Japanese salon

This morning my advisor took me around to do a bunch of administrative stuff, and I gave him and the other people taking care of me at Nanzan omiyage.*  I had to turn in a bunch of paperwork and pay for my internets (which I secretly suspect I was not supposed to have this whole time, oops) and I also have to get a seal (one with my name on it), so I need to turn in my paperwork for that.  Also, I need to get tickets from a vending machine to pay my rent?

I finally met the Japanese girl in my suite**, and she seems nice.  The other two girls I haven't seen, which is kind of disconcerting.  Maybe they never leave their rooms?  Or maybe they're always out?  I don't know.  We're supposed to have a meeting tonight to divide up responsibilities.

This evening I went to a Japanese class my advisor recommended, and MY GOODNESS, it was great.  It's a class that mixes both foreigners learning Japanese and Japanese students learning how to teach Japanese.  But to call it a "class" would not be true the spirit of what went on in there.  Basically, I walked into the room, and was immediately swarmed by a bunch of girls who thrust omiyage upon me (one of them had just come back from a trip to Okinawa).  Then the teacher showed up, and, because there were two new students (me and a Japanese girl), he made everyone introduce each other and then made the two new students introduce themselves.  It might have been the strangest set of introductions I have ever heard in Japanese.  One of the girls was introduced as "knowing karaoke" and another was introduced as "high quality."  Also, when I said I was from America the entire room freaked out for some reason.  (Apparently they've never had an English-speaking foreign student in the class before.  The two foreign students who were there tonight were Chinese and Taiwanese, and there are two other students who are Polish and German.)  And when I said I was studying Shinto, the teacher said he'd take us on a field trip to a shrine?  Anyway, after we were done with introductions, we spent the rest of the class playing word games.  That may sound simple, but the game was that each of us were given a word and we had to come up with a definition of the word that the other students could guess.  I was given "rock" and my definition was "It's a strong, hard thing that makes mountains.  It also makes buildings and roads."  (Not exactly eloquent, but at least people guessed it.)  The hardest one was "regret."  ("Painful?"  "No, no, that's not it!"  "Sour about losing?"  "No, no, try again!")  It was a lot of fun, and I actually learned a bunch of new words (I had no idea what the word for abdominal muscles was before today), and it was really low pressure, which was excellent.  As the teacher said, "This is nothing like your other classes.  Forget them for right now.  This is like a Japanese salon."  Also, one of the girls speaks Kyoto-ben!***  

So that class meets three days a week, and if it continues to be as awesome as the first class was, I'll definitely keep going.

*Remember how I said that omiyage are souvenirs for people left at home?  Well, they're also gifts you give when you first meet someone you're going to have a relationship with.

**The girl who I THOUGHT was the Japanese girl is actually the Taiwanese girl.  She just has a Japanese name and speaks beautiful Japanese.  I WAS REALLY CONFUSED FOR A WHILE THERE.

***If I haven't ranted at you about Kyoto-ben before, simply put, it's the greatest Japanese dialect EVER.  I would marry Kyoto-ben, not even kidding.  It also sounds pretty much nothing like standard Japanese, so if you're more used to it than standard Japanese (case in point: me) you're going to have so much trouble in life. To give you an idea of how different it is, imagine you want to say, "I really don't know.  This is useless."

Standard dialect

本当に分からない。だめだよ。

Hontou ni wakaranai.  Dame da yo.

Kyoto-ben

ほんまに分からへん。あかんや。

Honma ni wakarahen.  Akan ya.

YEAHHHHHHH.

In which I wander around a lot

Once again, not a terribly exciting day.  I wound up doing some shopping at the konbini*, and then doing some laundry (which was exciting, because I then had to find places to hang all the things too long to be hung on my clothesline).  Then I wandered around Nagoya until I found a department store so I could buy a towel, and then hung around in my dorm room until I gave up on my suitemates ever making their presence known and went downstairs to the common room for the whole dorm, where I Actually Met Some People.  Also, someone mistook me for a girl who got severely drunk last night?  It was an awkward conversation (in Japanese):

Japanese girl: Oh, hi!  Are you okay?
Me: ...yes?
JG: You were really drunk last night.
Me: ...uh...
JG: Everyone was really worried.
Me: ...uh...a different person... [I'll completely lose my Japanese when I'm nervous or taken by surprise, which is kind of a pain.]
JG: Oh.  Oh!  But you went last night, right?
Me: ...I moved in yesterday...?
JG: Oh!  Oh, I'm so sorry!  It's nice to meet you!  Wow, that must have been really unexpected!  Sorry!

