Friday, Jan. 10, 2014: First Day

 It was my first day, but it was the last day of welcome week. I woke up with my roommate at 7:30ish. She made breakfast for me: rice and miso soup. I was relieved, since I had no food except for my leftovers from the plane. At 8:40am, she left to go to Japanese class. I had one hour before I needed to go take my placement test. I used that time to prep my back pack, shower, and wash some of the dishes (although we didn't have a sponge).

The view from my dorm window. Snow on the first day.

The breakfast my kind and wonderful roommate made for me.

Because energy is really expensive in Japan, we've been told to conserve as much as possible. Everyone wear lots of layers. We heat only the rooms we are currently using, using the air conditioner for a while, then a space heater for the rest of the time. For showers and washing dishes, we turn on the hot water, and turn it off afterwards. For certain appliances, we have to be careful to avoid overloading the circuit. As a result, it's very cold in the buildings. Fortunately, the Center provides plenty of blankets, but my face still froze overnight. The floor is wooden, which also steals heat from my feet, so I use slippers everywhere.

In addition, the gas stove and broiler are fire hazards, which I heard was strongly emphasized during orientation (and reinforced with a story about an exploded teapot). Trash is separated into soft plastics, burnables, and PET bottles (like water bottles), glass, and cans.

At 9:50am, I went to A-sensei's office to take the placement test. He had to leave to teach a class, so I had to finish the rest of the test later. While I waited, I went to look at the bulletin board in the main hall of the academic building (it was really cold there). I signed up for an Ikebana lesson and a field trip to a local factory. I also met some people who were talking on the other side of the room. A little while later, everyone got out of Japanese class and came past. I got to talk to them and see some of the other students before I went back to A-sensei's office to finish my test. Once I finished the test, A-sensee told me to come back later to get my results and discuss homestay with another teacher. Then I went back to the bulletin board, where I talked more with the other students.

We had a cooking lesson next, so I asked someone to check my room, since I had been unable to check earlier. It turned out that I was in the group that was using my room. I went to my room to wait. Eventually the other 3 students in my group (which didn't include my roommate) and the Japanese volunteer appeared. The Japanese volunteer was an English student at the Center, so she used a mixture of Japanese, English, and gestures to teach us how to make yakisoba, osuimono (a simple fish soup), and onigiri. She seemed surprised by how long it took our rice cooker to cook the rice. Our kitchen knife was also so dull that we had difficulty cutting the vegetables for the yakisoba. Our food turned out well. We just managed to finish cooking and eating before I had to leave to get my placement test results. They did the clean up while I was gone; it looked much more organized than before (the racks were put to better use).

Ready to eat our yakisoba and osuimono. Picture taken by M-san's English teacher.

Making the onigiri

Dekita! Finished!

My placement test results said that I could take Level 4, but since I would be the only student, it would be lonely. I decided to stick with Level 3, so that I could get to know the other students better and review my grammar and kanji. After making that decision, I was given the textbooks and taken to my Level 3 Japanese teacher, who explained the class and gave me homework and worksheets to catch up on. Then I went to talk to another teacher about homestay opportunities. Unfortunately, the number of homestay families was less than the number of students, so I couldn't homestay. In addition, I would need to commute by bike, but I haven't ridden a bike in 10 years. However, the teacher said that she would give me 2 weeks to practice, and in the meantime she would try to soften up some potential families.

After that, I was assigned a bike and helmet. Then I met with a teacher for one of my elective classes, who gave me a book to read for class. I told him about my adventures the previous night, and he kind of smirked when I mentioned Hotel RIDE. Baffled, I asked if the hotel had a reputation. He told me that the Hotel RIDE I had gotten help from was actually a love hotel, a place where couples go to enjoy themselves at night. That explains the phone at the front desk and the electronic room-buying machine.

I went back to my room and ran into a group of students, including my roommate, who were planning to ride to the store. I needed to buy food and learn the layout of Hikone, so I joined them. With their help, I adjusted my bike and followed them to a bike parking lot near Hikone Station. There were familiar landmarks along the way, but mostly I focused on riding and not falling down.  It was my first time riding in a long time. The sidewalks were narrow with slopes for driveways. I had to watch out for cars and pedestrians. In Japan, they drive on the opposite side of the road and they have different rules for bicycling. There were also some scary parts where a deep ditch for water ran along my right, and cars drove past on my left, or I had to squeeze between telephone poles and buildings. I kept a large following distance so I didn't run into the other students. Somehow I made it.

