the beginning of the second half

first day of japanese "class" went really well :)
sooo excited for spring term.

japanese religion was also scheduled for today, but it was canceled because the professor caught something on the plane ride over to japan... hope she feels better soon.

worked out to my heart's content this afternoon :)
so much free time today! i got back from the gym earlier than usual and still had some down time before dinner ^_^

....and tomorrow's friday! just one class in the morning. then a friend is throwing an all you can eat/all you can drink party at a bar that i have to get directions to---to which another friend responded, "don't bother. she'll just get horribly lost. i'll take her."

hahaha XD

the ties that bind

how is true friendship established?
for each of us, the answer is different.

in my experience, it is a commonality and/or a certain kind of chemistry that initiates the process. of course, not every encounter or even long-standing relationship reaches what i define as "true friendship". but this post isn't about my definition of friendship. rather, i'd like to put my thoughts into words about relationships in general. some last a lifetime, whereas many are a bit more evanescent. but all have their beginnings...

sometimes, it may be as simple as a blood relation. or a common motherland, mother tongue, or alma mater. however superficial these may be, i believe there's always potential for any budding relationship to become something that withstands the trials of life and the society we live in. unfortunately, most will wither away at some point, for much more than initial connections are required to sustain meaningful relationships. even friendships that were once solid are susceptible to being diminished to the level of small talk/superficiality.

i probably sound pessimistic. i'm not. friendship is something i greatly value in life, as most people do as well. over the past several years, i've learned a couple hard lessons about respect for friendship. i could write much more about this, but i won't here.

i guess my main thought is this: friends are not objects to be collected. friendship should be treated with care and respect. if such things don't exist within any given relationship, one should question how "meaningful" that friendship is. as mentioned earlier, i don't expect all to last.

and i think that's okay.

if meaningful relationships could be established with every acquaintance we make in life, it would be a beautiful, beautiful thing :)

a very "not japanese" new year celebration

if celebrating oshogatsu was hit or miss, it was a definite miss.

i slept in after an eventful new year's eve and missed going to the shrine with my host family. i had planned to go to yasaka jinja [a famous kyoto shrine] on the first during the daytime, instead of the eve for the countdown. but my friend wasn't feeling well, so we rescheduled for the second. unfortunately, there was miscommunication on the second, and we didn't go. and on the third? i was going to venture out to arashiyama on my own. then i realized my budget wasn't lenient enough for me to spend money for bus/train transportation. so i stayed in and lost myself in thought instead [which was much more pleasant and rewarding than it sounds].

my host family isn't as traditional as many others, so the festivities at my house weren't a paradigm of the japanese new year celebration. on the night of the second, my host parents threw a large dinner party at the house. i met some pretty interesting characters that night ^_^ i'll just say this much: there was a japanese man wearing a costume wig who got stripped down to his speedo by former boy scouts during dinner.

so i didn't see much of kyoto during oshogatsu, and i didn't put in great effort on my part to "experience" new year's the japanese way.

...i don't regret it.
[i have my reasons.]

to make up for the several uneventful days, mia and i went to yasaka jinja. we each rang the bell and prayed for good luck and happiness in the upcoming year :)

....more about this later.

the holiday season

...is without a doubt different this year.

one, no snow! :(

apparently, it snowed christmas morning, but i wasn't awake to see it. 

and it was gone by the time i woke up.

two, i picked out gifts that i thought my host nephews and nieces would like---my host mom tells me they loved them ^_^  but i didn't even get to give them their presents myself. i had been out with my friends, and i didn't realize that we would exchange presents earlier in the day.

earlier in december, i had hoped to help decorate for christmas, but that didn't happen either :(

then i missed baking cookies at my host sister mari's house.

the most "christmas-y" thing i did this year was go to a get-together at lofgren-sensei's house. but it's a traditional japanese house, and we ate sushi. (which was perfectly fine ~ it just doesn't bring back old memories of christmas) but there was a tree! and we did play a couple card games though! i thoroughly enjoyed that :)

anyway, i had really hoped to spend more time with my host family, and that didn't work out---but it's okay. i have next year to look forward to! i can't wait to celebrate the holidays with my friends at midd and family in new hampshire and new york city.

