Jet lag this time was a mighty need to eat much food and sleeping. The three-hour naps were inconvenient when they came between me and a chance to eat Japanese food with my friends or made me late for outings, but I wonder if it wasn’t jet lag but just normal exhaustion. Started up my 40-hours-a-week job within a day and a half of getting home. Commute is almost an hour and the time difference makes it almost impossible to talk with my Japanese friends. When work ends the family pitches in to get this house and the outdoors set for a wedding in a few weeks. My luggage is still not completely unpacked. So many things need to get done.

Adjusting has been weird and hard. At first mentally translating my thoughts into English was an unnatural process. I think it still sounds off, though not as bad as last week. Mentally I’ve been fighting to keep thinking in Japanese while readjusting to American life because my greatest fear is losing it all. I already am having a hard time recalling words. Culture and language are so closely tied I doubt its possible to constantly think in Japanese when one’s adjusting to the culture and communication of the Michigan countryside.

My behavior is also strange. Maybe I’m just too stunned having learned the recreated America in my mind I used for reference while in Japan was actually transforming into more of a replica based on my own changing behavior. Americans are larger, louder, and speak with more authority on individualistic things. Sarcasm is something I’d almost forgotten, so the store clerk who used it on me came off as unbelievably rude in half my mind and amusingly personable on the other side.

Leaving the airport I was amazed at how green and wide everything is. Why is all that space being wasted above the trees? Who owns all of these empty lots? Is none of this land maintained? But all of those lots together look really… natural. Perhaps that look is what the owner and all his neighbors had intended. I forgot land could just go to nature without some kind of forethought. I also saw lightning and heard thunder for the first time in 9 months. I’m not sure why they don’t have lighting storms or any real storms besides hurricanes in Japan.

Stepped out of the car at my house and the clean air after the fresh rain had fallen on the endless greenery (apart from the road, everything is growing and alive) came as a pleasant surprise. I could fall back in love with nature very quickly. Went for a walk today. I could smell the grasses, each distinct, and feel certain if one closed their eyes and walked they would know where they were by the sounds the wind makes on the trees and tall grasses. A breeze sounds so loud just by flying through the long strands. Birds change with the scenery; frogs come with the territory. Watched the sun chase the shadows of the clouds across a field of soy, trees far in the distance and another field beyond that. There are no mountains, but the land has a little curve just to give the fields a pinch of personality. Watch the rows move and shift. At night there are no city lights. Actually there are no lights at all. The brightest thing out there is the sky, and all the trees and everything else is a silhouette. So strange at first. So were the birds; I feel like I’m lost in the woods at times. But now the things that shocked me are settling down.

From my room on the second story this evening I was met with the smell of honeysuckle. I’ve felt so compelled to throw some things out and change my room. I’m confused about what comes next, now trying to sort out everything from Japan into its new place in my bedroom. Behold the power of thinking- not much accomplished but at least I’ve got that ‘thought on it’ feeling. Guess that’s what I’ve got for now, that and a night craving for some stove-top ramen.

Oh, conversation partner, at last! Iya,  sleep deprivation kicking in -_-

I’m definately going to find someway to used what I learned. How, I don’t rightly know. People in my town seem pretty culturally deprived. Maybe I could voluntarily teach the kids at school a little or try to get something together. For them the world probably doesn’t seem much further than the farms outside the township, as opposed to those inside with the same families as a hundred years before. Can’t really blame them, that’s a peaceful existence and travel to this worldly extent isn’t practical. No wonder American’s seem to live in a bubble; in-country travel is so much easier than having to spend half a day in the sky and paying excessively to do so. Travel between Japan and other Asian countries is very popular, but nearly all of the places I would describe as the furthest, most exotic lands that I know I will never go to. So strange it is to meet people who might go there for the weekend. I could hardly believe people in Bali eat everything by hand or the many festivals that seem to take over the entire island. Tropical beaches. Different world. Guess my way of living back in America must seem to them the most alien way of living. Still can’t imagine corn and soy fields as exotic.

