one broad abroad in japan for a semester 私は一人で日本にいる。
pictured: all of the food my mom sent me in a care package, also known as “my mom is better than yours” also known as “katelyn how did you manage to gain all that weight” also known as “food quest 2012”
the woman at the school who gave me the box looked sincerely concerned for my safety and my ability to get it home
the customs label says the following:
i love my mother
i just had the most delicious dinner of my life. or at least the most delicious dinner i’ve had in japan.
i went with my host family to an all you can eat yakiniku (grilled beef and other meats and whatnot) place. basically we ordered half the food in the restaurant and ate all of it.
i had:
I FEEL LIKE I GAINED FIFTEEN POUNDS BUT IT WAS GOOD
IT WAS ALL WORTH IT
the best part,though?
probably just the fact that i went out to a public place with my host family and had an amazing time eating and laughing with them. it was great. i’m starting to feel more comfortable and confident around them and i sincerely enjoy and love everything we do together. i am so lucky to be staying with these wonderful people.
i wonder if i have “awkward family bonding” written on my forehead. or maybe “hey we just met let’s get naked.” because remember waaaaay back in one of my first posts when i talked about how my host family took me to a public bath within hours of our first meeting?
yeah.
that happened again.
so all the pictures above are from the lovely little island of shoudoshima, as promised in my earlier post about spring break. i had a great time and it was beautiful and quiet and warm-ish and full of delicious food.
so i traveled for 3 hours by train and one hour by ferry to get there, and 20 minutes after setting my stuff down in the house my friend’s mom says: “OKAY LET’S GO TO THE PUBLIC HOT SPRING.”
yeah okay. great.
now don’t get me wrong. hot springs are fucking awesome. i just don’t understand why it’s my destiny to see every japanese woman i ever meet naked within an hour of us meeting.
anyway.
while i was in shoudoshima i visited the following places: a memorial park for giant rocks, a park full of olive trees, and an eighty foot tall state of the buddhist goddess of mercy.
first, the stone park: basically the story is that stones used to build osaka castle were taken from shoudoshima, but some of them got left behind (maybe because they weren’t good enough, maybe because they were just unneeded, either way i feel bad for them). so now they’re all lined up in a little memorial park next to the sea. there’s a series of little buildings you can walk through that explains the history of the event, including how the stones were carved out and transported to osaka, which is quite a ways away. the buildings are full of cool old pictures and old tools that were used for the job. my favorite part about this place was just how gorgeous it was. the sea was lovely and everything was arranged beautifully. it was also cool to think about people moving those massive rocks back in the day when manpower was the only power.
olive park: so shoudoshima (due to its mediterranean like climate) was the first place in japan to grow olives, and they’re pretty proud of that. there are olive trees everywhere there. people often even have their own little bunch growing in their gardens (the family i stayed with had one lonely little tree). so the largest groves are open as a park to visitors who can walk through and read about the trees and whatnot. there’s also a hotel with a hot spring and of course a little history museum/gift shop thing. let me tell you about this gift shop: it is full of food that is made from olives. DELICIOUS food. i ate a billion free samples of little candies (olive chocolate, which basically tastes like white chocolate except a thousand times better and oh my god i’m salivating just thinking about it) and delicious bread dipped in amazing olive oil. it was great. i bought a couple things and the family i was staying with kindly bought me some candy.
giant buddhist statue: also known as dai-kannon, or “big kannon.” i don’t know what the goddess’ actual name is but in japanese she’s kannon and they really like her here. you can go inside the statue and explore. it has three floors: first, second, and observation deck. the first floor is filled with rooms that have various religious set ups in them. they were beautiful. also a GIANT rosary. the second floor is a maze. it is literally a maze of tiny kannon statues. THEY’RE EVERYWHERE. they are all dedicated to people who donated money to the statue. there were literally thousands and honestly we were a little creeped out, especially when we saw the spiral staircase which leads from the second floor all the way to the observation deck, some sixty feet above in kannon’s necklace. the staircase is also lined with little statues. did i mention how freaked out we were?
we took the elevator.
in short, shoudoshima was a nice little break from hirakata/nagao. i’m really glad i went there and super grateful to the nakanishi family for giving me a place to stay and showing me around. in all honesty though, when i finally stepped off the train at my home station i really felt a rush of relief and a sense of being back home. i guess i’m starting to really be in love with this little city.
i should really update this blog more often! sorry i suck so much, you guys!
not a lot has happened lately though. it’s the last week before spring break so everyone is either getting ready for finals or getting ready for travel. i’m going to be spending a few days in shoudoshima, which is a small island in southern japan. it’s famous for being the setting of a well known book/movie and also because it was the first place in japan to grow olives successfully (it’s sometimes called olive island and also has wild monkeys and beaches). my host family’s niece who normally stays with us has been visiting with her parents there and she invited me to join them for a few days because i didn’t have any big spring break plans. i’m pretty excited and also really grateful. i’ve never really been to place that’s like wow this is obviously an island. japan is big enough that it’s not immediately noticeable when you’re just walking around here. shoudoshima is quite small though so it should be cool. also the beach. WHEEEE.
so i’ll stay there for a couple days then come back to osaka and relax a bit. then on the last saturday of break i’m going to kyoto again, but this time i’m going in a rented kimono! kimono’s are like tuxes here, you could own one but they’re expensive and you won’t get to wear it often so why not just rent? for those who don’t know kimono is a traditional japanese style of dress that is extremely beautiful but incredibly hard to put on/wear. i’ll make sure to get pictures of myself trying to function in one.
basically this spring break should be pretty cool even if i’m not going to okinawa or hiroshima or SOUTH KOREA (soooooooo jealous) like a lot of my friends. i might even get a chance to visit universal studios japan during the week. i’ll take a huge amount of pictures and share them with everyone and it will all be fantastic. yayyyy.
