Friday, July 16, 2010

Rip, Roarin, Ready to Sleep

Hey Abe, it's your body, can we talk? It's about your health. I understand the cafeteria says that the food they serve is made with health in mind, but...well, I think they may be glossing over a thing or two. We...your body that is...all agree that you aren't getting enough calories. We run around only a few hours after a meal, and that is if we even get to fully digest it. Didn't you put to and to together before? Japan has the nicest toilets in the world, and for good reason, a significant amount of time is spent on them. I'm just saying, see if you can't get some vitamins or minerals in your system, and no, the minerals in the water don't count. I'm glad we had this talk.
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Lets see if I can wrap up an update in the time before I hop on a bus to head to Tsuchizaki. This weekend is the Kessen Rock Festival, where I will accomplish one of my Japan-goals, seeing my favorite band: Asian Kung-Fu Generation, in concert. Ben and I will spend the night at Sakie's apartment, then hop in the car early in the morning and drive to Iwate, see the concert, and stay in a hotel in Iwate so we can drive back to Akita bright eyed and bushy tailed.

I really think that this concert is going to be good for me. I've started to feel AIU is like a large ship floating in the middle of the ocean with no wind in its sails. The crew and passengers need to find something to do to bide the time before the winds, but some of us go stir crazy first. I've done so much to try to keep myself entertained. I've written in this blog, worked on my audio podcast over at www.jonandabe.com, and started writing a short story about an American detective working in Japan. My time spent with Sakie is probably my most productive. With her we've planned this Kessen Rock Festival Trip, a smaller Hot Springs vacation we'll be taking at the end of the month, and we've started to plan my parents visit. We haven't just done the short term stuff either, we've even gone so far as to start a "Sakie and Abe's Life Together Notebook" with sketches and brainstorms, like this one:
From Study Abroad: AIU

In case you can't tell (and who could blame you), this is a diagram, or more accurately a blueprint of the house we're planning to live in when we move to the states and live together. I sketched out a basic floor plan of the house, and together we filled it with the things we would like to have. It was a warm and fun way to burn a couple of hours. We've also made lists of where we would like to travel, the places we would like to see, and what order we would like to see them in. Certainly alot more constructive then AIU's main pass time.
From Study Abroad: AIU

Heavy Drinking.
I wont go into to much detail, except to say that alot of unhealthy drinking habits have started here at AIU, and not because of some party atmosphere like you might experience at some colleges, but more because there is nothing else to do after you've studied. The cafe and LDIC have closed, and the only vending machine thats still on is the one that dispenses beer. I'm lucky enough to have obligations that take me away from some of the drinking parties, so I've actually done less drinking here then back home. Yea, go me!

Upon further thought, my time here has been punctuated by really interesting events. Not always entertaining, but always interesting. For example, A Noh Play. For those of you who don't know the difference between Noh play, and the world famous Kabuki play, I'll explain the difference.
Kabuki is, according to wikipedia: "the highly stylized classical Japanese Dance-Drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers.
Noh plays, according to me, are a minimalist style classical Japanese snore-fest. Noh theatre is known for droll monotone conversations and the sounds of the audience falling asleep and falling out of their chairs.
But hey, I guess the venue was pretty impressive.
From Study Abroad: AIU

From Study Abroad: AIU

From Study Abroad: AIU

From Study Abroad: AIU

Oh, did I fail to mention that at a Noh play, the audience sits outside in the elements? Yea, it is what it is.
From Study Abroad: AIU

From Study Abroad: AIU


After watching a 3 hour Noh play, while sitting in the rain in a plastic lawn chair, I decided it would be nice to relax a bit by hopping in the bath.
From Study Abroad: AIU

I just can't win, some days!

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Sacrifice for Gain

Never before has there been a digital camera that has held on to live as tenaciously as my Fujifilm FinePix A600. Covered in chips and dings, aging mechanisms that cause the lens to extend so slow you'd think the thing ran off steam, and a piece of scotch tape holding the battery door closed, it continues to do what I ask of it. It will be a sad day when it finally gives up the ghost.