For my last day I enjoyed company high fiving an elderly woman from my church, watching my Japanese friends put on a production of Hairspray in English, freeing a bird I found trapped in the building by coaxing it with Japanese, changing my mind about returning home early so I could say goodbye to all my friends in that club, getting to do some final shopping with a friend I rarely see and enjoying the talk and company, learning I would have one of my friends travel with me tomorrow up until I leave and another help me with my luggage, ate and laughed my way through dinner out with two friends (we had so many receipts by the end that the waiter had a hard time fitting them in the same metal cylinder), and enjoying that loud sounds of people falling down and in general making such rukus in this room in a manner known well to this dorm.

My experience in Japan was so long that I can’t summarize it, but even if I could I wouldn’t put you through all of it. I’d say these writings are plenty long enough.

Ate out Turkish for the first time ever. The meat was the kind you can see roasting in smaller restaurants in the Osu shopping district. Another friend wanted to hold a yami-nabe going-away party for me on Monday. Yami nabe means the guests can put anything they want into the nabe stew. But the meaning of yami is darkness, so when we were making our final batches we turned off all the lights in the room so no one would know what they were eating. I made my friend Momoka try several strange things, but I think everyone could agree they tasted good up until the last one, mostly because of the sweet powder mixed in that one usually uses on deserts. The nabe was mostly vegetables, noodles, meat, and some flavoring aside from the normal nabe soup (such as spicy Korean kimuchi). The most startling discovery was how well spam and banana go together.

After nearly nine months of being in Japan I finally made it to Tokyo. I almost didn’t make it back. I had stood by wondering why everyone still hadn’t boarded the bus up until it pulled away. It didn’t occur to me they were waiting for the next bus, so I took on the chase while dragging my luggage, shouting my disbelief in Japanese, and trying not to hit too many people as I bounded down the walkway and round the corner. My friend was at a calmer pace behind me either zoned out or struck confused at the sight. I didn’t see people getting shoved into the trains like I had heard of, though they were crowded. The sidewalks in the afternoon and evening felt like a stream of people going up the hills in the distance. I was short on time, and still am, but the most impressionable part of my visit would have to be the amazing building that was the Ghibli Museum. The main building was like a several story house with a built in movie theater, the history of animation, an an amazing room that seemed like a tour through the studio of Miyazaki, walls covered in art, some painted right on the walls, bookshelves and desks stacked with so many random treasures. It really motivated me to start working more with watercolors or at least to just start sketching. There was grass growing on all the roofs, there were stairways like silos and small bridges and small and narrow pathways, making the building feel like a house and a maze. As we just came out of one of the smaller rooms on the second floor walked over to the banister and looked up at the revolving fan hanging below the stained glass dome of the main room, with the small spots of stained glass in its panes, and the piano part from the Death Cab For Cutie song “What Sarah Said” distinctly began to play in my mind. I feel like that moment will play in the montage of my life.

I didn’t get to see a lot of Tokyo since I was only there for one day but I definately enjoyed Ghibli Studio. I leave Japan in two days. Definately anxious about that. Seems like I’ve been here so long that all I know is this way of living. Seeing all of Nagoya outside my window every morning. Riding the trains and subways while navigating through the crowd like a phantom.

During the interview the cough kept coming back, and even worse was the second half of the Japanese final when I could hardly write legibally. Instead of sidetracking after the test to go hang up on a rooftop with some friends who had spotted me, I made a straight trek to the closest clinic, finally certain of its strange hours. I blundered when I entered the narrow establishment, just between the first and second floors of a building built on a hill with a small miscellaneous store with small hand-made turtles by the upper entrance, a beauty salon or two, and shoe store out front on the lower end. It felt like the room was a hallway with a little more seating space on the left. One wall covered in plastic drapes and a lady to my left hardly visible except through the small whole in the blurry glass. Kind of cozy, kind of strange. My blunder was forgetting to take off my shoes at the mat. She called me out on that later and I put my shoes in the standard wooden shelf and took the slippers that were meant for customers. The doctor at the clinic liked speaking in English. He contorted his face like he’d just eaten something sour as he tried to conjure up difficult phrases, but my replies were usually short and more than half the time in Japanese. I did speak English, but in general if there’s a conversation on the language border I am likely the one speaking Japanese. At the medicine shop I picked up a hefty prescription to last me five days. I think at least one of them is a mint.