Something I still haven't gotten used to is that everyone leaves the front door of their suite open.  This means that I do stupid things like go into the wrong suite (that was horrifyingly embarrassing and I apologized about a million times), but it also means that while I was eating dinner, a random girl burst into the suite, tore into the Taiwanese girl's room, and began shouting in Chinese.  Two minutes later, she went tearing out the door again.  It was all very surreal.  Even if my suitemates leave the front door open, I'm locking the door to my room, 'cause seriously.

Anyway, I am tired, so I will probably just work on my Japanese blurb thing and then turn in for the night.  My sleep schedule has been so weird lately.

*Konbini are the best.  Konbini literally means "convenience store," but they sell EVERYTHING.  Need shampoo?  They've got it.  Need an extraordinarily large amount of tea?  They've got it.  Need a whole meal?  They've got it, and it probably won't cost you more than 500 yen, plus it'll actually taste good.

引越しの日 (Moving Day)

Didn't do much worth talking about today.  Said goodbye to a bunch of Fulbrighters, hopped on the metro to Tokyo Station, wandered around so some other Fulbrighters could find omiyage* for people they're visiting, said goodbye to a bunch more people, and then took the Shinkansen to Nagoya.  My advisor met me at the station and took me to my dorm and also the supermarket, because he is generally a really nice guy.  He probably thinks I'm crazy, though, because I like karate (his response was, "But it hurts!") and also because I get flustered really easily and forgot random things at the grocery store so I had to go through the checkout twice.

I'm in a suite with three other girls: an American, a Japanese girl, and a Taiwanese girl.  I've met the American and Japanese girls briefly, but have yet to meet the Taiwanese girl.  My room is probably about the same size as my room last year, although it has a wardrobe instead of a closet.  Also, the ceiling light is pretty much dead, so I'm writing this in almost pitch blackness.  I'm going to ask the other girls if there are light bulbs I can change it out for or if I'll need to ask someone to do it in the morning.

This has basically been my first day of being homesick, although I think people-sick might be a better word.  I think it'll be better once I have a support network and people I actually know, instead of just being stranded on my own in an unfamiliar city.  It probably didn't help that I had to say goodbye to eight awesome people this morning, who I probably won't see again for a couple of months.

Ah well.  Life continues.  I need to get some business cards and revise my blurb in Japanese about my research project.  That and figure out what the heck is going on with my light.

Comments from last blog(s):
I've never heard of writing wishes and tying them up before, but I'll look into it!  Korea (and China, for the matter) have a lot of religious practices that are similar to Japanese ones, which is pretty unsurprising, given their proximity to each other (and the flow of ideas from China to everywhere else)!

Japan doesn't have a class system; about 90% of the population consider themselves "middle class."  What they do have is a hierarchy, which basically means that you always have to be aware of how the people you're talking to are related to you in the hierarchy, so you can talk to them with the correct level of politeness.  For example, the other Fulbrighters are at the same level as I am, my advisor is way above me, my senpai are above me, and my kouhai are below me.  But it gets more complicated than that.  Other professors (who aren't my advisor) are above me but at a distance, random people my age on the street are at the same level but at a distance (so I need to speak more politely to them than I would to my peers I know), friends are closer to me and on the same level regardless of their age (which is why I speak slangy Kyoto dialect with my almost-thirty-year-old grad school friends), and the imperial family will always be so far above me that I have to use an entirely different form of speaking to address them.  It's all very complicated, and a lot of foreign students give up on learning the system and try to be equally polite to everyone.