Warning: long, personal, emotional post ahead. Don’t read if you don’t want to.
Today was hard.
A rather disturbingly sad video we watched in class started me thinking of Claire again, and as usually follows, I couldn’t stop myself from crying.
I’m usually at Oberlin most months out of the year, and it’s only been since July that it happened, and there was only a month and a half of being home to even think on it, so I think it makes sense that when I usually think about Claire and cry my eyes out, I do it at school. Of course I cried a lot over the summer, but that was more like a continuous flow of tears rather than the unexpected and ridiculously strong breakdowns that hit me now. Of course, there’s also my biggest fear to factor in, the one that hasn’t left me since I went away to college for the first time: I’m terrified that the people I love will die while I’m gone.
Now that I’m thousands of miles away, that fear can be crippling at times.
And today I realized something terrible. Normally when I break down at school any number of people is around that I can go to. Beautiful, wonderful people who somehow find it in their hearts to put down what they are doing and let me cry my eyes out (usually into their sheets). I can’t possibly explain what this means to me, that people exist who care about me—pitiful, overemotional, abysmal me—enough to let me get through these episodes by their side. The amount of love I have for them is endless.
But here in Japan I basically have no one. All the people who knew Claire and understand what I’m going through are at home. All the people I usually go to for help are at Oberlin or other parts of the globe.
Here there’s just me and a couple hundred people I can’t even talk openly with on a regular basis. It’s true, I could try and be close enough with them for that to happen, but I’ll only be here another three months. Three months into my freshman year I hadn’t even spoken to 75% of the people I consider my best friends now.
This isn’t to say I’m not trying to make friends here. Of course I am. I enjoy my solitude but I am not at heart a solitary person. I love people. I love conversation and laughter and closeness. Sometimes I crave it and that’s what’s hardest; when I break down into tears over Claire I don’t want to be alone, but who can I go to who won’t feel put upon or uncomfortable?
Today, Jordan was kind enough to take me to a beautiful, quiet, little park and let me cry next to her. She made jokes and cheered me up and was in general the savior of my day, and I’m very grateful for this. But I probably can’t expect Jordan to make that kind of sacrifice all the time. It’s not fair to her and honestly there will probably be times when even if she wanted to help she just couldn’t, due to distance or otherwise.
So today was hard. It took a toll on me that I’ll probably be reeling over for the next few days. But sitting in that quiet park, with the help of a friend, I was able to laugh and wipe my tears away and let the sun (today’s weather was perfectly gorgeous, I like to think it’s because somewhere Claire was smiling on us in that way she used to, where her smile would be drawn in like she was embarrassed almost to be enjoying something so much, but her eyes would sparkle and shine and show how truly amazingly beautiful she was) warm me up, and maybe that will be enough to get me by.
so my host mom went out for a little while and asked me to watch the kids. su-chan was sleeping on the couch (you can see her for a little bit here) but tora-kun really wanted to play. so of course i stuck bits of sticker to his face. he reciprocated. it was lovely.
this really is the cutest child of all time, and here is the proof.
also please ignore my japanese. thanks.
My host mom bought these slippers for me at the other day. I’ve probably mentioned before how Japanese homes don’t tend to have heating. Wearing shoes in the house is also completely unheard of. So most people wear slippers. I didn’t have any until now. :)
These things are incredibly warm and comfy even if they look awful. For those who don’t know, the animal on the front is Chopper, a reindeer-ish character from a Japanese show called One Piece, and of course he is wearing a Hello Kitty hat on his head.
My host family is basically just incredible.
So if you live in America there’s a good chance you have been walking down the street and someone passing you in a car has catcalled at you. It happens a lot. I can’t think of a place where it might be nonexistent, except maybe an upper class suburb or something.
I do not come from a nice suburb. I come from a relatively shitty part of upstate NY. People do not respect other people very often. I have been on the receiving end of some really strange catcalls.
Last night I experienced my first catcall in Japan. It was weird.
I was walking to a restaurant with my host family’s niece. A car passed us and from the back seat a guy just started yelling. In really broken English. He seemed to only know the standard English words that most Japanese people have heard even if they have never studied English.
So we’re just walking talking about food and suddenly: “HEY, YES, THANK YOU! THANK YOU!”
And laughter.
It was strange and not exactly pleasant. I’ll just leave it at that.
My host parents went on a little weekend trip for host mom’s birthday, so they left the house to me and their niece. It’s pretty cool, especially because host mom gave me money for food. So now I can just be like, okay let’s go discover a place to eat! There are a lot of little restaurants around I’ve been wanting to try.
Unfortunately it’s raining, so that puts a little damper on my ability to walk around comfortably as much. Nonetheless, I’m going to take this opportunity and explore! There is a high likelihood that new pictures will follow later.