:)

the national pastime

drinking.

japanese people love to drink. being drunk at 4pm is nothing unusual (certainly not common, but not unusual). there's something called nomihodai in japan ~ all you can drink. it can sound like a horrible idea, but i don't think there's anything wrong with it if one knows where to draw the line. since drinking is an inherent part of socializing in this country, i wonder how japan compares to the united states in terms of alcohol abuse.

i guess this post will be more about my observations than anything else. things i see:

1. drunkenness in the afternoon. a few months ago, i was surprised to see drunken people on the subway when i was going home from classes. however, my friend informed me that it's not unusual. and i've seen this a couple more times since.
2. vomit on the streets. also not unusual late at night. i suppose it's cleaned up before morning.
3. people who often look nauseous in or around bars.
4. vending machines that sell alcohol ~ present everywhere.
5. middle-aged men with severe asian glows before it's even 8pm. 
6. salarymen passed out on the train. they usually take up two or three seats because their bodies are sprawled out. 

so what does this have to do with me? for one, i've had more alcohol in japan these last few months than i've had in my entire life. but with the exception of new year's eve, i've been responsible in terms of knowing my limits and when to stop. since the drinking age in japan is twenty, all my friends and i are legal. since this isn't the case in the united states, one would assume that we'd "take advantage" and drink as much as we can. for me anyway, this is far from the truth. it's nothing special anymore. being able to buy alcohol whenever we want has simply become a way of life. (furthermore, a night out at the bar can become quite costly.) 

if teenagers were to be taught how to drink responsibly, and if the drinking age were lowered to 18 in the united states, i wonder if there would be fewer deaths/incidents amongst college students relating to alcohol abuse... 

new year's eve!

i suppose i'll start off with the events of new year's eve. in a nutshell, ben came over to my house because his laptop unexpectedly died the night before. while he was building a new one online, i finished the rest of my "top-to-bottom" new year's cleaning. we stayed at the house and hung out until dinnertime. i wanted to take him to osaka osho, an inexpensive and extremely delicious (japanese) chinese restaurant in katsura, but it was closed. so we went to shijo, where he wanted to take me to gyoza no osho, another inexpensive and supposedly yummy chinese restaurant, but that was closed too. *surprise surprise* it was new year's eve, after all. we walked around for a while and finally decided on a matsuya-like restaurant.

then we went to starbucks (sanjo) to meet becca, eric, and lauren before going to the hub. ben and i had gone to lawson's just before, but i was already glowing from the can of 5% peach cocktail. (he finished a stronger, larger can of beer looong before i did >_<) when we got to the hub, it was surprisingly relatively empty. we found coat hooks on the wall and managed to get a table. i waited a while before i got a peach cooler, followed by a tarantula (yummy, but 30 proof), some of becca's beer, some of ben's mojito, and then too much champagne (ben generously got the table a bottle). there's a reason for listing what i had to drink last night---i'll get to that in another post.

the rest of the night involved: immature 16, 17-year olds at the next table over who couldn't dress themselves from australia, brutal/hard-to-watch boxing matches on tv, party poppers at the end of the countdown, followed by four kisses to open the new year, warding off older guys who wanted to do karaoke,  and meeting ben's girlfriend rika for the first time. 

i got home around 2:30am ~ i wasn't feeling too well, but a lot better than about an hour earlier. elliot texted me, hoping that i could make it to the pig & whistle, another british pub. i would've loved to go, but i was already at kawaramachi eki (and was in no condition to wander back to sanjo by myself in dress heels). i texted danielle earlier too, but she was nowhere close to where i was. with the exception of mia (and elliot), i haven't hung out with the other midd kids in a while. the other day, my host mom asked me what they had been up to, and i couldn't give her an answer. *red flag* why didn't i know? even if we were all going in different directions, i felt like i should've at least had an idea of what everyone had been doing-- but i didn't. 

i'll say this much, "it shouldn't be this hard."

[holder entry]

no worries. i have much more (than just superficial things) to say about the first half of my time in japan. however, it's now nearing 1am, so i think i'll head to bed. i'll collect my thoughts over the next few days and hopefully write an entry on the reflections before the clock strikes midnight on the last day of 2008.

-jean

ten days

...since my last entry.

i figured i'd have to make some time to update. it's nearly midnight, and it's been an exhausting week, so i'll do my best to be somewhat coherent.

first big news: my sister alice has been accepted to middlebury (early decision) for the class of 2013! the couple days leading up to december 13 were too full of anxiety and excitement--sooo glad it's done and over with. congratulations, alice! you've worked so hard ~ you deserve it!

second big news: leslie came to kyoto and stayed with me this week. it was great to finally see her again after four months :)  leslie, have fun in hokkaido and tokyo with your family! i'll miss you, but september will be here before we know it... can't wait!

not big news: three more "meetings" with starbucks guy since the last entry. the next time i have an opportunity to talk to him, i will. for real, this time.

now on to smaller updates...