I had caught the movie club late for lunch, though the crowd was good. Just before everyone left for next period, I left the club house and took what was left of my lunch to a pretty busy building with a couple restaurants, the school bookstore, school store, bread store, and convenience store. I noticed a couple people who had come to my dorm’s party sitting behind me, but unable to place each other we didn’t end up talking until a fellow friend from the dorm showed up and the couple asked him what my name was. I turned around wondering which of us would talk first. My friend from the dorm and his friend came over, and spent a good deal of time talking about ‘How to eat sushi; The Japanese Tradition’, other online comedy videos, and laughed about how many pills I had just taken. I also learned more about some of their English classes, which put more focus on reading and writing and less on speaking. I have heard the same from several Japanese students. I feel it must be frustrating to have taken classes for so many years and to still not feel you have enough of a handle to communicate with others. From there I went shopping with another friend from my club and heard more on the subject. Apparently writing and reading has been stressed in Japan as a basic education since old times. With little language communication outside of Asia, the understanding of kanji made communicating through writing much easier than through speaking. The stress on writing and reading as fundamental remains strong to this day, according to my friend, which is why even in language studies today in Japan less focus seems to be on the speaking and listening aspect. I wonder if that is why standard tests seem so big, since it is where the most accomplished people of writing and reading can be assessed.

We traveled around the market area after that yesterday, less crowded in that it was a weekday, and ate some inexpensive pizza in the front area of a restaurant with a large wood-stoked, open-flame oven and while listening to the Japanese employees talk in Italian. After that a store with two floors of Aladdin pants was discovered, and its wares purchased. Mark that off the list of things accomplished in Japan. You can also put down the out-of-place laughter at entirely inappropriate rap music played in stores that nobody else seems to understand.

In spite of the rain I made a bookstore run with my roommate today. Good thing Japan seems to be connected through an underground network of stores, especially since my roommates umbrella blew out. Of course that network gets confusing, like riding the escalators up and down ten floors in one store in the train station. Finally bought some decent leggings, or should I say had them bought for me. Excluding the clogs, I wonder if I’ll pick up Japanese fashion just in time to go home.

I don’t think I shall be well pleased with anything I write at this point. An exhaustive list is overwhelming; and the less written, the less is understood. Talking over balconies, between stairwells and side windows; taking in the 4th story night view while a party seems to be forming through spontaneous encounters all around.

Dorm life is good.

Drew our way into understanding of random screaming noises like ’ahh!’ and ’kyaa!’ or ‘ora ora!’ and ‘wee!’ while hanging out with the movie club for almost three hours today. Eating food in our pretty packed room surrounded more by posters than cinderblock, old aquaintances busting in and out and discovering the many flavors of candy cigarettes in Japan through the help of a friend.

Club life is good.

Nonsense like this, as well as studying in the green area as the sun creeps away with a native-speaker friend before busting into the bad idea of barefoot soccer while trying to continue speech practice, can lead to good grades.

I have found good studying habits.

None-the-less, exploding fireworks, eating pounds of raw fish for the taking, hearing the unfamiliar English on Japanese MarioKart N64, being weekly amused by the spontaneously-entering and baffled-looking Japanese students who enter our Japanese Culture and Art class, lip syncing “We Will Rock You” with an on-the-spot gathering of spontaneous individuals, watching the myth that astonished people don’t fall to the floor be disproven many times, climbing down a mountain through a steep forest path, failing at preparing a futon, watching someone see a movie in 3D for the first time, talking on past issues that bring up new realizations, and playing in a squirrel village are all notable occurences with little organization that can bind them distinctly before the snowballing effect rolls them into one large event, a powdery memory that will seem as a dream when the seasons change.

It was the day after the big dorm party, so let’s rewind to that. Sugoku omoshirokatta. Teaching how to fish people out of the crowd, dancing like only I know how, and being complelely visible to everyone in the room with my massive stature and arms waving like ribbons in an updraft. In truth even the setup had been fun with people from the nearby dorm also coming to help.