...and being a strict vegetarian in Japan is difficult.  If you say you're vegetarian (菜食主義), people will assume you eat fish and seafood.  If you say you don't eat meat of any kind, people will assume you will eat fish broth.  There are some purely vegetarian restaurants in Japan (I've been to one!), but generally it's hard to find purely vegetarian food.  If you cook for yourself, though, it's super easy!

*Souvenirs given as gifts.

In which I do a lot of sightseeing, and hang out with awesome people

We only had orientation for twenty minutes apiece today, which left a lot of time to go sightseeing.  So I got in contact with my friend, Geoff, who is currently studying in the area to see if he wanted to meet up.  He said he did, so we made plans to meet in the afternoon.

My twenty minute orientation was actually a bit shorter than that, 'cause the program coordinators said I was really on top of everything and going in with a good game plan.  We actually spent a bit of time coming up for reasons for not drinking; one of the women suggested saying I have an allergy to alcohol if I'm asked, because that's a common excuse among Japanese people.  That is respected a lot more than "I just don't drink," so I'll probably go with that if people start pressuring me.

After orientation, three other Fulbrighters and I went to Yasukuni Shrine, the most controversial shrine in Japan.*  It enshrines the "glorious war dead," which include class A war criminals.  The shrine also has a very, ah, creative view of history, which does not go over particularly well with any of the countries Japan invaded during World War II.

Anyway.  We went to the shrine, and it was quite interesting.

Here's the main gate into the shrine.  What you might not be able to tell from the picture is that the torii (the shrine gate) is actually made of metal (I'm fairly sure it's bronze).  Most torii are made of stone or wood, so a metal one is quite unusual.

Here's the walkway to the second gate.

...and here's the main gate leading into the complex.  So far, pretty standard for a shrine.

Here's the main shrine itself.  

Still seems pretty normal, right?

Do you see him yet?

Yep, I'm talking about this guy:

Yasukuni Shrine has a security guard.  Given the amount of protest surrounding the shrine, it's not exactly unreasonable, but seeing a security guard at a shrine was rather strange.

This is an ema (a sort of placard on which you write your wishes) that was hung up at the shrine.  I took a picture** mostly because I really like the message, which reads in translation:

"I will definitely get totally better at drawings and making manga!!  Definitely definitely definitely definitely definitely!"

(Whoever wrote it made a couple of grammar errors, though.  Ah well.)

So then we went to the shrine museum, which was well worth the 500 yen entrance fee.  There were a lot of artifacts I wouldn't have been able to see anywhere else, but there was also the, ah, creative history I mentioned earlier.  Some events were rewritten, some were approached from a different angle, and others were ignored entirely.  For example, the entry for the Nanking massacre went something along the lines of "Nanking Incident: The Japanese army went to Nanking.  They had a resounding victory."  Although my favorite creative history example was that they argued that enshrining the war dead is an ancient Japanese practice--stretching all the way back to 1868!  ...of course, they fail to mention that 1868 was when State Shinto was formed, and enshrining the war dead had a political purpose.  It would be like if I rationalized my painting a horse blue because the U.S. has a long history of painting horses blue, stretching all the way back to 2011!

So, yes, very interesting.

Then I had to leave to meet Geoff in Akihabara, so I took two subways to get there.  Geoff and I wandered around Akihabara for a while, and somehow ended up in Ueno Park, where a guy was doing a cool juggling routine:

 (Yes, he is juggling his hat.)

After that, we wandered around Ueno Park a bit more, saw some cool ponds and a few small shrines and temples, and then wandered into a little shopping district nearby.  After failing at finding swim trunks (for Geoff, not me) and poking fun at each other's accents ('cause I have a Kyoto accent and he has a Tokyo accent) for a little while, we wound up in an arcade.

(Geoff got so many double-takes on the street...and even more stares when people heard us speaking Japanese together.)

After that, we geeked out around the model section in Yodobashi Camera for a while, and then hopped on a train to Hamamatsucho (another district of Tokyo), and grabbed dinner at Mos Burger, which was surprisingly good.  Japanese fast food isn't at all like American fast food, in that it's actually relatively healthy, tastes good, and doesn't make you feel like you're eating fried grease.  Also, MELON SODA.  It's so great.

