This is it

After saying good night to my parents at their hotel, I came home to my apartment for the last time. I must admit, I felt rather sad. I've managed here for 10 months alone, feeling somewhat grown-up for the first time and quite proud of the way I was handling things. I enjoyed my tatami mats and hanging laundry hooks. I did homework in my underwear. I often went to bed without worrying about locking the door. I'll never see this place again (they're knocking down and rebuilding Dai 2 Sakura Heights this summer). お世話になりました。It was fun.

So to begin that list of Things I Will Miss About Japan:
1. bank passbooks
2. using cash
3. carrying large sums of cash around without worrying
4. using my iPod on public transit
5. onigiri
6. 大きなチョコメロンパン (big chocolate chip melon bread)
7. delicious sushi, even at the cheap conveyor belt places
8. frequent and timely train service
9. little old Japanese ladies in hats
10. Japanese
11. Engrish

There's more, I'm sure, but now I must throw out and pack up the last of my stuff, then wait for the gas/electricity/water people to come shut everything off. I'm hoping to be out of here by noon. Then, on the way to the train station, I have to return my rented DVDs (last night I watched 電車男 [densha otoko] in Japanese, without subtitles!, it was cute ^^), mail one last form to the ITO Foundation, and leave my bike at ICU. We meet the Masurs at Meiji Shrine at 4pm. (I need to make a dinner reservation :-/)

Most likely I will not update until we get back to the States July 11th. Until then...
さようなら！

An ode to my bike

I am amazed at all I have done in the past two days: bought souvenirs (Ba, Deepa, Aaita?, Rebecca, Julia, Darren, Fuji, Jonathan, Arden, oh my!), packed four boxes, shipped four boxes, packed one suitcase and one rolling carry-on, takkyuubin-ed suitcase and carry-on (to be delivered to my parents' hotel tomorrow), wrote a "student life report" for the ITO Foundation, edited research report for the Foundation, wrote an abstract for said research report, emailed all three to the ITO Foundation, wrote a thank you letter to mail to the Foundation, ordered two transcripts (for Columbia and ITO), rented two movies, watched one movie (the original Japanese "Shall We Dance?" - *very* cute), did my last load of laundry, dusted and swept the bedroom, crushed at least a dozen plastic bottles, washed and cut up about a dozen paper juice cartons, taken out at least half a dozen bags of "rubbish" (as the Brits say)...

If you know me, you know how impressive it is that I packed and shipped stuff so promptly. And to that I owe my dear, hard-working bike シルヴィエー. I got really lucky with her. She was cheaper than each of Chris, Phil, and Tad's bikes, and though she has the dorky-looking "praying mantis" handlebars, she has the rack on the back - which means, not only is carrying two people by bike easier, but apparently getting 14kg boxes to the post office down the street is also much easier. I thought I would have to walk there and back multiple times... and I know from experience in Princeton that the nearest post office is much farther away when you're carrying a box. I expected to spend the entire day carrying and mailing boxes, but I was done before noon, in only three trips. I strapped the box on the back rack, rode most of the way to the post office, then walked the bike across the street and to the post office, then rode blithely home. :-) I need to remember to take a picture of the bike before I drop it off at ICU. (I decided it's just not worth my trouble to try to find a buyer at this point. I just hope whoever gets her takes care of her.)

Speaking of shipping boxes... moving sucks. It's so expensive and time-consuming! I just hope I get most of my deposit back when I leave... but as I haven't cleaned *that* regularly (even if I clean tomorrow morning, which is the plan), I'm sure Horie-san will be taking some money out of the deposit for cleaning.

And now to bed... so I can wake up early and tackle the bathroom and kitchen. (I also have to return Phil's rice cooker to J-Mart for him.) I'll update again tomorrow after my parents arrive.