The next morning I headed out on the train as always and went to go teach my English class. Also played tag with the kids in the park near our school. Kind of sad there are only a few more days of work left, but I’m also exhausted. Spent about an hour talking with one of my fellow teachers who just started up recently about cultural differences like college parties and the time we’ve both spent studying abroad. She also made me a really high-quailty purse by hand. I had recently had her visit one of my classes and we’ve been helping eachother out and talking after classes ever since.

Due to my misinterpretation of a very fast message I received from some individual currently working on my camera, I assumed it was done and after work headed over to Bic Camera by Nagoya Station. Nope. The message was just to tell me that they’d run out of parts and it would take a little more time. Well, no point wasting the $2.60 it cost me to get there, so I spent my day leisurely looking around. The camera store is enormous and I discovered an arcade in the basement. A Japanese arcade contains your average arcade games, some several-seater games with one large screen, crane games with some very unusual stuff in them (Want a chandelier for your computer? How about some cigarettes?), and the at times very crowded purikura section (photo booths where you can draw on and mess with the images afterwards).

Explored the couple floors of stores underneath Nagoya station. Walking in a narrow corridor where my head was less than two inches from the ceiling, I passed an American couple looking somewhat confused about what time the restaurants down there were open from. Thinking they might need a translator, I started talking to them and learned they were actually staying in one of the hotels attached to the station. They’re in Japan for a six-week business trip and have absolutely fallen in love with the place. Even though they can’t speak the language yet, they plan on moving to Japan. They also have a daughter about my age too, so we also talked about studying abroad in Japan.

After asking a store clerk and then being redirected by some girl waiting at a light, I headed out for Sakae by foot in search of a Yunikuro, a clothing store I’ve heard a lot about but haven’t been to yet. I’m bad with directions, so I ended up walking for about half an hour where it should have taken maybe 10 minutes. While crossing a bridge I saw a beautiful view so I stopped to draw it on the back of a club flier I’ve been carrying around. Consecutive bridges crossing over the stream that seemed set down a level, a restaurant and residential homes along with several business buildings stacked at different levels lining the river until it turned, and the plants dangling and trees alight beside the shadows draping over the river.  Took on a Monet style of drawing for the water.

I eventually found my bearings at the Sakae store that has a ferriswheel suspended above the road. I went to the third store I think, where every item in the stores looks like Western clothes and costs about $200 or more, in order to read the interesting English on the shirts and learned from one of the employees that the store I was hunting for wasn’t far away. Heading down the escalator a few of the guys going up said a very unnatural ’hello’ and laughed that I recognized it. However a concert had been building up outside the store, just at the base of the escalator, and in all of the excitement and screaming fan girls I couldn’t restrain myself and just had to draw a picture. One girl in the front row was holding up a sign saying 「あゆむん大好き」 (I love Ayumu[n]) but I was only able to draw the backside of one of the five singers and a very poor frontal drawing of one of the guys leading the crowd to wave their hands in the air. The crowd was really thick with people still trying to get to the cafe and stores and a few people were working crowd control. This led up to me hurrying for the subway to make it to my friend’s concert at one of His Call church’s events. Ate food and listened to some of my other friend’s saxaphone solos. Takes me back to the jazz cafe concert they had last semester. Of course I never found my store and never got my camera, but it was an eventful day and I did get some drawings in. (I wonder if I can upload any of those onto here).

I also got a little lost two nights ago while trying to walk off a headache I had gotten from doing too much hanga (woodblock carving, though doing any kind of art for too long has it’s way of making me sick). I say I got lost as though it only happened once that night, but it was more like a constant state of being. I had already been helped by a fourth year college student at a nearby college and her friend, who had left the college late and led me back through a path behind their college campus towards a train station that I knew, when I made a wrong turn again and ended up asking a bread store man to set me straight.

