Crow Whisperer (Familiar Encounters, Pt. 1)

(This week on My Inconsistent Drawing Style, featuring background lines...)

Much to my disappointment, there are no squirrels in Japan (T_T).  Crows are as plentiful here as squirrels are in America, though, and they're pretty cute (but not quite as cute as squirrels).  They're much bigger than American crows! 

The other day, a crow hopped right up to me while I was waiting to cross the street and cawed.  Thinking I was alone still, I cawed back.  It cawed louder, and I told it there was no need to be rude (in Japanese too, since it was a Japanese crow and just to get speaking practice).  The crow then hopped away and I realized there was a lady behind me, who was probably wondering why the crazy gaijin was talking to a crow.

I also saw a crow crossing the street with a piece of bread in its mouth.  It must have been running late to crow anime school!



(Edit on 3/5/17: I changed the title because I keep having encounters with crows and will likely have more in the future, based on my love for them.  So now it's a series.  Stay tuned to see how Lee amasses a murder of crow familiars and becomes a nature witch.)

Vote at all costs

 

Happy election day, America.  May the odds be ever in our favor. 

 

I voted via absentee ballot a while ago but forgot to post this until today, whoops.  I did need to mail it by a certain date, though, and the post office is only open on weekdays and closes shortly after I leave from work.  So, I rode my bike as fast as I could through the pouring rain and came in at just five minutes to closing time, dripping wet, with a rather complicated request (I had to have the envelope formatted a certain way with the signiture and official election mail logo on a certain side, and I tried to explain the pre-paid postage but wasn't able to get it across so I ended up paying 20 bucks anyway, but darn it I was going to vote).  And I did, in fact, forget to bring an envelope with me when I went there.  So even though I didn't actually burst in with a loud bang, I'm sure it seemed a bit like it. 

 

In related news, in a few hours I will know whether I'm going to stay the full five years here or if it will be safe to go home.  

School or BUSt

WHAT I WAS SUPPOSED TO DO:

WHAT MY DUMB BUTT DID:

Well, I had quite the adventure today.

I went to my furthest school today for the first time.  I left extra early, and boy was it good that I did, because somehow I ended up on the wrong train line when I transferred.  So then I went back to Aomori Station, then got on the correct line and everything went smoothly, and I thought the worst was over and done with.  But oh no, far from it.

The kids were absolute sweeties and such a pleasure to teach, but when I left, I managed to get lost on my way back to the station and sort of wandered around trying to find a place to cross the train tracks (I could SEE where I needed to get to but couldn't get to it because it was on the other side of the tracks, and there weren't many places to cross them).  By the time I got to the station and bought a ticket, I realized the next train wasn't for another two hours.  I checked the walking time on google maps and saw that it was only an hour to get back to Aomori station, so I figured I would just walk it and get back early rather than sit around waiting.  Apparently, however, the Lost-In-The-Woods rule applies to train stations in rural Japan: when in doubt, STAY WHERE YOU ARE AND WAIT.  I'll remember this next time.  

So, thus began my 5.5 km walk back to the station.  I passed a number of bus stops, but whenever I asked if the bus was going to Aomori-eki, the answer was always "no", so I kept walking.  Luckily, it was a pretty straight shot.  Once I finally made it back to the station, I checked my phone and saw that I had about 45 minutes until the next train, so I bought lunch from a convenience store and sat in the park in front of the station to eat.  I then got up and walked into the station with plenty of time before the train left, only to discover that google maps was wrong and there was not, in fact, a train for another hour (GOOGLE MAPS WHY MUST YOU DECEIVE ME).  

Well, no problem, I thought to myself.  Might as well use this opportunity to get familiar with the bus system.  Surely there has to be a bus running from Aomori-eki to the station near my house where I left my bike this morning.  So, I went to the bus information booth and asked which bus would take me to that station.  The lady gave me a time-table and said I needed the bus at spot 3 at 13:00.  Perfect, that was in 7 minutes.  I went over to spot 3, got on the bus that was waiting there, and it left at 13:00.  Everything seemed to be fine and dandy, until I noticed we had gone a little far and we probably should have turned a few blocks back... but maybe we're going in a big circle?  Ah yes, we're heading south now... and now we're going east and further away from the station I need... 

And then, the route got all weird and loopy and we were VERY far away from downtown.  I thought maybe we would loop back around again, but instead we stopped at the Showa Daibutsu temple, very VERY far from where I thought we were going.  I went up and asked the bus driver if we were going to the station I needed, and he said the bus that went there was the one AFTER him.  After a very confusing conversation, he directed me to said bus, and I got on that one.  That one did not, in fact, take me all the way where I needed to get to, so when I got off I had to walk a kilometer to get to the station I left my bike at.  From there, I hopped on my bike and rode my usual route to my base office.  I explained the situation to my supervisor and we both laughed, me inwardly-cringing a bit.  

A couple of hours later, I rode my bike home and collapsed face down on my bed for about five minutes straight.  Then I thought "Oh right I should probably do my evening run... oh who I am kidding, I got plenty of exercise today, I'll just make dinner now"

Tomorrow, I am ONLY taking trains, and I will make sure I'm on the right platform when I transfer.  

Winter is coming...

I spotted snow on top of the mountains yesterday.  It's mid-October.  

