Endo-Ryo and Foreigners

Without a doubt, one of the largest differences between this trip to Japan and my last one is my living arrangements. The way one behaves with a host family and in an apartment is entirely different. On top of this, Endo-Ryo is a special living situation- a 3 bedroom, full bath, kitchen, living room, and dining room in a "mansion," as opposed to others who either have homestay or live in dorms-- where they are fed (unless it's the women's dorm), have a dorm manager, have curfews... But, I suppose, what makes Endo-Ryo the most unique is undoubtedly our landlady, Endo-san.

Endo-san is the antithesis of what you would expect in an old Japanese woman. Quiet? Oh no, think again. Meek? Anything but. Kind? Uhm... well... I'm pretty sure I could tall stories about Endo-san all day and I would not exhaust myself. She mocks us, tries to con us out of money, treats us like children, pries into our business, comes in unannounced, and is simply not the happiest woman to be around. Endo-san has the authority to come visit all the time because she is supposed to clean our common areas-- not to say she has done anything but take out the trash. On top of this, she has an annoying amount of storage left in the house- closets, bookcases, shelves full of her things. Still, it would appear that past residents have had far more problems with her than we have. Overall, we are pretty cleanly, heading warnings from previous residents.

Still, the mansion is great- from the balcony, we can see the ferris wheel at Odaiba, the fireworks at Disneyland, a river, wide fields... Not to mention, it is in a convenient location. On top of this, I love my roommates, SeungYe and Hannah. While all of us are, in our own ways, antisocial at home, it is working out splendidly. It is also amazing how many foreigners are in the area as well- Hannah and I have seen to creating our extensive (politically incorrect) catalog:

African Steve- Tall, lanky guy that hit on me a few weeks ago and started the naming of foreigners.

Blonde Sally- A woman we saw waiting to cross the road on a bike

Arabian Al- A nice looking Middle Eastern Guy that often is at the station at the same time as us

Nigerian Pete- Possibly the same person as African Steve; eyed Hannah up.

Lanky David- A tall guy that we saw at the station in Gyotoku

Model Craig- One of those guys you expect to see in an Abercrombie ad

Bernie Mac- He looks like Bernie Mac.

American Mary/Sue- Hannah and I

Strong-looking Anthony- A guy with poofy blonde hair on the train that was beefy

Yep- True Story. As fun as it is to name all the foreigners, I think it truly speaks volumes that we CAN name the foreigners-- people that would simply blend in to any crowd in America become something novel, something mezurashii (Yep, 'novel' in Japanese). This has no exception when it comes to either Hannah or I either- whether it's simple, interested stares on the trains, heckling by other English speakers on the street, or people going out of our way to avoid us, there is never any lack for feeling different. No amount of hair dye, brown contacts, style change, and tanning will help it either- from our noses to our face shapes, we are incapable of blending in. One of my most interesting collisions with being foreign happened the other day, on my way home from working with my host mother at her bread shop. A seemingly normal man in his 50's passed us on the street, and, as is customary when you meet people's eyes, he greeted us. However, apparently one greeting did not suffice- suddenly this man was in my face, standing inches from me, fear gluing me in place. "Hello! Good morning! America! Hello!" Over and over again, the chain of broken English greetings inched him closer and closer to me, to the point where he was almost touching me- my host mother pulled me away and we walked home, but the experience shook me. "It's because you're a foreigner- you're cute and you're a novelty." My host mother told me, "That brings out strange men like him." Normally, I don't mind sticking out of the crowd, but here, some days I feel like I would do anything to blend in.

Most likely, from here on out, blog posts will be themed instead of day by day descriptions. I get too far behind. @.@

Second Half of Week 2- Entrance Ceremony, Vegan Healing Cafe, and Lazy Saturday

Thursday

Today ended up being quite the photo-op and the Entrance Ceremony was actually pretty cool. Mindy got to give the speech at the Ceremony (we all suspect that she got the highest score on the exam-- which wouldn't be a surprise! She's very amazing! =]). Post ceremony, we all went to our usual food court hang-out, this time with a few others in tow. Eventually, conversation turned to one on religion and, although it was very comfortable to discuss with the majority of the table, one girl left me feeling rather uncomfortable. Not wanting to start an argument, I went back to the house and started to watch an anime I heard about from Shanis at the Entrance Ceremony, Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni. That pretty much shot the rest of the day for me.