Besides losing myself time and time again, my new Japanese roommate (as of earlier this month) and I have been hanging out a lot. She’s from the Japanese countryside (does it exist?) so we’ve got a bit in common. Walked in or last least looked into every store in a massive three-story mall, took on some claw machines in an arcade, bought some American marshmallows and A&W rootbeer, and spent a good deal of time looking around in the pet store. A wallaby, dogs smaller than kittens, something that wasn’t quite a flying squirrel, hedgehogs, a monkey perched on someone’s shoulder, and a goat (not sure who in the city wants a goat) were among the possibilities. However the smell of the marshmallows and A&W was so natsukashii, making me think of home so that I unintentionally kept slipping up my Japanese and switching into English.

It’s Golden Week! Hahaha! Vacation for the exchange students and Japanese students around the country. So let’s celebrate it by busting out the soccer ball, eating some coffee-flavored yet surprisingly delicious papiko ice, and forcing you all to read a very long blog post.  Yes! (お疲れ様でした。-You must be so tired after working so hard.)

Heading out tomorrow to hang out with my previous boss, going to the movies and attempting to make some manju sweets before staying the night and hopefully getting some more drawings in. Studying is good; playing and studying at the same time is better.

I’ve done kenpo a few times, though the title kung fu sounds more familiar to most Americans. I always manage to bang up my hands in strange ways, but learning how to throw other people seems useful. One day I went with a friend but, because we got there too early, we thought we’d blundered on the day. We walked around the building, past the kendo and table tennis, to watch in the room where aikido and soseido were practicing. I drew some pictures of people stretching, aikido people creepily walking as they kneeled, and a lot of throw downs. Afterwards we did get to practice and talk with the kenpo group, so all ended well.

I’ve visited some clubs during lunch like the art club, but have been eating more lunches with the video club lately. Our room in the club house is long but small and covered from floor to ceiling with posters (though the ceiling is still taking additions). the group has a few freshmen but some other people from last semester are usually there. Ate a strange omiyage (souvineer, though this one happened to be a strange carmel-looking snack) from Thailand today and watched a slideshow from one of the students who just got back from there. Went to Kyoto on Saturday the 17th with probably 4 other Americans and about 40 Japanese students/Asian exchange students from the Nagoya and Seto campuses of Nanzan (how two different campuses can be one college I’m not quite sure). It was my third time visiting so for the things I had wanted to do, like eat in the outdoor restaurant overlooking a forest of green and with a very famous shrine within walking distance. Our group stuck together a lot more than the last time I went. The Japanese are a culture that has put great emphasis on souvineer shopping. Usually this ends up in the form of some kind of food. As I entered one store I was handed a cup of amazing green tea and went about leisurely between the samples. Afterwards, when time had drawn short and we were hurrying back to the bus, a friend and I dropped into a shop cattering to fan clubs. I was on the hunt for a souvineer for a friend. I waivered lost in that amazingly packed fan-based paradise but it didn’t take long for store worker to spot me out. On our IES trip to Kyoto last semester a few of my friends and I had entered the same store. Now where some Japanese guys were browsing my friends and I had spent a considerable amount of time looking at pins and pictures. Course my new purchase set the fanclub that had formed on our bus roaring with excitement.

With no shortage of activities, things have remained just as busy as they were during the week of club showcases. But the farewell orientation set me back to remember my first recollections on campus, when days had been warmer and our view of campus was limited to the B building and its lecture-size rooms. Listened to the Japanese only explanations of very important information, knowing the forms stated roughly the same details but actually following along a little easier. Took mandatory AED training and then went to the Coffee Hour’s farewell party for the exchange students. After much talking I started up a small dance party to the background music, which ended in moonwalk lessons. Said my goodbyes and passed through a large group that had formed outside that building on my way to meet up with one of my Japanese friends to go exploring. We ended up running around nearby Nagoya College, a famous public school with a small exchange student base and a lot of club activity, though that’s not so rare here in Japan. The existence of campus club houses at most campuses here contributes more to leisurely hanging out at all times. Some warm feeling of closeness associated with those cinderblock buildings packed with all kinds of clubs, whose member bases are so great they can’t even fit into their club rooms.