I have the best back figure

After spending my Friday sorting and cleaning and putting things in piles (if not suitcases), I decided to wander the city Saturday. I couldn't get the boxes I needed or ship anything during the weekend after all, as the 郵便局 [yuubinkyoku] (post office) was closed. I left my apartment around 10am, hoping to see the irises as Meiji-jingu and walk down to Aoyama - to see the Spiral building, which a guest lecturer spoke about in Shoji class in the fall, and maybe see if Kotto-dori had scrolls and other "traditional" goods that might make good souvenirs/presents for people.

I hadn't been down to Harajuku in a while, but I still like it a lot, even if I feel a little old for it. This time there were lots of musicians performing on the bridge. Not so many cosplayers, I assume because it's getting a little too warm for the layers of lace and makeup involved. I didn't spend much time lolling around the bridge though.

The iris garden was nice. I'd imagined like fields and fields of irises as far as the eye could see. It was more like a river, which was stilll very cool in its own right. There were a lot of people perched randomly along the pathway painting and sketching the scene. And there were many many more people just there to look, like me. There's also an azalea garden apparently, but only one plant was blooming when I was there. It was kind of neat the way it was all alone. The entire area is quite spectacular though, even if there were fewer flowers than I imagined. Most of it just grows naturally I think and little gravel walkways are carved into it. Very pleasant.

From the garden I decided to visit the shrine itself, to offer 5 yen and maybe a "prayer" for the coming year (and my parents' impending visit). On the way there, I stopped to read the sign along the path about the Meiji emperor. I still can't understand it perfectly, but it made more sense to me than I remember it making the last time I visited. Proof my Japanese has improved? As I was taking pictures of the sign in order to look up words when I got home, I noticed a middle-aged couple looking and smiling at me.

I said, "konnichiwa," and the man began speaking to me in English. His wife meanwhile was very cute and smiley-embarrassed. She would speak to him in Japanese and not directly to me. I made a point to speak directly to her. Ordinarily the way she didn't talk *to* me would have annoyed me, but it seemed more like she was embarrassed and shy, not that she thought I wasn't talk-to-able. Proof that I too have become a sucker for Japanese women? Anyway, they asked me the standard questions - where I was from, what I was doing in Tokyo, if it was my first time to the shrine. The gentleman's English was quite good, and after I told him I was from Texas, he revealed he had been to Dallas-Fort Worth before (business, I guessed), so I suppose it's not surprising.

He also said, gesturing to his wife, "She thinks your back figure is best." His wife grinned and giggled shyly. I was thinking, "what? back figure?" but said, "Oh! Umm, well... I don't know about that, but thank you." And he asked if I did any sports, and I grinned and shook my head no. And *then* he said, "Well, I think, if you were to run a race, you would surely win." ?!

This reminds me of the time, *years* ago, when the Houston kids sang "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" at the convention, and I was wearing a *gasp* above-the-knee dress, and afterward someone asked me if I played tennis. Okay! I know! I have big thighs. You sit in araimandi for hours at a time for several years, and we'll see how slender your thighs are. Except that Saturday my capris (or whatever they're called) were well below the knee. *shrugs*

At any rate, I'm going to miss random encounters with Japanese people like that. I'm going to miss lots of things. I'll post a more complete list later.

So much to say

But I just don't have the energy to begin. It's been a busy busy several weeks... and it isn't really over. I am now in the process of packing up my belongins. I need to ship a few things, but I feel like I actually have less stuff than I thought. Which is good. I'd hoped to have all this done by today, but there was lots of other nonsense to take care of at school. *sigh* And I'd wanted to go to Kyoto next week but now 1) I have to take care of all this moving stuff that didn't happen this week and 2) Jae might come! That's right, he emailed me just a couple days ago, and it looks like he's trying very hard to make it out here before I leave. I'm so excited! I can't remember the last time we saw each other. It's been several years, definitely. If he comes, I won't regret not going to Kyoto at all. I'll just have to come back, which I plan to do anyway.
Anyway, my parents then arrive on the 29th, and we've got an action-packed two weeks together - first in Tokyo, then Beijing. I'm very excited about going to China for the first time (I finally was able to pick up my Visa on Thursday). We're also meeting the Masurs on the 30th for dinner, so I need to find a snazzy restaurant for all of us.
Once I get back to Texas, I'm hoping to take the bus up to Austin and spend several days with Fuji. Then my sister visits for the week before I leave for New York. And I am so excited about New York! Darren and I will be living together, which we've talked about doing since our freshman year, and if the apartment allows it, we're going to get a kitten! (I've already picked a name for it too!) o(^-^)o

Now if only all this other stuff would just do itself in the meantime.