Friday

Everyone was more than nervous today- the day that we got placed. The teachers guided us through a mock class and finally, about 2 and a half hours of this, they announced our placements. Five students got into 5, none into 4, 10 into 3, and 10 into 2. I was most relieved when my name was called for 3, the class I am supposed to be in, anyway. It's a little scary, though. Shanis, who is a year ahead of me at UR only got into 3 as well. It makes me wonder about how well 200 advances one back home. Very nerve wracking. I hope I can compare. Hannah will be in 3 with me, though, so it will be nice to have someone to study with.

After Japanese, we were supposed to start Architecture, but, due to Instructor illness, the class was cancelled. Thus, I decided, today would be a good day to go buy the Vegan Restaurant handbook that Vegan Japan puts out. But, in order to do so, I had to go to one of the restaurants that they listed on their website. Thus, Nancy, Hannah, and I went to Shibuya to "Vegan Healing Cafe."

Well, by the time we got there, we were very hungry, because, as I'm sure you can guess, I got us lost on the way again by pointing us in the completely opposite direction... yeah. >>; I felt really bad, too, since Hannah was in heels. Well, when we got there, I was really excited. It was a small cafe and it promised to provide me nutrients and... well... uh... I don't know why I ever imagined that "Vegan Healing Cafe" would taste delectable... or even terribly edible. In fact, if I wasn't starving, I think I would have sad. The hot chocolate was... bitter... and the blueberry cake was... dry? And the meal was... alright? It was very... wholesome? It was very... healthy? Overall, interesting exprience, I must say. Hopefully, the places with fake meat will be a little better.

Parked outside was a PETA van, which was terribly amusing to me-- although I'm not a big PETA fan myself. They have bad tactics. Then, we saw a guy dressed as a candy bar, walking around... with a man, giving out flyers. So strange. @_@

Saturday

Today was the upmost laziest day I had here. I seriously sat around watching Higurashi no naku koro ni for most of the day and finally went to Seiyu Gyotoku for a change of pace (It's the Wal*Mart branch that's a 20 minute walk instead of a 10 minute one...). I went in hopes that they would have a more extensive selection of, well, everything. What I did find is that they had quart-sized cartons of acerola juice and, really, apart from that, not a horribly impressive selection. I did get quite a few vegetables, though, and prepared a soup with them. The soup ended up making a mean topping for the rice. Another thing I ran into at the store was this- peanut butter... it's practically odd here. They have this stuff called "peanut cream" which is pretty cheap, but I really had little interest in trying. The peanut butter that they did have was smaller than an average Skippy jar and about $4. It was a little disheartening.

Endo-san came over after all of us had eaten, took nail polish that prior IES students had left behind, was her usually rough self, and left. She seems to really like SeungYe, which is funny, since SeungYe seems to tune her out the most and respond to her the least. haha.

First half of Week 2 in Tokyo- Meikai Tours/Placement Test/Alien Registration/LaLa Port

Monday

Today was pretty dull, actually. We gathered at KUIS this morning and went through Academics orientation. Pretty much, we were told to show up to our classes and that we were not permitted to drop below 15 credits NOR could we drop Japanese. Hannah and I both elected to add a third IES area course, as IES permits us to have up to 19 credits. Thus, my official schedule is:

M,T,R,F 9-12:10- Japanese

M 2-4:40- Japanese Society and Culture

R 2-4:40- Japanese Art and Society

F 2-4:40- Architecture and Urban Planning

Everything, with the exception of Architecture, starts on the week of the 14th. Apart from that, we were taken around Shin-Urayasu and Meikai with some of the E-Pals. After we ate at the food court, a few of us (Nancy, Mindy, SeungYe, Hannah, and myself) went to the 100 yen store, the bank, the bus pass window, a cake shop, and back to our house to study. SeungYe wasn't feeling very well and nancy had forgotten to sign up for the Tokyo Tour on Sunday, so we called Watanabe-san. The five of us didn't study too much, but ended up having a pretty good time. Shin-san came around and fixed our wireless, but my computer still doesn't want to pick up on it (which, as Hannah says, is rather funny since I have a netbook)

Tuesday

Today was the big placement test. It was broken up into three different parts- listening, reading, and the "interview." The listening wasn't too difficult, the reading was, in the first half, a joke and in the second a terror, and the interview was... well, I just can't say I really know what to say when people ask me to tell them about what I think about Japanese as compared to American culture and what I think about the state of the world in my mother tongue, let alone my second language. It really caught me off guard. Overall, I felt really disheartened by the exam.