In half an hour starts the dorm decorating for tomorrow’s big dance party. Haven’t had dinner and I plan to make some omrice, and so I must depart with haste.

The nighttime flowerviewing with the dorm was in a tiny park within walking distance. There was a small lake and the trees stood out above us on dark sky. It was chilly but a good chance to talk to some of the new people in the dorm for quite some time.

Then I went flower viewing after church in the same park where I almost got sick after running last fall. You could walk down the sakura covered path beside the grassy incline where daffodils bloomed or stay under the trees with everyone looking out at people on the baseball field or children running off in every which direction. I walked up the incline to the second tier of sakura and enjoyed the double layer effect: more sakura lined this higher level, but those below were granted at a bird’s eye view and seemed as clouds of sakura, the light flowers all one could see besides the blue sky.

I also went flower viewing two Saturdays ago. It was after a week of getting to know the new students though the club festival going on every day on the main street on campus. After hanging out and talking amongst the different clubs and with all of the bright eyed and enthusiastic freshman, I seemed to have developed my title as senpai for a good portion of the incoming class. Besides helping man my club’s booth I’ve been attending welcome partys like it’s going out of fashion, averaging two a day where I may or may not have been the only exchange student. I met a group of my kohai at a concert that week which led me to visit, after International Friendship Night (completely packed with Japanese freshmen), the Tennis Club’s hanami (flower viewing) at Tsurumai Park at night. I had been wanting to go night-time flower viewing at Tsurumai ever since my first visit when I noticed the lanterns that must illuminate the scene at night. My friend and I traveled there by subway after leaving the other party.  When we emerged from the subway we were faced with an enormous crowd of people, unusual considering how late it was. They stood and strolled around the blocked-off street. From the vendors they were buying food like taiyaki (a sweetly filled, fish shaped waffle) and then heading back to the party taking place throughout the park under the trees. The sakura indeed were illuminated, but for the amusement factor of the crowd, people seemed fairly distracted. At first my friend and I walked around to get the atmosphere. Business men and women, high schoolers still in their uniforms, younger and older people, some college aged up and playing baseball with an unwinding piece of twine, singing songs with a guitar, or just running around for no real reason. For sanitary reasons the Japanese take off their shoes when they enter houses or, apparently get onto hanami tarps, but given the state of affairs our socks were a lost cause. Talked with all kinds of amusing characters, from the disconnected who seem as though they’d fall given the slightest breeze, to the silent, ‘I’m going to stand right by you and silently try to pull off the tough look’ sort. Even saw the soccer guys I’ve been running into constantly during the week of the club showcases. They don’t say much but they say it in English and we always high five like long lost brothers. Every person I ran into wanted to speak in English. Hard to just melt into the crowd when you’re one of the four non-Japanese in a crowd of hundreds. An amusing time to say the least.

The ESS wecome party I went to was called a hanami but was actually in one of the campus’ buildings. From that cafeteria you can see some sakura trees, and apparently that was all they needed to call it flower viewing. That place was packed with first years, with a line out the door that took about half an hour before everyone got in.

Finally I also did some excellent flower viewing in Yoshino. The IES group took our last overnight trip to Nara and Yoshino. At the big Buddha temple in Nara I was amused to see there’s a hole in one of the structure’s beams and apparently if you can pass through the hole you’ll get good luck. I didn’t want to try, but the fact that there is such a hole and such a long line of people amused me. I wonder when and why that hole was originally created. According to my friend it’s about the size of the statue’s nostril. That’s one big buddha. Enjoyed an outdoor hot spring at the Japanese inn. Our rooms overlooked the valley lined with mountains light pink and green. In the morning I sat out and rested for a while in the view from a quieter path a little away from the noise of the packed streets. I also saw a festival a little while after that while sitting up on a stone ledge with an older couple I was talking to. The men in their blue and white outfits swayed and stepped, swinging their sticks with straw gathered on the end, occasionally bellowing in a deeper voice. Some guys in light blue ran up front and people carrying the head of the shrine in a black box and some carrying large chests were also way up there. I sat where the march began so I saw the three people dressed as demons posing for pictures with an old lady and some other people before they started up. A long line of perhaps priests and priestesses dressed in robes brought up the end. I especially enjoyed talking to the couple, who also gave me a parting gift of some handmade sushi. I ate it while flower viewing in a spectacular area, green mountains in view past the sakura, a slightly leveled area below a roofed place with stone benches, and a blizzard of flower petals flying in from different directions every time the wind picked up. One flew into my mouth just after I had finished video recording and I laughed and joked with some people who had seen it happen. Also decided it was a good day to climb a mountain in an hour. People had stopped to flower view all up and down that sakura-laden mountain path. In distant areas as well there would still be one or two individuals who had found their way to a quiet place. Talked with a few people on the way and on the way back down I overcompensated for the strength of a drinking fountain and got rained on. The sun was so hot it felt like summer, so I stated my contentment and laughed with one of the people who had seen me get showered. My last trip with IES, and I am definately content.

