviewed. I volunteered, but once on camera I could not understand – or reply – anything at all. I literally stood there and said "Uh… uh… sorry…". Well, I'm sure they aired that clip… Afterwards, Nick and I went to the local Starbucks on the bay to study for a bit. Yes, I know, not exactly cultural.

Okay so I cheated a little. Studying snack! 

Dinner was absolutely delicious, the main feature being a rice bowl with a soy-glazed tuna. Oh man. The food is getting better and better (with the odd such-and-such every now and then).

DELICIOUSNESS.

After dinner, I was pretty exhausted and I fell asleep on the couch until 9. Oops! Lots of homework to catch on after that.

If you're interested, the general schedule for my school-days is as follows (with some variation, of course):

6:30am Wake up (...hopefully…)
6:35am Shower and get dressed
6:50am Finish homework, study for quiz
7:30am Eat breakfast, continue studying
8:05am Leave house
8:10am Get on the tram toward Motomachi
~8:42am Get off at Motomachi, walk up the hill to HIF
8:50am Last minute studying
9:00am Quiz and Ohayoo-time
9:15am Class 1
10:05am 10-minute break
10:15am Class 2
11:05am 20-minute "tea time"
11:25am Class 3
12:15pm Lunch
1:00pm Cultural activities and/or exploring and/or studying
5:30ish Get on tram towards home
6:00ish Get off tram, walk home
6:30pm Dinner!
7:15pm Homework and studying, accidental napping, perhaps an episode of the Good Wife (if I deem that I deserve it)
~12:30am Sleep

[The rest of the week coming in the next post… Thanks for reading!]

Yoneuchi-san's abacus
(still widely used here for daily computations)

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