Tonight, Endo-san came over as well and is now making us seperate our own garbage. I mean, it's not that big of a deal, but we're worried about how many of the duties she is supposed to do by contract that she is going to fork over to us. I'm not her biggest fan because, regardless of me trying to communicate with her, she mocks my Japanese (like repeats me verbatim in a mocking tone). It's a little disheartening. She asked SeungYe and I about what our parents did and is offering to make us Yakisoba. It makes us all nervous though, because we don't know if she'll charge us or not. We'd all rather not get in that situation.

Wednesday

Break! What a fun break it was too! I'm looking forward to having Wednesdays off this semester. Although, it's a bummer Mindy won't. In the morning, Hannah and I went to get our Aleing Registration cards in Gyotoku. It was a pretty simple walk, but my map dyslexia kicked in and, well, I kinda didn't have us turn when we were supposed to again. A minor setback, but I still really need to learn how to read a map. When we got to the office, Hannah realized she forgot her passport. Also, SeungYe had some problems with the office telling her that the IES provided pictures were too small... but they told Hannah that they were the right size. Nevertheless, they took my US passport-sized pictures. On the way back, the two of us saw Mountain Dew in a vending machine and, getting terribly excited, bought some.

When we came back, SeungYe joined us and we left to go the the largest mall in Chiba (only a stop away!) Too bad we got on the wrong train... We ended up getting stared at even more there! It must be it was even more odd to have foreigners at that stop than it was at Ichikawa. When we got to Minimi-Funabashi, we apologized profusely to Mindy (who had been waiting) and went into LaLa Port (yes. LaLa Port. Yeaaah) There were so many shops o-o; It was amazing. The most amazing, surprisingly, was the Disney Store.

Unlike in America, the Disney store here had a lot of useful goods for adults. Aprons, hats, chopsticks, cell phone charms, bags, etc... and it was a million times more adorable than normal Disney stuff. Don't ask me how, but they managed it. Yeah. So, I bought Halloween Disney cell phone charms... they are adorable pumpins that look like Mickey... ^^;

On our way out, we stopped at a Crepe shop and dined out outside across from Ketucky Fried Chicken. They have a "Kenta-kun" outside almost all of the "Kenchiki"s here- and by that I mean, a statue of the Coronel. Yep. So we posed with him. Yeahhh. I love being dorks.

Tomorrow, we have an entrance ceremony. I wonder if it will be interesting... Hannah and I were talking tonight about how they always seem so boring in anime! Hope it's not that way!

Japan-Week 1 (Orientation for KUIS and Meikai)

Alright, so in the interest of laziness, I will summarize the rest of the week.

Orientation

For the most part, Orientation was dull. It was mostly policies, etc, nothing terribly exciting. Still, I love the IES staff and the students in my program are pretty cool too. For the most part, Orientation consisted of:

1) What to do when there is a earthquake, etc? (EVACUATE! HIDE!!!) [On a more interesting note, one of the lecturers said to us yesterday "I really hope you can experience earthquake in Japan."]

2) What not to do (Do not ride bike unless you're really good at it, don't eat while walking, don't talk on public transportation... and, especially don't ride a skateboard because the last guy who did "broke his skateboard... and his legs too.")

3) Communication issues ("In Japan, no means yes sometimes and yes means no.")

4) Money? (Pretty much cash is always the best idea and you can use the ATM at the post office for the cheapest.)

5)Alein Registration (GET A CARD! RAWR!!!)

We took a train one night and got dinner in Shin Urayasu (apparently they mash up meat in even their vegetable curry here. It's in the sauce?! I had to get spaghetti) and toured KUIS campus another day (the roof of the library has a path on it... and grass. They have grass on the roof.)