At the bike lot, an old man with a raspy voice approached us. I had the strongest Japanese, so I tried to speak with him, but because his voice was so raspy, I couldn't understand what he was saying. It wasn't until he gestured at a bike lock that I realized that he wasn't asking us to pay, but actually asking if we had bike locks. He was offering to provide us with some if we didn't have them. I thanked him, explained what he said to the other students, and we left.

We went across the street into AL Plaza, a multi-level department store. I bought slippers, laundry detergent, and folders at the 100-yen store. For the laundry detergent, I had difficulty finding some that wasn't softener or bleach, so I asked a Japanese lady looking at the shelf next to me for help. Even she had trouble, but eventually she found a bottle for me. I guess she told the cashier, because the cashier asked if I was satisfied with the detergent when I went to check out. I also asked an employee about hole punches. I was looking for binders for class. There were two main types: a kind with clear plastic pages which you could put sheets into, and a 2-hole binder. However, for the two-hole binder, there was no holepunch. I asked the employee if there were usually 2 holes for binders (answer: yes), and she showed me the holepunch and even took it out of the case to demonstrate its use.

I'm glad my Japanese is good enough that I can talk to people in Japanese. It makes things a lot easier than trying to figure things out just by looking.

Later we went to Beisia, a huge grocery store, where I bought food. One of the things I bought was eggs, which were not refrigerated. There were brown eggs and white eggs , but I couldn't figure out what was different other than the price. After I paid, I saw that there were no bags. My friend told me that you have to buy or bring bags. Thankfully she lent me hers.

When we got back my friend and I each cooked and then shared food with each other. She made a simple pasta with some sort of shrimp cream sauce, and I made fish, bean sprouts, and mushrooms with soy sauce. They were weird mushrooms--big and at least an inch thick. They had a label saying "Biggu Pakku," but I didn't see anything else identifying them. They looked like this (drawn from memory):

Afterward we talked for a long time. From what we talked about, it seems like Michigan has a small town feel, so everyone knows a bit about all the different areas and all the universities. Also, it's a lot easier to find cool, diverse/interesting people in college than high school.

Departure for and Arrival in Japan: Jan. 8-9

Introduction:

I am studying abroad again in Japan for a semester at the Japan Center for Michigan Universities in Hikone, Japan. Although my last attempt at blogging didn't last very long, I will try again.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014 

It's 9:21 am. I'm in the Pittsburgh Airport waiting for my 10am flight to Detroit. I was supposed to leave on Sunday, but because of the terrible snowstorms in the north, both flights to Detroit were too delayed for me to make my connection to Nagoya, Japan. So the flight agent rescheduled my flight for Wednesday. The flight agent said there were no hotels in Detroit, so it was better to wait for another day than go to Detroit and take my chances.

There's a 17-minute delay, but the plane is on the way.

Why don’t airports have public wifi?

I’m going to have missed nearly the whole first week, which includes orientations, placement test, tours, and classes. However, I think I will take advantage of my missed class to cultivate a relationship with the professor via email, since it’s an online class anyway. I’m reading through the first lesson’s powerpoint and making a list of questions. Too bad I can’t respond to emails now, since the professor sent one out asking for a reply.

~4:00pm, Detroit Airport (which does have free wifi, and is way more international and much, much bigger than Pittsburgh)

My flight was supposed to leave at 3:30pm. Everyone is on the plane and ready to take off, but they discovered a wing problem. I can barely hear the intercom since the plane is so loud.

~5pm
The wing problem has been resolved and now we're moving to takeoff.

~8:30pm, Thursday, January 9, 2014, Nagoya, Japan
The plane has landed. The flight was fairly pleasant; I was sitting in the window seat, but fortunately the young couple next to me was very friendly. However, the touchscreen provided for entertainment was annoyingly insensitive, making it useless for games and frustrating for everything else.

~9pm
I moved through Immigration and Customs with no problems, exchanged dollars for yen with minimal difficulty, and asked for directions to Hikone at the Information Desk.

