Monkey See, Monkey What Do?

My mom came to visit me!  It was her first trip to Japan, and we went to a lot of places and had a nice time.  My prefecture has a lot of beautiful nature places to see, but the thing is that they're a little hard to get to via public transportation, which is why most people just get a car when they come here.  My mom got an international driver's license and valiantly braved the right-hand-side driving while I played navigator/sign-reader/person-who-tells-the-Japanese-car-navi-system-we-would-like-to-stay-on-main-roads-thank-you-very-much, so we worked as a team to get around some of the more remote parts of the prefecture.  While we were walking around the Twelve Lakes area on the hiking trails, looking at our map, there was a sudden sound up ahead like something crashing through the brush, and we looked up to find a small group of monkeys running across the path!  We could see one smallish one (maybe an adolescent?) in a tree, one crossing the path to climb up the opposite embankment, and one that just plopped itself down in the middle of the path and sat there for a while.  Neither of us knew what to do, so we just stood there and watched them for a few minutes until they wandered away, then we continued very cautiously down the path in case they came back.  It was cool because we weren't even in a designated monkey park like Arashiyama; they were just wild monkeys living their monkey lives who happened to come across a couple really tall, weird-looking sorta-monkey-creatures.  

Rated T for swearing...

I'm starting to think swear words don't translate very well...

When I was in Osaka, a friend taught me some Kansai-ben (Kansai dialect, if you've seen yakuza in movies there's a good chance they're using this dialect), and he said that なんでやねん ("nandeyanen") meant "what the fuck".  So imagine my surprise when I get up here and tell people I studied abroad in Osaka, only to have them exclaim very loudly "Oh so do you know 'what the fuck'?"  This conversation has happened multiple times with bosses, coworkers, and my teachers, and always sort of takes me by surprise.  I'm starting to think なんでやねん doesn't have the same profanity connotation as my friend said it did...

On that note, I spent years seeing words in anime get translated as "you bastard" and "shithead" and "asshole" but then when I got to Japan I noticed students (most all of them boys) calling each other the same words and no one batting an eye.  Again, maybe those words don't have the same connotation as I learned. 

Inaka Train

Coming up on the one-year mark of my time in Japan, and still going strong with no car (I made it though the winter!  Yay!)  

The thing about not having a car is that you're limited to walking/biking or taking public transportation such as buses and trains.  I've seen documentaries that gush on and on about how wonderful and frequent and always punctual to the second the trains are in Japan, and after living near Osaka for five months and Northern Japan for eleven months, I've got a sneaky suspicion those documentary-makers never went outside of Tokyo (or another major city like Osaka) for their information.  

Trains are usually pretty punctual, but I've seen them be late up here (and sometimes just... stop on the tracks for like five minutes?), and buses... man, I don't think I've taken a bus that was actually on time.  But the biggest downside of public transportation up here, especially to the more rural areas, is the infrequency of the trains/buses.  To get to two of my schools, the train that goes out there only runs nine times a day.  And good luck getting anywhere at a time other than rush hour; if I miss the 12:15, I have to wait until 2:10 for the next train.  Needless to say, I spend a lot of my school visit days sitting in train stations.  And while he knew the reason, I think my former supervisor still might not have been too happy with that, based on the detailed description the new supervisor gave me about when I should go to the schools from my house or from the office.  But, alas, when he tried to be helpful and show me which train to take, he discovered the same thing I had been saying all last year: there just aren't that many trains.  The school in this town is, I believe, the furthest north you can be and still technically be part of Aomori city, but there're farms everywhere.  The school itself is plopped in the middle of a bunch of rice paddies.  

We found the bus schedules and worked out something that amounts to a little less doing-nothing-time, but every time, as I stand waiting for the bus with little old ladies who stare at me like "what the heck is this gaijin doing this far from the city???",  I am reminded of why I dislike taking the bus in this particular fairly rural area: they are always late.  Sometimes it's five minutes, sometimes twenty.  

But when you don't have a car, what can ya do?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  しょうがないなぁ。     

At least the nature is pretty out there.