Karaoke

A few of us went Karaoke'ing the other night~! There is a place called Cote d'Azur close to OVTA and across from Kahin Makuhari station. At first we could only find english disney songs... including "Go the Distance-" the Japanese version (the only thing in english is "go the distance") and a techno beat version of "A whole new world." Yeahhhh... So, we figured out that you can not only change the key, but the tempo as well. So, we sang Barbie Girl as quickly as possible... it was awesome. haha (We had to leave so Tate picked the fastest song he saw and then we speed it up and all 5 of us sang.) We were really glad to find the paper catalogue because, at first, we only saw the electornic one... it was difficult to get around @.@

Endo-Ryo

So, on Thursday, Seung, Hannah, and I moved into Endo-ryo. All the staff made us a bit nervous with preparations for moving in- Kudo-san, Watanabe-san, and Shin-san all came up to us and asked "Have you been told about Endo-san yet?" So, in addition to things I had heard from Sarah before (she likes for things to be kept clean, don't touch her stuff, she likes to gossip), the IES staff warned that Endo-san likes to do favors for students and then charge them. Furthermore, she's terribly nosy and speaks very roughly.

Hannah, Seung, and I split up the rooms before we got here (I have the master bedroom facing the highway) and the apartment is, overall, very nice. We had a bit of a fiasco right from the start, however. We were to arrive Thursday afternoon and, despite Endo-san knowing this, when we got here, she wasn't around. Furthermore, Endo-san keeps the keys (since we essentially sublet from her) and so, we couldn't get into our room. Watanabe-san apologized again and again, calling a lot of different people and knocking on Endo-san's door repeatedly. Eventually, she went down to the lobby and Seung, Hannah, and I just laughed nervously and waited.

After about 30 minutes of this fiasco, a sturdy Japanese woman in her 50's came up to us, speaking loudly and in rough (borading male's language) Japanese. She asked us why we weren't inside and where Watanabe was. I replied that she was in the lobby, to which she asked which one and I replied the lobby of the building we were in. She apparently didn't like or understand this answer and went to the door, pushing it open and saying "See? It's been open all along! You should just go in." All of us were quite shocked and a little confused as to whether or not this was Endo, as she kept referring to herself in third person as "Endo-san." (It turns out, for the record, it was). Eventually, Watanabe-san returned with the building manager. Endo-san told the building manager that she was busy and had just left the door unlocked for us- Watanabe responded that since it is not her house, she did not feel comfortable just entering, let along trying the door handle. This set the tone for the rest of the evening.

We all then gathered at the kitchen table and had a discussion about the rules and an awkward introduction session with Endo-san. She eventually asked me what I ate and was quite shocked by vegetarianism. She then told us that she could only cook for Seung (even though Hannah eats fish? Interestingly, when Hannah also explained she was a vegetarian, she asked her if she ate ham... which was espeically odd, since Hannah was wearing a Star of David. Is it possible she doesn't know about Jewish culture?). Endo-san left and we began to get settled, but she came back later that night and made all of our beds.

I guess she came back last night and Hannah was the only one around at that point. She kept asking Hannah "Where are the others?" To which Hannah kept telling her we were asleep. I guess despite the fact that Hannah told her three times I was sleeping, Endo-san knocked on my door and opened it anyway, surprised to find... me asleep. She also demanded a copy of our semester calender in Japanese (we only have them in English) and for us to tell her what we're doing for Silver Week (vacation from 9/19-23). Eek! Hopefully she isn't over every night. It makes us all a bit nervous.

Shopping

Shopping! So, for groceries, we went to the local Seiyu which, to my surprise is... *drum roll* the Japanese division of Wal*Mart >>;; We mostly just got rice and noodles.

Then, yesterday, Hannah and I went to Carrefour (French version of... *drum roll* Wal*Mart) and the mall attached to it. Hannah got adorable bento and change purses and I got about 100 dollars worth of clothing. The most interesting thing is actually the fitting rooms. You need to take your shoes off as you go in. Also, before you enter, you give the clothing the the attendant who removed the hangers... And then, the face covers. Yeah. So, you place this mosquito-netting mask over your face, put the shirt on, and remove it... yeah. Face masks. In order not to get make-up on the clothing. Yeah.

Alright! That's it for now! Going to Shibuya with the roommies! =D