And then we went...

...to Tokyo Tower.  And neither of us got transported to another world OR was told we had to battle for the fate of the world!***  GEEZ, DISCRIMINATION.

We went up to the observation deck (at 150 m) and it was AMAZING.

My camera, however, was not awesome.  In fact, this is the best picture it could take from up there.  YOU FAIL, CAMERA.

...and just in case you thought I could go for more than five minutes without talking about shrines, this was in Tokyo Tower!

So then we grabbed a (totally non-alcoholic) drink a floor down (which was still really high up), and talked a bunch before we headed back to the subway station.  (I also continue to be amused that he calls me senpai.****  I have kouhai!  It's awesome!)  All in all, a pretty excellent way to spend my last day before I have to begin Serious Research!

*For a complete explanation of the "Yasukuni problem," I highly recommend Helen Hardacre's Shinto and the State, 1868-1988 (ignore the negative review by the person who thinks he/she knows everything about East Asian religion, ugh), although it does not cover the more recent developments.  I also recommend this article, which is coincidentally written by my advisor at Nanzan, for more recent information.

**For anyone worried about how appropriate it is to take pictures of other people's ema, it is perfectly fine.  Ema are meant to be read (it's a way of proclaiming your intentions to the kami and everyone who comes to the shrine), and shrines encourage their visitors to take photographs.  What isn't appropriate is opening other people's envelopes with prayer requests.  That would just be creepy.

***Sorry, nerd references.

****Senpai-kouhai is a really important idea in Japanese society.  Essentially, a senpai is an upperclassman and a kouhai is a lower classman.  But, more importantly, senpai are expected to take care of and advise their kouhai, while kouhai are expected to treat their senpai with respect and take their advice seriously.  So the fact that I have several kouhai is kind of amazing.  Of course, all of them are older than me, which is a little bit weird, but whatever.  I have kouhai!  They ask me for advice!  It's crazy!

Orientation day 2

So this morning two of the other girls and I went to Nogi Shrine.

(There I am, squinting into the sun like a dork.)

It was a pretty small shrine, and we arrived just as the shrine was opening, so we got to see a lot of the early morning routine, which was super neat.  There was a whole gang of guys in dressed entirely in white cleaning the shrine and raking the gravel out.  One of the priests was also paying his respects to all the kami*, which was quite a long process, since there were at least three separate shrines within the shrine complex and then about six or seven sacred trees!

This was a super cool place to tie omikuji.**  Much nicer than the strings people usually tie them on at shrines.

This was a random hallway leading down the side of the shrine.  We think it's used for weddings and other ceremonies, but we're not entirely sure.  I've never seen another shrine with such a thing!  Then again, Nogi Shrine is very, very new, in terms of shrines ('cause General Nogi didn't die until 1912, and the shrine wasn't built until 1917), and the architecture reflects that.

This was a super cool rock they had on display.  It's called "the chrysanthemum face rock" in Japanese, and (although it's hard to see in the small picture, so you should really click on it) it has flower-shaped patterns all over its surface.

So then, after two of us received 5 mosquito bites apiece over the course of about fifteen minutes, we decided to head back to the hotel and then head over to orientation.

Today's orientation was more useful than yesterday's, 'cause we talked about things we'll actually need to know for the program, like how to get a cell phone and how to sign up for classes and how to get our Alien Registration Cards.  There was also a lot of information for people who need to get apartments.  I am so glad I don't have to do that, 'cause it sounds insanely difficult and complicated.  We also got a lot of information on what to do in the event of a major natural disaster, because the Fulbright program organizers didn't know enough or given enough information about forced evacuations and voluntary evacuations when 3/11 occurred, so they've decided to remedy that this year.

On the less helpful side, we kept being told, "Yes, it's really hard to balance study and research and a social life and not go insane from overwork.  But make sure to do it."  Auuuuuugh.

On the other hand, I'm glad I'm not in the sciences, because apparently staying in the lab from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. is expected of graduate students.  We're not sure whether it will be the same for Fulbright Fellows, but we're hoping they'll have to do less, since they, you know, want to have lives and actually see sunlight sometimes.

