I don't eat whale meat, but...

...I'm still bad at updating!

Let's see, exciting highlights of the past week:

My new roommate came!  I was supposed to get two new roommates (to replace Louki and Grace), but one wound up cancelling at the last moment, so there are just three of us in the room now.  My new roommate is named Yi-Yi, and she's

...was that a gunshot outside?

...I really hope not.

...there was a second one.

...I haven't a clue what's going on, but I hope people aren't shooting each other in the streets, because that would be awkward.

...anyway, Yi-Yi is from Beijing, but goes to school in the States.  It's nice to have someone around the room again (since Hi-chan is gone so much of the time).

On Sunday I presented at the Chubu Fulbright Alumni Association's meeting.  There was kind of a mix-up, and I arrived slightly before 4 (when I was supposed to start presenting)...unaware that Austin (the other Fulbrighter presenting--he's a graduate student) was presenting BEFORE me, not AFTER.  Needless to say, I felt kind of terrible and apologized profusely and was bummed out of my MIND because I had really been looking forward to his talk.
My presentation went fine, though, and people were generally interested, although I got some odd questions, like, "Has anyone ever told you your hair makes you look like a miko?"  ...well, no...?
There was a reception afterwards and I talked to a bunch of interesting people, including a PhD student from Malaysia, who told me his tales of graduate school woe.  Although most of his tales weren't that woeful, so hurrah...?

Also on Sunday, Kim and Louki came back to Nagoya for the day to pick up their bags from my room and eat cheese naan.  (They are addicted to cheese naan.  I haven't a clue how they're going to survive without it.)  Kim didn't believe me when I said that I could be excited about anything,* and I waxed poetic about gum syrup containers to prove her wrong. It was certainly one of the stranger dinner conversations I've ever had.  (It also convinced Samantha, who just moved into the dorm and went to dinner with us, that I am insane.  OH WELL.)  And then Samantha and I took them to Nagoya station where we bid them farewell and swore everlasting vengeance friendship and stuff.

Yesterday the dorm had a gyoza party, which was delicious, and I met a bunch of the summer students, which was also nice.  It was also Yi-Yi's birthday, so everyone sang happy birthday to her and ate SO MANY GYOZA (okay, I probably ate like a fifth of the gyoza; don't judge me; I was really hungry).

Aaaaaand today we had Japanese class and talked about comparative particles!  It's actually pretty interesting, 'cause for this study they gave people the beginning of four sentences and asked them to write continuations of the sentences (using comparisons).  The sentences translate to:
I eat meat, but...
The husband drinks shochu, but...
I eat whale meat, but...
Japanese people eat whale meat, but...
Before I tell you the results, take a minute to come up with the second halves of the sentences for yourself!





All done?


Okay.



Everyone finished sentence #1 with "...I don't eat [X]."  Similarly, everyone finished sentence #3 with "...I don't eat [some kind of other meat]."  70% of the respondents finished sentence #2 with "he doesn't drink [some other kind of alcohol]" while the remaining 30% finished with "...I/the wife don't drink alcohol."  In the case of sentence #4, more than half the respondents finished with "...[some other people] don't eat whale meat," and everyone else finished with "...Japanese people don't eat [something crazier than whale meat]."
Interesting!  Part of the reason that the sentences split up like that is that "I" isn't seen to be part of a pair like "the husband" or "Japanese people" is.  So when you (the generic Japanese speaker who was raised in Japan) see a sentence like "I ____ X," you automatically assume that X is the thing being compared, not you with someone else.  But when you see a sentence that starts with "The husband ________ X," you might assume that you're comparing the reactions of the husband and wife about X, rather than comparing X to something else!

YAY, WORDS.

*I AM EXCITEMENT IN HUMAN FORM.

I AM A MAJESTIC TAIYAKI

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeey, everybody.  Guess who was actually accidentally food poisoning herself the whole time.
Hint: It's me.
So, uh, after eating more servings of pork noodles than I care to freely admit* and wondering why every time I ate them I started feeling horrible afterwards, it suddenly dawned on me that sometimes correlation is causation.  What I think happened is that my pork went bad, 'cause it was in our sucky fridge** and then I cooked it into a huge batch of noodles and then the noodles became a breeding ground for bacteria and...well, anyway, the lid of the container looked like a petri dish when I finally threw it out.
All together now:
EW, GROSS.