For all of those who feel so limited by time, stop counting as a comparison to what time you’ve spent. You’ll end up disappointed if you constantly focus on the time and not the opportunities. 

Speaking of which, I was also able to stop off after the trip to try and get my old roommate’s camera repaired. I could definately use an upgrade since the window on mine often confounds people, and repairs will only cost me $80.

I was already in a somber mood when we went to Hiroshima. As you take the train down the middle of the characteristically wide roads (as they had been remade) nothing looks out of the ordinary until you see the genbaku dome come into view, its skeleton alongside the river with so many trees and green vegetation around. I feel like everyone on the train turns to stare, especially the tourists. But this is where people live everyday and nothing is said. It’s surreal. From my room in the ryokan I was able to draw a sketch of the dome at night. The rubble under the structure remains fairly the same from the day of the explosion, and apparently one reason the structure remains intact is that it was almost directly underneath that minature man-made sun. The heat cast shadows of ladders, of people. I noticed a black-stained reminder of the water level that day when I looked at the rivers. In the museum, children’s bloody and burnt clothes, belongings, and stories were made more haunting as occasionally some remains of their hands or hair were also present.

The somber mood rose with the sun as we headed to Miyajima and made our way as tourists in the land of deer that wandered anywhere they well pleased and the home of one ancient shrine and one famous tori gate. Watching the tides, one would realize that the evening was the best time to make a run under the gate and watch people chuck money up on it. There’s also a rather creepy tunnel revealed with the water’s fall. When the tide went out, several people went out to the beach and gathered: Seaweed? Oysters? I’m not sure. In the evening the place was illuminated and dead silent. It seemed as a beautiful tropical island without the intense heat of the tropics. My friend and I slept in for a few hours after buying yukatta and woke up in the evening and walked into the orange glow of afternoon sun with a plan to head past the beach and try to climb the mountain [we failed, but ended up having a nice talk with a store owner]. Somehow it all felt like a family vacation. The next day we rode a ferry and several trains on our way to Himeji. Where you sit on the train does affect the atmosphere, as does the cultural awareness of those around you. The castle was huge, the sakura were coming in, and there was some real back-up because of the crowd.

This last weekend I went on a church spring camp (though it’s not my spring break) with a lot of Japanese friends and a few other exchange students to Lake Biwa. It’s not one of Michigan’s Great Lakes, but it felt as cold as Lake Superior that day. Though the lake is spotted with the foggy outlines of distant mountains, I couldn’t see a solid land mass surrounding it so the biggest lake in all of Japan can qualify as being rather big. We gathered as they grilled, chopsticks grabbing for the yakisoba noodles, little octopus, and slightly scorched meat. So good. Many gathered around the grills for warmth since the gusty wind was so frigid that day. One of my friends was helping a young girl on the shore throw rocks in the lake. We messed around on a skateboard and tried snap-shots of Jame’s the destroyer pulling stunts. I sketched a picture from a shakey pier of the people on land standing and dancing around a large, cement structure made for the purpose of massive bonfires. Behind them were two buildings, perhaps one a motel, and massive green mountains towering overhead. Saw some monkeys near our Japanese inn, played some very poor soccer with the guys, and spent my nights playing a game involving the black and white go pieces and one night we played signs. Heard a really good message too. Overall I got to know a lot of people better.