Koban Konundrum

(I'm experimenting with hand-writing the text, bear with me.  On the one hand, it meshes nicer.  On the other, it's more time-consuming and slightly less legible.  Not sure if I'll continue it, still deciding)

I lost my keys!  I had just gotten back to my apartment after going to the grocery store (luckily I didn't get any cold foods...) and noticed that my keys were not in my pocket.  So I rushed back to the grocery store and, like any American would think to do, asked if they had a lost and found at the service counter.  They didn't have them, though, and the woman suggested I check at the koban down the street.  For those who don't know, kobans are Japanese neighborhood police stations, sometimes translated as "police box" but they're a little different from the British ones

(Sorry, Doctor, this is not the police box you're looking for...)

Instead, they look a little more like this:


They're basically little tiny one or two story police stations set up throughout cities and neighborhoods, where police officers can keep community watch, respond to emergencies, give directions to lost tourists, etc.  I always see them everywhere, even use some of them as landmarks, yet for some reason, I forgot that someone would probably bring lost keys there if they found them lying around.

So I went to the koban near the grocery store, and then stood outside it for at least five minutes figuring out how to explain my problem in Japanese.  When I finally had a translation worked out on my phone, I walked in and basically got as far as "Excuse me, keys--" before the officer said "oh yes, we have them!" He was actually just putting the keys in an envelope to file them as I walked in.  Looks like I didn't need to spend all that time figuring out what to say after all!

To get the keys back, though, I had to show my residence card and fill out some forms.  And man, whoever turned the keys in was very thorough; they turned them in with the written description "one dark blue key holder that says UK on it holding five keys and one weather thermometer on it", and I had to write the same description three different times on the forms.  Word for word.  Eventually the police officer let me write "keys" as "カギ" instead of "鍵"  (^-^0

The officer at the koban was very nice and it was an easy process, but not one I would like to repeat any time soon.  I'll be keeping a close eye on my keys from now on.

What rule?

Being an ALT means encountering a number of... unusual ideas about English.  Some things make sense, like the idea that writing English letters has a "proper stroke order" that actually matters (after all, the stroke order for kanji does matter, so why wouldn't other writing systems be the same?)  But some "rules"... I'm not really sure where they came up with them.  One I encountered recently was the something/anything for questions, pictured above.  If you are asking a question, you generally don't know the expected answer; that's why you're asking.  So it doesn't really make sense, from an English-speaker's perspective, to phrase the question differently, in this case.  So that question really threw me for a loop.

English does have a lot of weird rules, and numerous exceptions to every rule (so many irregulars verbs... so many).  This is because English has a TON of loan words to which the origin-language's rules apply (that's why "tooth" becomes "teeth" and "goose" becomes "geese" BUT "moose" doesn't become "meese", because the first two words are German in origin but the last is Native American in origin).  And throughout history, every time someone tried to "standardize" English spelling, they employed their own method for doing so, which resulted in modern English spelling being as seemingly "random" as it is.

When it comes to English rules, it's a bit like someone wrote a bunch of things on pieces of paper, put them all in a box, shook the box, and then tossed it into the air and just grabbed one, much to the frustration of every ESL learner.

Oolong tea? More like ooh, wrong tea...

It's late March, which means there are a lot of teachers moving around to different schools (they shuffle people every couple of years, I think to avoid corruption or something).  Anyway, that means LOTS of enkais (work parties).  All-staff leaving enkai, section leaving enkai, All-staff welcoming enkai, section welcoming enkai... Lots of partying.  

Enkais generally involve a lot of alcohol.  Not just because it's fun and a chance to let loose a little bit with your coworkers, but also because it's customary for the younger teachers to circulate with bottles of beer topping off the older teachers' drinks and chatting (apparently you do this regardless of whether you are drinking or not).  But that's in the second half.  The first half is a dinner that usually involves many courses of meats in various states of uncooked-ness, from sashimi to sushi to the rarest steak I have ever seen in my life... like the middle was so rare it was still bright red (not a rare pink) and oddly squishy.  And lots of seafood.  So much seafood.  