Fortunately, I stopped food poisoning myself in time to be somewhat recovered to meet Kocchan on Saturday for Crazy English Practicing Times, which was actually more like 45% English, 50% Japanese, 5% unintelligible Japanglish (on my end).  I also discovered that matcha lattes don't actually have coffee in them, and are really good at settling upset stomachs.  Crazy!  But anyway, after I got horrifically lost on the subway (oh gods, don't try to navigate the subway while you're sick) and Kocchan was nice enough to not punch me for being 30 minutes late (HOW COULD I MISTAKE TENMACHO FOR YABACHO I AM A FAILURE slknrekbarebjareha;) we had a nice chat and talked about moose and practiced being cooperative in English.  And then we went to Loft, which is a very difficult store to describe, except that it is like someone decided to pack RIDICULOUSNESS and FUN into a store.  It has things like Taiyaki costumes (which Kocchan got a picture of me in) and Mount Fuji costumes (which I got a picture of Kocchan in).  Also, we practiced using the word "majestic," as in "that taiyaki is SO MAJESTIC."  I teach important English phrases.***
...also on the way to Loft I got stopped on the street by this girl who said I was adorable and asked me to model for her because apparently she's an artist at a famous beauty salon in Sakae????  And she asked me if I was half and I said I was half SOMETHING but that something wasn't Japanese.  And then I said I was very sorry but make-up makes me break out and thus being a model is not the greatest idea and her response was, "Oh well, you're cute anyway!"
So that was a new experience for me. Nobody has ever asked me to model for them before.  And I can probably count the number of people who have non-ironically called me cute in the past five years (without following it with "in a really scary way" or "but terrifying") on one hand.  So, uh, yeah, it was kind of nice?****

What else have I been up to?

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm, I stopped food poisoning myself.  So pro.
I foisted books (specifically Powers and Feed, go read them) on Louki and apparently she is some sort of reading demon because she has already given me Powers back.
I am reading The Basic Eight, which has once again convinced me that I Did Puberty Wrong, because I did not spend a great deal of time skipping school to go shoes shopping.
I went to the Immigration Bureau today to get a re-entry permit (for when I go tour grad schools), which was a lot easier than I expected it to be.  Everyone I've spoken to has described it as being like visiting the DMV and has also said that it takes hours and hours, but I was in and out in 15-20 minutes.  It really wasn't bad at all.
I bought my Shinkansen tickets for my upcoming crazy travel,***** which was kind of like carving a section out of my arm, except that I cannot ride in comfort across Japan on a section of my arm.
The dorm had a nabe party tonight, where everyone brought a single ingredient.  If you've never had nabe before, it's basically throw-stuff-in-a-pot-and-cook-it-until-it-tastes-good, so in our case it was kind of like Stone Soup and also SO DELICIOUS.  Oh gosh, I'm going to try to recreate a couple of them 'cause they were amazing.

Also, I bought NEW HEADPHONES.  My headphones, being cheap and lame, finally bit the dust, which is to say that the sound on the right side died which made me very confused when a friend sent me a comedy routine in which apparently half the dialog was silent.  But now I have NEW HEADPHONES which were also cheap and will probably break at some point, BUT THEY ARE SO NICE.  I've been listening to my music, and SUDDENLY I CAN HEAR ALL THIS STUFF THAT WASN'T THERE BEFORE?  Like whole countermelodies?  And suddenly there's a bass line?  Which makes me believe that A. my old headphones were seriously lame and B. my computer speakers are cheap and lame.
...of course, Geoff just sent me a load of MLP:FIM fan music, so I can revel in good music AND my glorious new headphones.
...I am not obsessed, I swear.

*四回食べちゃった.  Yeah.

**I could write haiku about why our fridge is so sucky.

Our fridge likes to freeze
everything solid sometimes.
Oh no, not the ice.

I am not sure how
cold our fridge is normally
but it seems warm-ish.

Cold fridge turns my food
to ice but warm fridge is a
breeding ground for yuck.

You may shower me with praise now.

***Okay, to be fair to my English teaching skills, apparently Kocchan actually used stuff I taught her on her written test and she passed with flying colors, so I am not a TERRIBLE teacher.

****Actually, it's just generally nice hanging out with people who think I'm kind of quiet and shy except when I'm super enthusiastic about something (which is pretty often) rather than people who think I'm scary/intense/terrifying/[whatever other adjective].  Being "scary" is vaguely amusing for a while but then it just gets really isolating.

*****Tentative plans are:
February 24: Travel to Takeo!  Crash.  Hope Mary doesn't draw on my face while I'm sleeping.
February 25: Adventures with Mary in Takeo!
February 26: Adventures with Tatara-san and Alyssa and Mary!  There will be CASTLES involved.
February 27: Adventures with Alyssa and Sara in Fukuoka!
February 28: Adventures with shrine priest Tatara-san knows!
February 29: Adventures with Alyssa and Sara and Alex in Beppu!
March 1: Travel to Osaka!  Adventures with Nellie!
March 2: More adventures with Nellie!  Return to Nagoya.
March 3: Recover.  Oh wait, I mean Hina Matsuri.  If anyone's doing anything for Hina Matsuri.  I haven't heard anything yet, but that doesn't mean much.
Hopefully somewhere in there: Hear back from grad schools????