After orientation, we went to Meiji Jingu, but unfortunately due to orientation running late, we didn't have much time there before the shrine closed.  So I don't have many pictures, despite its awesomeness.  Walking through the gates into Meiji Jingu is bizarre, because the street outside is your normal, bustling Tokyo street, and the shrine is essentially located in a forest.  You can't even hear the street outside once you get far enough in.

These were some random barrels of French wine inside the gates.  SO STRANGE.

And here're the more normal barrels of sake.  One of the other girls thinks that maybe the wine was there because the shrine was built during a time when there was a lot of pressure in Japan to Westernize.  Still, it's surprising that the wine wasn't taken out later, during the anti-Western movements.

We found a huge billboard with a poem written by the Meiji Emperor's wife outside the inner gate, and we were all trying to figure out what the poem said, 'cause it was written in an older form of Japanese.  Someone asked, "Can anyone here actually read this?" and immediately several people said, "Ask Dana!"  It was kind of amusing.  I guess I've become the official Hard Japanese Reader.  I could read most of it, but there were a few vocabulary words that I didn't know (and I still can't find them in the dictionary, so they're probably not used any more).

Here's the main shrine.  This was taken from just inside the gates, so as you can probably tell, there was a huuuuuuuuge courtyard.  It was paved too, which is unusual, since a lot of them are gravel!

After that, most of us returned to the hotel.  I registered myself for the State Department's Smart Traveler Enrollment Program, and then went out to a random hole-in-the-wall restaurant to get dinner.  And then I walked all the way to Roppongi (a big nightlife distance) just because I could. It was interesting to see Roppongi, since I've heard so much about it, but really not my thing.  Although the extremely tall black guy advertising the nude girls club was kind of amusing.  It was like if Simon sold nude girls instead of sushi...?

A bunch of other people from the program are going out for drinks this evening, but since I don't drink (or particularly enjoy being around people who are drinking) and I'm really, really tired, I'm just going to stay in.

And some random thoughts before signing off:

A lot of us have already gone into gaijin-spotting mode.  It's kind of sad, actually, that whenever we see a non-Japanese person we do a double-take.  Of course, a lot of them are standing out like crazy because they're doing dumb things like shouting in the middle of the street or standing on the wrong side of the escalator***, so we're not entirely at fault.

During lunch we decided to make a list of the things we will miss the most about the U.S.  What we came up with was:

1. Mexican food (actually, about three of us said this one simultaneously)

2. Cheap produce

3. Really good dark chocolate

4. Skim milk

5. Being able to show your shoulders (i.e. wear tank tops) in public

And now I'm going to hit the sack, because I am way too tired to do much else.

*Kami are the spirits believed to inhabit pretty much everything.  Unlike the Western conception of god(s), they don't have any particular moral compass, and often behave a lot like humans.  If you're nice to them, they'll usually help you out, and if you're a jerk to them, they'll make your life miserable.  They can also throw temper tantrums, which is how earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and bad storms happen, so it's usually good to keep them happy.

**Omikuji are fortune-telling slips.  You should tie your slip up if you get a good fortune--or if you get a bad one, depending on who you ask.  Basically, everyone ties them up.

***In Tokyo and pretty much everywhere else, stand on the left and walk on the right.  In Kansai, stand on the right and walk on the left.  Yay, Kansai being randomly rebellious!

Orientation Day 1

I woke up at 3:30 a.m.

Yeahhhhhhhhh.  I tried to go back to sleep for about an hour and a half, but that failed, so I just got up really early.  I am surprised I haven't crashed yet.  I don't know why my brain decided that now would be a great time to run on 6 hours of sleep, but I completely disagree with its decision.

We (that is, all the Fulbrighters) ate breakfast* this morning, and then took the subway together over to the JUSEC (Japan-U.S. Educational Commission) offices for the first day of orientation.  It was basically a everyone's-gonna-talk-at-you-about-great-things-ahead day.  We were told very politely that we were incredibly privileged to have this opportunity and we will be attacked by man-eating monkeys if we waste it. (Okay, not that exact phrasing, but pretty close.)  And then we had a guy come talk at us about the Japanese educational system for about an hour.  It would have been interesting if I didn't already know pretty much all the information, and if he didn't speak in a monotone.  He did talk about zemi,** though, which was strangely ironic, considering what happened later.