Anyway, during the dinner, I was sitting there eating and had my glass of oolong tea (because I'm a Cool Kid™ who doesn't drink... actually I'm just lame and don't like beer.  Plus I have a hard enough time with small talk in Japanese while sober, that's a battle I don't want to attempt drunk), and I have to admit, out of all the teas out there, oolong tea is probably my least favorite.  Green tea has grown on me quite a bit, and I like black tea, but oolong... just kinda tastes like leaves.  (Yes I know that's what tea actually is.  Thank you, Zuko)

Anyway, I've got my oolong tea, and I notice that one of the sashimi and unidentified-raw-meat-that-might-have-been-horse dishes that I had in front of me had a little decorative lemon wedge on the side.  So I look around, see everyone is engaged in conversation, and then sneakily squeeze the lemon into my tea.  Whoops, the guy next to me caught me and gave me the most bemused look, so I just said something about how Americans like lemons in their tea.  Which is true; lemon wedges are a common addition to sweet tea.  But this guy looked like I had just committed blasphemy.  Which, I suppose adding something unconventional to a Japanese food is, sort of.

My other favorite moment of the night was when someone asked me if we had cucumbers in America.  Buddy, I've got news for you: cucumbers are not exactly special to Japan alone.  They're not even originally a Japanese thing, I'm pretty sure they're from Europe.

Ah yes and the man who asked me, while I was reading the event handout, "can you read any Japanese?"  Nah dude I've just been staring at this paper for three straight minutes for the hell of it.  And for some reason he was more impressed that I could read hiragana than he was when I said I could read some kanji.  (O_o)???   

On the plus side, though, I actually managed to understand a considerable amount of what was said, both in speeches and in conversations.  Not everything, but maybe half.  Improvement!

That "kanji" when your coworkers are amused by your confusion...

Someone spotted the post-it I had stuck to my desk with some kanji on it that all look very similar but mean different things.  When I see these kanji in a sentence, in context, I don’t mix them up, but when wanikani (the study website I use) throws them all at me in one unit without any sentence context, I get them mixed up.  So I wrote this, stuck it on my desk, and doodled on it when I got bored.  Much to the amusement of my coworkers, who thought this was hilarious. 

On the subject of kanji, most kanji have a number of readings (the on’yomi from Chinese, and kun’yomi from Japanese), which can make it a bit confusing to remember which ones are used in which words.  I actually thought someone’s name was San’ue-sensei for about a month until someone told me to give something to Mikami-sensei, and I replied with “Who?”  They pointed to… San’ue-sensei (or, at least, who I thought was San’ue-sensei).  And that was the day I learned that while 三 is read “san” and 上 is read “ue”, 三上 is not, in fact, read “san’ue” but “mikami”.  

This happened again when I was attempting to read a newspaper and looked at the word 下北 and thought “something-kita… ka-kita?  Kuda-kita?” and stared at it for a few minutes before looking at the conveniently-located map next to the article detailing the upper peninsula of Aomori, which is called… “Oh!  SHIMO-kita!” 

Kanji is an adventure.  (the post title is a bad example of a cross-language pun based on "that feel when..." and the fact that "kanji" also means "feeling")  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That's not a tornado siren...

*arrives three days late with a current events comic* (I was busy this week)

Monday morning, just as I was leaving my apartment, I heard the loudspeakers posted throughout the neighborhood turn on and make an announcement.  Now, because of the echo and reverberation, plus the usage of keigo (formal language), I can’t really understand what these announcements say.  It’s mostly the echo.  I can puzzle out keigo given enough time and thought, but when I can barely hear it and it’s all echo-y… nope.  So I didn’t know what was being said, only that I had heard the same loudspeakers turn on a couple times this past summer too, in late July/ early August-ish.  And, having grown up in the Midwest, where the tornado sirens are tested the first Tuesday morning of every month, I assumed that they were just testing the emergency weather sirens, given that the sky was clear.  (Does Japan even get tornadoes??? IDK). So I finish putting on my half a dozen layers and go on my merry way to work.  