Asian women

Chun Kwangne, "Victims of the Emperor Faith." Akiko Okuda and Haruko Okano, eds. Women and Religion in Japan Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998.

Koreans were not the only comfort women, and when it came to light that women from six Asian countries were also victims, the expression of one Filipina friend I was with at the time I heard this, became set in a pained look. It was not simply the comfort women she was thinking of, but also the so-called 'Japanyukis,' women coming to Japan to find work and being forced into prostitution, and the groups of Japanese men going to the Phillipines on sex tours. The situation of these Asian women in Japan could be called the latest version of the comfort women. Industry has taken over from where the former Japanese IMperial Army left of, wielding money and economic power in place of bayonets and military might. Japanese men are using up Asian women both in and outside Japan as though they are simply merchandise; in the past they were regarded as war supplies, now they are sexual commodities forced to be communal receptacles for Japanese men. And the men who go shopping for women show no sign whatsoever of any sense of guilt.
...
In 1991 I heard of a Japanese woman around the same age as me, who hid contraceptives in her husband's suitcase whenever he went on a business trip in Asia. If it were an affair with a Japanese woman then it would be cause for jealousy, but if a husband buys an Asian woman for sex then it is seen only from a rationalist point of view. Far from questioning her husband's warped morality and sexuality, this woman did not even notice that she had become an accomplice in the crime by promoting it. Recently the prejudice that Asian women are the source of AIDS infection is also on the increase.
To give an example: Asian women workers in all regions of Japan have been experiencing trouble for some time, but this came to a head at a public bathhouse where the manager was pressured over which customers to allow entry by a regular customer who said, "If they [Asian descent foreigners] are using the same bath, then I won't come. Even if they don't have AIDS, you don't know what diseases they've got." Despite already being in an uncertain position business-wise, the manager apparently finally sent a letter of apology to the regular customer saying, "Public baths are something that people who have no bath cannot be deprived of."
This account shows just how Asian women, who are sacrificed as an outlet for Japanese men's sexual desire, are easily seen as a source of AIDS contamination. Regarding them as unclean in addition to lusting after their bodies, robs them of vallue as humang beings. Comfort women and Asian women are the ones who are the victims, and it is their own shameful conduct as human beings that Japanese men ought to be making an issue of.
...
One day in 1991 I saw an Asahi TV documentary about the comfort women. There was one scene in particular which riveted me. In answer to the question from the Japanese woman interviewer, "have you ever thought about marriage," the former comfort woman fixed her with a steely eye for a second and answered. "Women who were comfort women aren't seen as human beings you know. Marriage? If you have a conscience there is no way you could do it with this body. I haven't ever even thought about it. What would I do if I got married? Do you think I could have children?"

Today

I woke up at 6am. Looked over my notes for my history exam, did my grammar homework, showered, and plotted out the revision/rewrite of my final paper for writing class. Went to my last reading class at 10, was in a sour mood, ran into Tae Hee-san afterward, took a picture with her and swapped contact info (she returns to Korea on the 23rd), grabbed lunch and joined classmates in a cram session for the History final. Had the history exam at 1:15, not so overconfident this time. He'd gotten some questions regarding one of the essay questions so decided to give us a freebie, i.e. give us all three questions instead of a random two from which to pick one to answer. I answered the one about Shogun from the 1180s to 1600 in 3 pages, but I'm not so confident I answered thoroughly. It was exhausting, even though it was only like an hour and a half long, and my hand was very cramped afterward. Went to my final religion class as well. So painful, but it was the last class, and I'd missed the two previous. What a terrible class. We "discussed" the same thing every week, and a lot of the time it really just seemed like we were a captive audience for the prof's opinions on and observations of Japanese society. I'm so tired, but I should probably get started on my paper for writing class - the final draft is due by noon tomorrow, and I have to miss class to go pick up my Visa from the Chinese Consulate.
So yes, that means I am done with class.
For now.