#1 end of fall term class party with imao-sensei

￥10000 (about the equivalent of $100 USD)

this was really yummy, but it was also really difficult to eat.  

we called for reinforcements after a little while... 

not even half-way in, and most of us were about to give up.

#2 starbucks.

i'm still going. everyday. overkill? perhaps. 

why am i going so often? many reasons. 

for one, obviously, the coffee. 

two, i love the atmosphere (awesome for reading). 

three, it's a great place to meet up with friends. 

four, it's one of few places in kyoto where 

one can actually sit down and 

have conversation for hours on end. 

five, i come across (interesting) people 

that i normally wouldn't otherwise.

#3 finals week.

i have never been so relaxed around exam time.

there was no need to cram or study excessively.

i reviewed the material with some friends at starbucks

in between good conversation and just plain silliness :)

[elective grades aren't in yet, but i received an A for japanese]

#4 leslie!

mia and i were able to spend a lot of time with leslie

over the past few days. we did a ton of shopping and

ate delicious ramen. we also had yummy chinese food with

nestor and greg before they went to nagano for part of break.

grant also met us at starbucks for more catching up/reminiscing

over some good coffee before he had to head home to pack.

#5 awesome finds.

(the perfect) off-white wool coat on sale.

cute deep purple dress from zara.

new bag! similar style. different color.

beautiful handmade pouch with eiffel tower.

lots of inexpensive, but pretty jewelry.

<3

magical.

is what today has been.

....well, not in the cheesy sense. but it has been an amazing, amazing day.

it started off with cinnamon toast ^_^

then my last class of fall term let out 30 minutes early.

yummy lunch with good friends.

wandered around doshisha library.

starbucks. enough said :)

hung out there with friends until food time.

[oh, and starbucks guy happened to be there too. the third meeting, and i STILL couldn't say "hi"]

make-your-own okonomiyaki <-- DELICIOUS. explain more later.

"let's become beautiful" purikura XD

returned to starbucks and hung out some more.

walking home, i noticed the BEAUTIFUL full moon.

....and then i saw a shooting star.

soaked in the [hot] tub for a while.

came back to my room to find skype msgs from matt.

whs had a snow day, so alice was home to chat with me.

i really couldn't have asked for a better day ^_^

chicken x2

i saw the starbucks guy again.  i was on my way to get parfaits with my friends when we passed each other on the street.

next time [if there's a next time] i'll say hi.

i hope.

>_<

books :)

i love them.

i'm about to finish my fourth book in two weeks.  because of my extremely high productivity levels lately, i've had a lot more free time to read (for pleasure!)  i go to starbucks, satisfy my coffee addiction, finish homework, curl up on one of the couches and just turn pages for hours and hours. and then wander around a nearby five-story bookstore when i have even more free time.

sound wonderful? 

trust me, it is.

^_^

chicken.

not the food.

me.

=]

went to starbucks again after classes. finished a separate peace and got a lot of work done. silently played what felt like a waiting game for several hours... 

i should've just said hi.

>.<

a temporary band-aid

i've never been one for starbucks. 

coffee in general, definitely <3

but not starbucks.

yet, today marks three full months since i've been in japan, and i've been to starbucks over a dozen times already. it's not that i think starbucks coffee is the best thing that has ever graced the planet. it's just that home-y feeling of america that i get when i'm there. or maybe more specifically, the grille at middlebury. i'm sure being homesick has something to do with my recently frequent trips to this overpriced (especially in japan!) café, but more than that, i can unwind and productively do my homework and studying there.

i would've gladly extended the time i was there this afternoon (from four hours upward) if i didn't have to catch the hankyu home for dinner. after a series of events yesterday, i broke down crying in front of a couple of my akp friends. luckily, they lent me a shoulder and an ear until my stop at katsura. i took it easy for the rest of the night yesterday and looked forward to some coffee after class (today). i got a friend to go with me, but he headed home a little thereafter. (not a big fan of coffee. or starbucks, for that matter.) 

so i curled up on a big, comfy chair and read john knowles' a separate peace for the first time since freshman year of high school. (thanks for the lend, mia [...or rather, mia's younger brother] ^_^)  great book, but unfortunately, its content didn't really take my mind off of what i was trying to forget. in any case, being in a café atmosphere and enjoying a cup of caramel-flavored coffee over a good read did wonders for my spirit... at least for a little over four hours.

i hope i'm not conditioning myself to turn to starbucks every time i need a pick-me-up, but i've learned that i want little coffee shops and/or diners around whatever town i'll end up settling down in.

not much of an update :)

...."attractive" screenshot ^_^

just some thoughts...