There’s more to say about the flower-viewing I did yesterday with my Japanese class [and the interesting people I met under the sakura trees], but I plan to hanami again in ten minutes so I’ll hold off until after I’ve experienced night time flower-viewing.

It’s spring break for the exchange students. On Friday evening I went to my friend Miki’s going away party. We pulled chairs from every room and gathered around the table, eating nabe and breaking into conversations. As the food dwindled we threw udon into the broth and made a new dish. While Mifuyu stood over Miki, messing with her face and laughing as they were all talking, I drew a picture of the two. Aya made a desert for the occasion: a clear gelly with a candy-like brown powder sprinkled over it. Drawing from Kuma’s friend’s experience three of us united in smashing rice with a potato masher. Someone else had to scrape the pulverized rice off the masher as another took charge of the water misting. Continue as long as possible, and twice as long if you insist on using the flat side of chopsticks over a potato masher. Afterwards, add the same brown powder to give it flavor. It was interesting to say the least. When we carried her stuff out to the car and waved farewell, the car pulled away with two of our party sprinting after with the vigor of a race with no end. Instead of embarking on our own we went back to her room, a room where you feel the absence as the clamor stills. Silent moments are no rarity, for thought or empowered patience to grow yet further as we wait for the one who demands we turn our heads. I perhaps stayed far too late, but in our round-table gathering and group story-making I heard some of my friends speak English for the first time, such unfamiliar voices coming from people I know well, making sounds that seem very inappropriate given all I knew of them. I have become the same sort of person.

Saturday morning came with my commute to work. I made them read and do dialogues, and during break we played Egyptian Rat Screw, which I don’t regret teaching them. I feel more like a teacher every week, writing up the assignments and trying to keep their attention long enough so they stop switching into Japanese. After class one student’s mother hadn’t shown up yet, so we waited at the front of the small building, from where see the couple cars between us and the rather quiet road, beyond which is an open field. I try to think about the identity of a teacher, but I don’t think I match any teacher I can recall from my past.

From work I went to view the plum blossoms with a friend in a place with a few buildings, beautiful tree-filled and open landscape, and plenty of food venders and a store near the entrance way. Waiting for sweet potatoes to finish baking as the line grew behind us, looking over the sitting couples on a mostly cloudy but clear afternoon. The fields of trees are like an apple orchard by comparison with many paths weaved and trees weeping flowers pink, white, and the few a deep rosey shade that were quickly fading. Some did not weep, but stood up as cherry trees whose branches are solid and sweetly laden. Sakura lack smell, but in proximity of these trees the delicate petals gave their gentle nudge en masse, though never overpowering. From the gazebo overlooking the orchard we ate our yakiimo, and such delicious roasted Japanese sweet potatoes never disappoint. Trying to figure out a new fruit, I bit the passion fruit and was confused by the hollow sound and tough skin. Tastes as a tropically overpowering fruit should, though it looks like brains, and it made a good chaser for the sweet potato.

From there I met up with another friend and went to Saturday’s International Friendship Night, but we arrived early so we took a rest in my friend’s room upstairs. We were laughing and talking more than sleeping while someone nearby played the taiko drums on and off and a dog nearby cut in with it’s consistant double bark. It was a good day, followed by Sunday and my baptism at my church. That was eventful and went by rather well with two of my friends and my pastor helping with the translation. My church is normally conducted in all Japanese, but given the circumstances I wanted to make sure I understood everything going on. Took it easy for a few days, then this morning ran into some friends from the dorm after a walk and spent the rest of my day with them and a returning dormee from the past who I had never met. For as long as we spent at the restaurant we should have ordered dinner too. I’m dumbfounded that my conversation ability has improved, or maybe my mind is making it up. Over half of the time I miss out on the jokes, but I’ll milk the ones I can understand for all they’re worth.

So, Hiroshima! Four and a half hours. Maybe I can catch some sleep on the subway and bullet train tomorrow. Apparently superman is faster than the bullet train, so maybe I’ll have enough time for some decent rest.