For lunch we had a bunch of sandwiches that no one could figure out what was in them (including the woman who had bought them), and then we heard about the Fulbright alumni groups (which we're probably going to have to do presentations for, eek) and then we got OUR MONEY.  I will be incredibly relieved when I have a bank account.

I also bought a shinkansen (bullet train) ticket for Saturday.  It turned out to be about $100, which is what I thought it would be in the first place but twice would Google said it would be.  So I now know not to trust Google.  GEEZ, GOOGLE.  Next you're going to tell me that solid-gold train doesn't exist!

So then this evening we went to a reception/dinner sort of thing hosted at the house of the current Minister of the Embassy of the United States of America.  I met my advisor there, and it was not as terrifying I feared it would be.  However, within about three minutes of my introducing myself, my advisor informed me that I would be attending his zemi and THEN asked me if I could read Japanese.  (I'm somewhat terrified to consider what he would have done if I had said no.)  He also said he would introduce me at the local shrines.  So, pretty much, he's awesome and I managed not to fall over myself.  Yay!  And then I spent the rest of the evening talking to cool graduate students about their projects, and also hearing about amputating the fins off of zebrafish from one of the girls working on stem cell research (there are two of them total; what are the chances?).

Tomorrow is day two of orientation, and we're going to learn actually useful stuff, like how to set up a bank account.  So that'll be helpful.

Can I take a moment here to complain about the weather?  'cause, good grief, I had forgotten how horrible humidity is.  I feel like I need a bath if I've been outside for more than fifteen seconds.  Blech.

Also, all the other Fulbright grantees are so accomplished, I feel kind of lame next to them.  One guy already has two articles published...in completely different fields.  And almost everyone has already spent at least a year in Japan, and has a way bigger academic network than I do.  They can do the academic talk thing too, while I mostly know a lot about sketchy internet websites.  Oh, and Ian Reader.  I've read a lot of stuff by Ian Reader.

The only place where I actually stand out (other than age) is that my Japanese is a lot better than most of theirs.  We had to take a taxi over to the reception, and I wound up doing all the talking to the taxi driver, because the other two girls I was riding with couldn't understand anything he was saying.  Then again, I also think I'm a lot more willing to try to speak Japanese than some people.  I have done the whole sound-stupid-and-stumble-over-words-to-get-the-point-across thing, and I'm really okay with sounding stupid if it means that my Japanese improves.  So that was why I was speaking 75% Japanese, 25% English with my advisor, and the other girls were speaking entirely English.  I dunno.  Maybe I'm just more willing to make a fool of myself.

In response to questions from last blog:
No, there is no concept of sarcasm in Japanese.  There isn't even a word for sarcasm; you have to use the same word as "irony."  One of my Japanese friends asked me to try to be sarcastic in Japanese once, and I couldn't do it.  Sarcastic Japanese just sounds really confused.
And, no, I only ever call myself a gaijin ironically.

And now I'm going to collapse toward bed.  Good night!

*Japanese breakfasts are so excellent.  I have waxed poetic about them many times before, but they are basically the greatest thing in the woooorld.  So many Japanese pickles, rice, miso soup, roasted fish, a fresh-baked roll and grapefruit juice--what more could you want?

**Zemi is the shortened Japanese version of "seminar." It's basically a discussion class led by a professor which can last anywhere from a semester to four years.  A lot of the time, it's an invaluable networking opportunity, and the professor takes on the role of advisor/counselor/parent figure/employment finder/matchmaker.  Also, a lot of the time, professors get to pick which students they take into their zemi, so being picked for one is a huge honor.

Aw, cool, blogger is in Japanese now, 'cause I'm in JAPAN

Sometime in the middle of last night it struck me exactly how terrifying what I’m doing is.  I’m moving to a foreign country for a year, and I’ve never even lived on my own before, not really.  Needless to say, not a whole lot of good sleeping went on, which means that I am writing this while REALLY TIRED.  Please forgive grammars and typos.