よかった。

Oh, and someone stole my umbrella from the umbrella-holder at the building entrance somewhere between lunch and the first break during Religion class. Whatever, it was ugly and cheap, and they'll probably get more use out of it anyway since I'm not brave enough to ride a bike and hold an umbrella at the same time.

I'll make a real update after exams and stuff. I know y'all want to hear all about my trip to Nikko and first visit to an Onsen and such...

Ranting again

me: i got my history midterm back today
me: i got an 85 on it
me: i'm sort of pissed
me: i don't know if i should fight for points though... i'm kinda lazy
me: the final exam is thursday
me: and i've missed a lot of class now, so i'll probably do as "well" or worse
me: i wanted an A in the class
me: i thought i'd aced the midterm
me: there are no comments written on my exam
dg: i'm sorry...
me: ripley's trying to comfort me/tell me my grades here don't matter
me: but i'm worried they will
dg: do you think it'd be good to at least talk to the prof and understand the reason
dg: ?
dg: are you thinking about for med school (regarding the grades)?
me: yeah
me: (about grades)
me: and i think i would like to know...
me: hannah got an 88
me: and she said her answers were crap, that she looked back at it and it seems like english isn't even her first language
me: i wrote like half a page for each id, like an entire story, everything i remembered... and there's no explanation
me: for why i lost 2pts on the first 2 and 1 on the second (which incidentally i was less sure about)
dg: hm
dg: odd
me: it's just poopie because i think i'm pretty good at history... not like remembering dates or anything but like the stories and the causal relationships
me: that and the class totally sucks and i *should* be able to ace it
dg: but indu that's assuming that a prof who runs a class that totally sucks is going to be able to tell what a good exam is
dg: if they're running a class that bad, they're probably stupid with tests as well
me: *sigh* maybe
me: but it's my gpa that's suffering *pout*
dg: i know... and that sucks...
me: and my other grades this term won't be so hot either
me: i've heard everyone takes advanced I reading *twice*
me: like if that happens, clearly there's something wrong with the way they run the class
me: or write the exams or something
me: we got the last part of the midterm back today
me: a reading we had never seen before
me: by the time i got to it during the exam, i had like 15-20 minutes. i didn't even *read* it and tried to answer the questions by looking at the graphs. that's not reading!
me: it was worth 40 points, and i lost 21 of them just from questions i didn't have time to answer
me: and they were t/f
me: i could have just put true for all of them, without reading, and gotten most of them right!
me: and then for religion class
me: there's a final test and a final paper
me: i haven't had time to start the paper yet
me: but the final test (which doesn't count as an "exam" but is the only other part of our grade besides participation)
me: is online
me: and the questions come directly from the self-quizzes throughout the term
me: so if you printed out the self-quizzes *with the correct answers*
me: not only could you study for the final test
me: you could *use them while taking the test*
me: but i wouldn't do that
me: so everyone else is going to get 100% on it and i won't because i won't cheat
dg: but is that cheating, if its within the rules of the game, as they set it up?
me: it's not in the rules!
me: that's not what he wants you to do
dg: ok
dg: they're just stupid
me: i mean i guess i could ask him in class specifically if it's allowed
me: but guessing from his reaction to when ripley asked if she could have copies of the self-quizzes he'd already closed
me: that that wasn't his intention
dg: yeah
me: i know it's stupid and just that i'm used to a different way of learning in some cases
me: like ripley's in the listening class
me: and she got a D on the midterm because she just doesn't think like they do
me: like in explaining the contents of something she outlined like the concept
me: but they wanted like details
me: and 1) she just doesn't think like that 2) she doesn't think that's what important
me: so now, even as anal as she is about grades, she's like "whatever"
me: and i agree with that for her, definitely, but
me: i worry that my grades count
me: she's like "you're here for self-study, it's your last term as you're preparing to return to the states and pursue medicine. it has no relevance for med school"
me: i'm just worried it'll be seen as like a reflection of my character or something
me: *laughs*
me: geezus i haven't even started premed and listen to me
me: you sure you want to live with me?
dg: yes, of course i'm sure
dg: part of the problem with grades, especially in any social science or humanities class, is that its partially a test of your psychological skills
dg: (i.e. can you decipher what the prof wants and values)
dg: and that's always annoying because it has that subjective component
me: dude i wrote like exactly what i had written in my notes which is exactly what he said in lecture!
me: 8 out of 10 points
me: and the one on which i got 9 out of 10
me: i wasn't there for that lecture. i learned what it meant by googling it!
dg: yeah well maybe he doesn't like his lecture, or doesn't want you to say what he said
dg: people are weird and stupid, so who knows what they're thinking
dg: if they think at all
me: i almost want to tell him that and be like "are you saying i'd make better grades on your exams by just learning the stuff from the internet and not from you?"
me: or not make better grades but learn the stuff better
me: "better"
dg: yeah
me: ugh