When I got to work, however, the TV was turned on to the news.  Now, we have a TV in the office, yes, but it only gets turned on in the event of national emergencies/events (and apparently prefectural parliamentary meetings, when there’s something about education, but that’s a different story).  The only other times I’ve seen them turn on the TV was for a national moment of silence for the atomic bombings on August 6th (where they showed everyone observing the moment of silence in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then turned it off and everyone went back to work), to check the news when they heard Hachinohe lost power due to a tsunami, and to very very briefly to check the news the one time there was a slightly-noticeable earthquake, but when they saw there was no alert for it, they turned it back off again promptly.  This time, they left it on for about a half an hour to watch the news covering the test missiles North Korea fired off into the East Sea/Sea of Japan, off the coast of Akita prefecture, which happened just a couple of minutes before I recall hearing that announcement over the loudspeakers.  And then it dawned on me; those other few times I heard the loudspeakers over the summer was around the time North Korea fired other missiles too… those were not emergency weather warning drills like I thought.  WHOOPS.  Perhaps I should try to listen to them a little more carefully next time (assuming there is a next time.  Really hoping there isn’t. I hope the only thing I hear out of those loudspeakers is the daily little song they play at 5 to call children home)  

On the plus side, I was able to understand a decent amount of the news coverage, probably mostly due to the fact that Japanese news/game shows are very heavily subtitled (in Japanese, not foreign languages, but it still helps). So even if the volume is turned down or the people are talking fast or using a lot of colloquial language, the gist of the sentence is usually written prominently in standard-Japanese.

For those who don’t know, Japan doesn’t technically have a military, but they do have a Self-Defense Force (or jieitai).  There’s also an American Air Force base at Misawa, which is very close by.  That’s comforting, I suppose, but also kind of not, because there’s always the possibility that NK will target American bases in Japan and South Korea, and given that their aim isn’t terribly accurate and my city is between NK and Misawa, that’s… not particularly good.  But, I have been assured by a friend that missiles are not the same thing as nukes, and that NK doesn’t have nuclear warheads, so that’s good to know!  And my coworkers didn’t seem particularly alarmed, just a bit amazed that it was so close to us.  Lots of then were saying “woah, so close…”

Familiar Encounters, Pt. 2

I had an honest-to-gosh conversation with a crow one morning on the way to work.  

There's this 600 meter stretch of fence between the next big intersection and my office that overlooks a huge park (which is real fun to walk past when there's nothing stopping the wind from whipping across the fields and knocking me into a snowdrift).  And one day, I encountered this crow sitting on the fence about, oh, I'd say 200 meters away from my office, cawing into the open air.  So, me being the nature druid nerd I am, I cawed back, as there was no one else around to witness the weird foreigner talking to a bird.  And I swear, the crow actually jumped a little bit and stared at me with the most puzzlement I have ever seen on a bird's face before, and it let out another inquisitive caw.  I cawed back as I walked past it.  When I started to get further away, it flew and landed on a stretch of fence in front of me and cawed again, and I cawed back.  This went on until I reached the entrance of the building, where it watched me go inside as I waved and made "caw caw!" with the same inflection as you might say "bye bye!"  

(I'm not good at drawing birds... I'll get better, though.  Since I can't seem to stop talking to crows, which will lead to more stories I need to draw.)

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* Follow Your Dreams *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

The weirdest wishes from childhood are apparently the ones that come true.  (Why couldn't my wish about being rich come true? T^T  )

I loved reading the American Girl books as a kid.  Kirsten's book was the first one I ever read, and I remember thinking how cool it was that she had such an adventurous life as a pioneer.  And as I sat next to the Christmas tree at my grandparents' house reading that book, little did I know that fifteen years later, I would be living a... remarkably pioneer life, to be quite honest.  Tons of snow, kerosene heating (and lugging said kerosene home from the home center) and not being able to leave the heater on at night (thank goodness for electric blankets!), a nearly one-hour daily commute that involves walking through two feet of snow on a good day and a freaking blizzard on not-so-good days, having to snowshoe that one darned stretch of 600 meters to get to my office where there's nothing stopping the wind and snow from whipping across the open fields... Generally, I come home looking like Kristoff in that scene where he meets Anna in Wandering Oaken's Trading Post.

^ actual photo of me getting home from work, featured in the Disney movie "Frozen"

So yeah, be careful what you wish for, because you might actually get it.  I still don't have a pony, though, nor am I a famous paleontologist :\   (Really, fate?  You gave me the snowshoe wish, out of all the things I wished for as a kid?  That's what you went with?)

(Bonus panel)