~1am
I'm exhausted. Besides the fact that I've been up since 7am Eastern Standard Time, and now it's 11am EST the next day (therefore 16 hours later), I changed trains 3 times on the 2.5 hour commute from NGO airport to Hikone. While I was on the train to Maibara (the Shinkansen?), I heard the woman behind me sniffling a lot. I happened to glance behind me, and I caught her eyes in an expression of desperate upsetness. That image stays in my mind: face tilted up, cheeks red, eyes wet as they meet mine in her moment of vulnerability. I wanted to offer her a tissue, but I didn't want to impose on her misery again. She composed herself after that.

After the train, I rode in a taxi. I was somewhat familiar with the trains from my previous study abroad, but the taxi made me nervous.

Hikone Station has many taxis; I think I saw more than 10. It's probably because this area doesn't have any buses. I nervously sidled up to a taxi that pulled up to the curb and had it's back door open. I made eye contact with the driver, and he closed the door and got out to open the trunk and put my suitcase inside. I waited next to the door until he went back to the driver's seat and pulled a lever to open it. I climbed into the backseat and told him I wanted to go to "Michigan Sentaa." It was about a 10-minute ride. I tried to memorize every sign and landmark I passed so that I would remember how to get back later. Once we arrived, I paid the taxi driver in cash, got out, and took my suitcase. Since it was midnight, the Center was completely dark. I walked up to the front door, where I saw a sign the student coordinator had left for me, with a phone number to call. The taxi drove away.

I tried to use my American phone to call the number, but it flashed, "No Service"--no help at all. I realized that I had assumed that since my phone was the same brand (Pantech) as before, it would work in Japan. Now it seemed that my model was incompatible with the Japanese networks. I took out my Japanese phone, but I hadn't charged it enough, so it had no battery. I couldn't get in the building. It was cold and windy and dark. I had no phone. I started to panic. "The side door!" I thought. I had a code. If I could get in, at least I had a chance. I left my suitcase at the front--no one was around to take it anyway--and wandered around the building until I found a door that looked promising. However, the lock refused to open. Depressed, I went back to the front of the building.

I was so close, yet without a phone, I couldn't get in! "I can't give up now," I told myself. I looked up, back towards the road, and saw the glowing building of Hotel RIDE nearby, a mere 5-minute walk away. A hotel must have a phone. I grabbed my suitcase and walked to the hotel. There was a surprising amount of traffic considering it was late on a weekday.

Inside the hotel, I went to the front desk, but there was no one there, although the closed glass door leading to the office was lit from the inside. I looked around, but saw nothing helpful. Next to the desk, there was what seemed to be a ticket machine to pay for rooms, which I thought was unusual. On the counter at the front desk was a phone with a label in Japanese: "Press 9 for Front Desk." I picked up the phone, pressed 9, and waited. A woman in the office picked up; I could hear her real voice through the door as she spoke on the phone. My Japanese was in full rust mode as I attempted to explain my predicament. Eventually the lady came out of the office to talk to me. She tested the phone I was using, but said that it couldn't perform outside calls. "If you buy a room, you can make calls from there," she told me. I told her that I just needed to call my supervisor, and I would be fine. I said that I had a Japanese prepaid phone that I might be able to use if I could charge it. She asked me if it would be quick. "Yes," I said. She directed me to the outlet where the vending machine was plugged in. My phone recovered enough charge, but when I tried to call, an automated voice told me that my account was empty: I had no money to make a call with.

The woman had disappeared, so I called with the phone at the front desk. A man answered. Disconcerted, I said, "I still need a phone," unable to explain it all over again. The woman and the man (who I assume is the owner) both came out to talk to me. I explained the problem to them. The owner didn't understand at first, but once the lady explained it to him, he left and returned with his personal cell phone. I successfully made the call. I thanked the owner and lady profusely. They asked where I was going, and I said that I was going to the Michigan Center. "Oh, that's close!" they exclaimed. Yes, I thought, which is why I wanted a phone and not a room.

I left the hotel and went back to the Center, where the student coordinator was waiting for me. He let me in and took me to my room, startling my roommate. After a brief intro, he left. My roommate and I talked briefly, then she went back to sleep, and I made my bed and organized my stuff. Finally, I went to sleep. I had a busy day ahead.