Anticlimactic

Wednesday after class I decided to run errands.

First stop, the Continental Ticket Office in Ebisu. Why did I have to go there? you ask. Can't you just buy your ticket online? Well, yes, I could. I made my reservation online, but actually... I don't have any money in the States. Just a couple hundred that I dip into when I occasionally make online purchases (gifts usually), not enough to buy a trans-Pacific plane ticket. Plus, unlike I did in college, I rarely use my credit card - definitely not on a daily basis, definitely not while running around Tokyo. I use cash for everything. You can do that here and everyone does. It's perfectly safe and, I've come to believe, perfectly convenient. What better way to manage expenses than when you know *exactly* what you have left in your wallet and *exactly* what you started with? So at the ticket office I dropped approximately 1000USD. Not what I normally carry in my wallet, but not a big deal here. The best part was that I carried out the entire transaction in Japanese. :-D Granted I'd already done the serious stuff online, but still. A small accomplishment for me.

I took my time walking back to Ebisu station. I've been in the mood to shop lately (*gasp* yes, me, shop!) so I figured if I saw something I liked, I'd stop in. Nothing stood out, plus, even though the Chinese Consulate website had said it was open 'til 12am, I thought it would be safest to get there by 5pm, which is when most offices close, right? So I took the chikatetsu (subway, the kanji literally translate as "underground iron"... kanji are so cool ^_^) to Roppongi.

My first time there, a popular nightspot and hang out for the young, particularly gaijin. (Apparently a good place to pick up Japanese girls.) Clubs, bars, etc... but that's at night. In the daylight it looks kind of skeevy (not surprising). Not blatantly so, but... just a little too dingy, a little too neon. I took my time as I'd never been before and people talk about it so much, but I couldn't really see anything too special about it. Except maybe Roppongi Hills - a giant, upscale living and shopping complex complete with towering glass and garden, but even so it was pretty anticlimactic. The most I get out of things like this are the way they nestle a little pond and garden right in the middle.

I have to admit the architecture's pretty cool, but really it's just another big, spiffy-looking building in a city full of big, spiffy-looking buildings. Plus I don't care much for shopping complexes specializing in expensive European designers a normal person like me could never afford or wear - not just because it's expensive and useless for me but because... I don't know. I feel sort of cheated. Like, Japan should have it's own cool upscale designers to promote... or something. Otherwise I might as well be trying to shop in Paris... or New York even. And I know it isn't really fair of me to expect Tokyo, which is as "Western" and "modern" and basically just another city (like Paris or New York) to somehow be "Japanese," but... I do anyway. :-P

After a bit more walking, I finally found the consulate. It closes at noon. Of course. Why would it *actually* be open 'til 12am? But geez, if they're going to use English, couldn't they get it right? So annoying. At least I know where it is, and it'll be easy enough to go next Monday.