*hisses* back, winter, back!

RENT

From what I've seen so far, living in the Japanese countryside (the inaka), is pretty cheap.  Even within the "biggest city in the prefecture" (which really isn't saying much... I'm pretty sure Lexington is more "city-like" than Aomori), most of my friends pay 10,000 yen or less monthly for rent (generally not including water).  I have a friend who is waaaay out in the inaka whose rent is less than half of that, though, and her house is huge!  But, on the other hand, she does have to drive a car if she wants to go anywhere.  I guess there are pros and cons to both sides.    

Mission Improbable

Apparently you can't escape the missionaries, even in a country where less than 1% of the population is Christian.  In fact, most Japanese people usually say they don't feel especially religious at all.  Religion in Japan is a mixture of Shinto and Buddhism, and the lines between the two often get very blurred.

 

I had a pleasant little chat with the missionaries about their experience with trying to spread Christianity in a predominently non-Christian country, but when the discussion turned to "my image of God" I declined to answer and wished them good evening.    

Chicken in the Water!

 

A few weeks ago, a group of us were at the beach and there were a couple of jellyfish in the water.  One of my friends pointed to the jellyfish and called it "karaage" (fried chicken) by accident instead of "kurage" (jellyfish), which lead to a nearby Japanese child looking very surprised and confused!

Check?

(I forgot to draw the speech bubbles.  Whoops.  Enjoy the glory of MS Paint-made speech bubbles.)
(Once again, clicking on the images makes them bigger and easier to read)

So today, after a very confusing conversation with my supervisor, I learned that checks aren't a thing in Japan.  I probably should have realized this earlier, considering when I got my bank account, they didn't give me a checkbook, but somehow it slipped my mind.  Apparently (as far as I can tell), when you need to give a large amount of money to someone, you just... withdraw cash and put it in an envelope.  Which is how I have been paying my rent and water bill (the water bill is even more bizarre... you put the money in an envelope and stick it in one of your neighbors' doors, and every few months they rotate who takes it to the water place).  I've never heard of just withdrawing $750 worth of cash and giving it to someone in an envelope, other than for under-the-table sorts of things.

I'm still not entirely sure what I'm supposed to do with this ¥75000 cash.  After the "give it to the same ATM" line from above cycled about five times I just said I understood.  I figure I'll just take the money out, slap it down on the counter at the bank along with the bill, and say "I need to get this money to this company.  How do I do it?"  Playing the gaijin card! 

Shoe Sacrilege

Confession: I sometimes wear my outside shoes past the genkan, if I'm in a hurry and just need to grab something.  *Gasp!* Oh, the horror!  Taking off my shoes when I just need to grab something from the table?  A'int nobody got time for that!

Earthquake?

I experienced my first earthquake in Aomori!  ...And no one acknowledged it.  It was just a little bitty baby earthquake.  It only lasted about thirty seconds, and I might not have noticed it if I wasn't sitting still at my desk.  All of the sudden I felt a little off-balance and looked up to see the cord on the desk block phone swinging a little.  And then it was over and when I looked around, very few people seemed to have noticed it at all!  I heard two guys saying "地震？"　　"そうか。。。" ("an earthquake?"  "I guess so...") and that was all the acknowledgement I saw of it. 

I checked my earthquake radar immediately after and saw that it was a 5.0 off the coast of Hokkaido.  Glad to see that my radar updates as soon as it happens!

Ohana

I think this every time I do my self-introduction for a new class.  Also, side note, "ohana" (お花) means "flower" in Japanese.  Also, Nani's name (何) means "what?"  I'm really curious how the Japanese dub of Lilo & Stitch went.

Pokemon Go, Pokemon No

(If you click on the images,  they get bigger so it is easier to read!)

Pokemon Go came out a couple of weeks before I left for Japan, and it had been out for about a week and a half in Japan when I got there, so I'm not sure if the same kind of craziness that was going on in the States happened in Japan in the beginning and it just mellowed out by the time I got here?  But I noticed a distinct difference in how people play, as well as how the game is set up, in both countries.  In America, people were running around catching pokemon all over their neighborhoods and walking dogs to hatch eggs... it was so crazy that it made newspaper headlines!  So when I got to Japan and saw a bunch of people just standing completely still in parks and in front of train stations, just staring at their phones, I almost didn't recognize that they were playing the same game!  Instead of running around chasing pokemon, they stand near the Pokestops and just let the pokemon come to them, then catch them, all without moving.  Very different than in America!  Maybe it has something to do with how Japanese culture places emphasis on doing one thing at one time rather than multitasking, which is why you almost never see people eating or drinking while walking.  I've also noticed a difference in the location of Pokestops; in America, there were at least four Pokestops within a mile of my house, which was located in a residential area of a suburb.  In Japan, I almost NEVER see Pokestops in residential areas.  There's one in front of the high school near my apartment and one in front of the post office a couple of kilometers, and that is it.  However, when I go downtown and go in front of the train station or to the large park near the sea, there are at least three or four Pokestops all within a hundred feet of each other.  I guess it's because they don't want people running around neighborhoods catching pokemon, which can be a little disruptive, but by all means, do it in the park.  Of course, when you do go to the park, everyone is just standing motionless.