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Having now been in Japan for a little over three months, I'm beginning to understand the plight of the exchange student. 3 months is just about the amount of time it takes you to compile a mental list of all the things you miss from home, and those thoughts begin chipping away at your resolve. I'm already seeing it working at the foundations of some of the other students, and I hear a lot of talk in the cafeteria about getting home. Since I will not be one of those headed home come August, I've been trying to either suppress the thought of home comforts, or try to supplement them with the best we can pull off here. Example: Taco Bell.

For those of you who don't know, the same company that owns KFC and Pizza Hut also owns Taco Bell. Knowing this, I'm all the more frustrated by the fact that they have KFC and Pizza Hut here, but for some reason have not opened a single Taco Bell on the entire island of Japan. So, Ben Strickland and I gave it our best shot.

From Japan Pictures


While the ingredients were not quite the quality we were hoping for; with the cheese being the kind you put on a pizza, the lettuce being more cabbage then anything else, and the meat being...well, Japanese style meat, we gave it our best shot and were pretty pleased with the result. Somewhat similar to Mexican food, and no food poisoning.

From Study Abroad: AIU


It's important when one lives on a campus as small as AIU's to be able to get away from it all when you need to. Even spending my weekends away from campus with Sakie, I still find myself beyond my stress threshold at least once a week, and that is when I throw my bag over my shoulder and head off into the small wooded park next to campus. In this small wood I find privacy and quite, the party-going type that makes up most of the AIU student body don't venture out here, and I can feel safe and sound lying in a small field, and enjoy the view of the bright blue sky, and think about nothing at all for an hour or two.

From Study Abroad: AIU

From Study Abroad: AIU


I've brought Sakie here a time or two as well. I hope in doing so she enjoyed our time together there.

From Study Abroad: AIU

From Study Abroad: AIU


A number of the most interesting experiences I've had in Japan so far have been thanks to AIU's Community Outreach Service, or COS. The COS office's sole purpose is to set up opportunities for AIU students to volunteer all around Akita prefecture in a number of different domains. The first of these that I ever took part in was a trip to Minami Naraoka Elementary School in Daisen City.

From Study Abroad: AIU


This would be the first of many trips to this same elementary school, actually, but this time is definitely the most memorable for a number of reasons. The first is that we went there to join the children in planting rice.

If you've never planted rice before, you are a bad person. I kid, I kid! Rice planting happens something like this:
-First things first, you remove your shoes and socks, and roll your pants up above the knee. This step is really important for step 3.
-Second step is to make your way out to the rice patty, and wait while a worker lays out a grid in the rice patty. It is best to use this time to steel yourself for what you are about to do.
-Step three, Jump into knee high mud.
-Step four is to take a handful of the little rice plants, and shove 3 or 4 a couple of inches into the mud where the lines meet.
-Step 5, get clobbered by flying mudballs.

While learning how to plant rice, and then going out and doing it is a cultural experience I felt like I would enjoy, planting rice with the kids from Minami Naraoka is what made it into something I will never forget. I hope my readers will understand why there are not so many pictures to mark the occasion, as most of the experience took place in knee high mud, or with hundreds of excited children underfoot. To mark the occasion and send us off, once our time was up at the school the kids got the marching band together and put on a show for us:

From Study Abroad: AIU

From Study Abroad: AIU


What cannot be conveyed by pictures was the sentiment in the air that moved a couple of the other foreign students to tears. These are the kind of unique experiences that I studied abroad to have.

Another of these trips was to the Akita Omoriyama Zoo, again through COS.
From Study Abroad: AIU


Located atop a hill with a scenic view, it is one of those zoos that doesn't look like much from the outside, but hides alot of surprises behind its big, fake, bamboo fences.

From Study Abroad: AIU

From Study Abroad: AIU


The point of this trip was similar to the one before it: to speak English in the company of people who are trying to learn it. The difference this time being that before it was to elementary school students, but now it was a group of parents with very young children they were wanting to expose to English as early as possible. Again, A trip to a great zoo is neat, but a trip to a great zoo while surrounded by local families who came to see you makes it a treasured memory.

From Study Abroad: AIU

From Study Abroad: AIU

From Study Abroad: AIU


Our day at the zoo together ended around lunchtime, when, as planned, the families pulled out backpack sized bento lunches and fed us until we were to stuffed to walk back to the cars. I can only hope this isn't the end of the home made Japanese bento lunches I'll have while I'm here.
From Study Abroad: AIU