So I took a flight from San Francisco to Tokyo this morning.  Despite hearing stories about how much better Japanese airline food is than American airline food, I cannot say that I found this to be the case.  Yes, the dinner was almost entirely edible, but I could not bring myself to eat more than the fruit from the breakfast.  Of course, it probably helps that air travel makes me horribly queasy, and stress makes me queasy as well, so I was just a queasy factory.  YAY.

I spent a while watching X-Men: First Class with Japanese subtitles, which was exciting.  I’ve watched American movies dubbed into Japanese before, but never subbed.  Japanese subtitles are very strange, in that they will turn three lines into half a sentence.  And sometimes they’ll completely change what people are saying.  Like this (actual example from the movie):

The English dialog:

Charles: Are you ready?

Eric: Let’s find out.

The Japanese subtitles:

Charles: 大丈夫か? (Alright?)

Eric: ああ.  (Yes.)

Not a huge change, but the English dialog says way more about the characters.  They also cut pretty much all the snarky lines (although that’s mildly understandable, because there’s no concept of sarcasm in Japanese) and the fast-talking nerd humor.  Ah well.  It probably has something to do with how quickly you can read in Japanese, but then again, I read really slowly and I didn’t really have a problem reading the subtitles.

[/X-Men nerd out]

I also read Fahrenheit 451, which I have had on my shelf for about two years now and only just worked up the courage to read.  I was wincing through most of it (BURNING BOOKS AUGH IT HURTS MY SOUL), but Bradbury is such a good writer, his prose just kind of blows me away.  MUST READ MORE OF HIS STUFF.

...and then I landed and stuff got pretty lame.  So, first of all, being sleep deprived means that my motor functions start dying.  So useless things like hand-eye coordination go out the window, as do my abilities to judge distance (which are already sketchy at best).  So first I managed to fail at steering my baggage cart a lot, and then I managed to drop all the money I changed on the floor.  Fortunately, a really nice girl helped me pick all of it up...and then it turned out she was another Fulbright grantee.  Awesome times.  Except for, you know, the part where I kept dropping money as fast as I picked it up.

...and then I went to get the baggage delivery worked out and discovered you can't do takuhaibin (home delivery) without a telephone number!  Of course, the folks at my dorm didn't bother to mention this...or to give me a phone number to contact them...so I paid $8 for internet and looked up a friend's phone number to write down instead.  Of course, she's in Kyushu and won't be any help if they're trying to deliver baggage, but I'm going to friggin' hope they don't call that number.  (They said they could write down a friend's number...  They didn't specify which friend...  I AM JUST A DUMB GAIJIN; IT'S NOT MY FAULT.)

And then I couldn't figure out which bus I was supposed to take, but the nice lady behind the bus counter pointed me toward it and I ran like the dickens to catch it.  And then I met up with three other Fulbright grantees and we talked on the bus.  And then, to add further insult to injury, I managed to somehow lose my baggage claim slip, so I had to stay afterwards and hand over my passport to prove to the bus driver that I wasn't trying to steal my own suitcase.  AUGH.

But I finally managed to get to the hotel room, and went to the convenience store with a bunch of other Fulbrighters to buy onigiri and STRAIGHT TEA (oh, how I have missed straight tea).*  And then we hung out and ate onigiri and tried to figure out what was in mine (one of them definitely had wasabi and the other had some kind of ginger).**

You know how your eyeballs start feeling like someone’s been rubbing them with paper towels or something after you’ve been on airplanes for a while?  Yeahhhh.  Mine have been feeling like that all day.  I think it's time for me to sleep.  For reals.

Orientation starts tomorrow morning.  Hopefully it'll be pretty okay.

*Straight tea is kind of like normal black tea with sugar, except it's not grossly sweet like most sugared teas are, and is a lot lighter than most black teas.  Basically, it is everything you could want in a tea that is not prickly pear tea.

**It was 生姜のうま煮, which I assume is some kind of cooking technique and has nothing to do with horses.  Then again, I could be really wrong.