Trash talk

Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, everybody!  Guess who's sick!
Hint: It's me.
Don't worry; I haven't figured out how to transmit germs via the internets yet, so you are (probably) safe from Extreme Queasy Madness.*
Of course, the fact that I have been a useless lump for the past three days means that if I wrote a blog about what I've been doing, it would read something like this:
I woke up, was pathetic for a couple of hours, fell back asleep, woke up again, stood up, decided standing up was a horrible idea, fell back asleep...
In other words, it would be REALLY BORING.
Also, Louki says I am allowed to be pathetic because I am sick but seriously I AM MISSING FIELDWORK BECAUSE OF THIS.  I was going to go to fieldwork later this afternoon, but then I stood up for fifteen minutes and started feeling really ill again and decided that that wasn't such a hot idea.  And, no, Mom, I'm not dehydrated and I even convinced myself to eat something, so I dunno what's going on.
GAH, SO PATHETIC.

Anyway, since writing about how pathetic I am is BORING, instead I will write about...trash.

Trash in Japan is so complicated.  We have to sort and deal with our own trash in the dorm, which means that I get to take the trash out once a week.  We have four trash days a week, which are:
Burnable garbage
Recyclable garbage
Non-burnable garbage
Burnable garbage (again)

Burnable garbage basically means any garbage that you could possibly burn.  In my dorm, that's mostly food scraps, used tissues, pizza boxes, those weird paper things they use to tie noodles in bunches, etc.

Recyclable garbage means garbage you can recycle (NO WAY).  But there's A LOT MORE you can recycle than in the States.  Pretty much anything plastic can be recycled.  That includes things like those weirdly shaped clasp things on produce bags, produce bags, pretty much any food packaging, etc.  That's pretty nice, since food in Japan comes in SO MUCH PACKAGING. It's kind of insane.  I don't know why everything has to be packaged in separate plastic bags, but I guess the fact that they can be recycled makes them less ridiculous?  (But still pretty ridiculous.)  You can also recycle normally recyclable things like PET bottles (plastic bottles that drinks come in), cans, glass containers, paper, cardboard, milk cartons...  Basically, when Tuesday (recyclable garbage day) rolls around, get ready to haul SO MANY BAGS.

Non-burnable garbage is only picked up once a month, and it's basically all the weird stuff that you can't burn or recycle, so stuff like...shoes or broken plates.  There aren't really thrift stores in Japan (I've found one sort of thrift store-ish place), which means that if you have clothes you don't wear anymore you just...throw them out.  Guh.  Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

There's also sodai gomi (粗大ゴミ) or "oversize garbage," which means things like refrigerators, microwaves, TVs, etc.  It's picked up really infrequently...and you might have to arrange a special pick up.  I dunno.  We have a dead refrigerator, but we still haven't gotten rid of it for some reason.  In other news, "sodai gomi" is also a way to refer to your useless husband!  The more you know!

There's also Extremely Dangerous Garbage (not the real name) which is for hazardous materials like aerosol cans and batteries, but apparently our dorm doesn't do that?  I don't know why.  It's very confusing.

Oh, and in case you are sitting here thinking to yourself, "Well, if you're gaijin, you can just dump everything wherever and pretend you didn't know," that is a terrible idea because A. it's a jerky thing to do and B. there are garbage police.  I am not even kidding.  They go around checking to make sure that people dispose of their garbage correctly, and if you don't there will be a RECKONING.  Seriously, you don't want to mess with them.

And now I shall end this post with pictures of...

Dutch food.

SUDDENLY TOPIC CHANGE WHIPLASH!

Pancake quesadilla things!

The ones on the bottom are plain.

There were also ones with apples on the inside, so they were like German apple pancake, except not as sweet.

...but we ate them super fast so I don't have pictures.

DESSERT.

Not actually Dutch, but still delicious.

NEWS FLASH: Just got a text from Kocchan, who, if you'll remember, asked me to look over her essays for an interview.  Anyway, she passed the first stage of the test!  Not that this is surprising, but YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

...this blog post is hopping all over the place.  LIKE A FROG.

...and now I'm actually getting hungry so I'm going to try to convince myself to eat again.  Yay?

*I was going to call it "Extreme Pukey Madness," but then I realized that was misleading since I've only actually puked once.