The weather wasn't great, but it was fairly clear and not raining and since I was in the area anyway... I decided to go to Tokyo Tower, my first time. I hoped to catch it around sunset, so as to see day, sunset, and night Tokyo, so even though I probably could have walked, I went to the nearest subway stop. On the way there I saw my favourite Engrish yet.

I think this is an especially cool example of Engrish because it requires knowledge of both English and Japanese. Many English words and phrases are borrowed by Japanese. They write them in a phonetic script called katakana, using Japanese phonemes and intonation. So oftentimes I have no idea what a Japanese person is saying when they're saying what was originally an English word. (For example, Yukiyo-sensei, my dance teacher, once tried to explain something in terms of the Northern Lights or Aurora... only it sounded like "Ororo" to me, and I had *no idea* what she could possibly be talking about until she explained "coloured lights in the sky" or something like that.) So anyway, if you Japan-ized "hangover" it would become, you guessed it, "hangobaa" or "hangobar." Brilliant, right? I thought so.

I took the subway one stop; as soon as I came out of the station, there it was, right in front of me. Well, sort of obscured by buildings and trees and powerlines, but in front of me. I walked up past Shiba Koen, and found myself at its base, in back.

Tokyo Tower is taller than the Eiffel Tower, after which it was modeled (obviously). But really, it's got nothin' on the Eiffel Tower. I remember going to Paris, seeing it from everywhere, riding up to the top for the first time, then lying out on the grass staring up at it... It was really magical for me. If the Eiffel Tower was a tribute to the potential of technology and modern man, Tokyo Tower is like a shrine to capitalism. You can't get under it and look up and marvel at how small you are (like you can at the Eiffel Tower) because they have built this big, ugly brown block of a building under it housing 3 floors of restaurants and amusements. I just felt like, everytime I turned around, there was another way they were trying to get me to buy something. There was no open place to just sit and look and think and marvel. I guess that's what the observation decks were for. I paid for the set, two observation decks. But that was disappointing too. It was a little hazy by the time I got up, but the sun was lower in the sky. It could have been really pretty, like sunlight on water, but it was just kind of... blah, really. I think the problem is that *everything* in Tokyo is tall. The Eiffel is awesome and makes you feel like "Uwaaaaa" (as the Japanese say) because you really do feel like you're on top of the world. I mean I'm not really sensitive to heights anyway, so maybe I exaggerate, but I didn't feel anything close to that on Tokyo Tower. (And it was so annoying to ride in the elevator with a girl clinging to her date going "kowai kowai" [scary scary] the whole time *rolls eyes*.) It wasn't doing anything for me, but I felt like if I didn't stay longer and "observe" I'd be wasting my money.

Luckily I got a text from Christina and Ripley as I was getting desperately bored, suggesting we go see The Da Vinci Code. So I booked it... I am *so* proud of myself. It took me an hour, I think I changed trains 4 times, but I ran into the theater two minutes before the movie started. We had caramel popcorn (better than I expected, considering I don't really care for caramel) and settled into a huge, not-full theater (one of 3 playing Da Vinci Code at the Fuchu theater). Like the book, the movie was disappointing. It was fun enough though, but nothing brilliant. I *was* however very upset with how they changed details about the Catholic church... No wonder people are upset! *SPOILER* The book didn't point fingers at anyone in particular, put good and bad people on all sides, but apparently someone decided to put their own agenda/opinion about the church in the movie. I found that disgusting.

In any case, it was an eventful day. I needed to update. More has happened since, and more should be happening this week, but I have a ronbun to turn in for writing class tomorrow so I'd better get to work!