...not really an update, i suppose.

after a relatively expensive day yesterday, i decided to stay in. i woke up late and found the house empty. my host mom had left a note for me on the kitchen table saying that she'd be out until 3pm or so. until then, i had watched a few episodes of the OC and caught up with a couple friends online. 

when my host mom came home, i was picking up my room... but one thing led to another, and i began to "REALLY" clean. fortunately or unfortunately, i found some things reminding me of high school, japanese summer school, and the first month of being in japan.

i realized that many things that i may have been unhappy about stems from issues more deeply rooted in just the "weird ways in which japan works". and i wish that i had tied up loose ends before leaving the country, but i didn't. so now, i have to figure out what it exactly it is that i need to do to "fix" a few things in my life. i won't have the answers before this month is over, let alone before break ends this weekend.

but as always, i'll がんばります。

it's all that i can do.

fall break!

....has begun! ^_^

i've been terrible about keeping this blog updated for a while now. 

BUT, i've been keeping a separate journal so my misadventures don't go unwritten :)

sometime this week, i think i'll post a video blog ~ since i can talk a lot faster than i can type (which i'm sure you all know what i'm talking about...lol)

i'm doing extremely well now. it just took me forever to figure out that there's nothing i can do about the way the japanese go about things sometimes. most of the time, it's practical. and when it's not, i just want to scream in frustration. 

...but i can't. because it's not middlebury. and i can't do random "crazy" things like that.

(the closest my friends and i have gotten to screaming "randomly" is when we saw the election results come in on the computers in the akp lounge. we went out, bought drinks, and raised a toast to obama in the middle of the street ^_^)

oh midd... how i miss you <3

i didn't vote either.

i just read a friend's post about not voting in the 2008 election. i could literally copy and paste her entire post, and that would sum up perfectly how i feel.

i wish i had worked harder to make sure i got my absentee ballot.

i wish i could've been a part of making history.

i wish i could tell future generations that my first vote was for obama.

i have very few regrets in life, and not voting in this election has become one of my bigger ones. can i reason why i didn't care enough to secure my absentee ballot? i'm not sure. like some americans, i had lost hope in our country. for a period of time, i seriously considered living elsewhere in the world after graduation because i didn't see reason to stay. i disagreed with decisions that our government was making. i became frustrated, and i guess i just didn't want to care anymore. maybe i was "certain" that others would vote for obama, and my vote wouldn't have "mattered". i don't know.

three weeks worth of posts are missing. during this period in october, i was not in a very good place mentally. japan was driving me up a wall with some of its strange habits and customs ~ culture shock, i suppose. (maybe it's a matter of "getting used to it". but one thing i doubt i'd ever get used to is seeing girls pile on fifty layers of mascara in a restaurant or moving subway car. this morning, i saw a woman walk onto the hankyu with a mirror held up to her face. she couldn't wait five seconds until she was actually on the train?!) anyway, the point i'm trying to make is that being here in japan has made me realize that i do love america. and i'm ready to see america change for the better. but by the time i had come to realize this, it had already become late october.

it's about time i fly again ^_^

for whatever reason, i decided to practice some cheer stunts (on a wobble board) after stretching at renaissance tonight.

then a trainer comes up to me, and i thought i was about to be scolded for doing strange things on the wobble board in the stretching area. instead, she started to say something about cheer, but then she saw the middlebury cheerleading shirt i was wearing. やっぱり (after all/as it turns out/"i thought so"), she says.

long story short, she's on a cheerleading squad based in osaka and wants me to join ^_^  practices are saturdays and sundays from 11am to 5, 6pm.  if it's both days every weekend, then i might have to reconsider, but it's much better than what doshisha's squad requires.

i had contacted the doshisha cheer angels in september, but all hope was lost when i found out that practices were three weekdays (at three hours each day) and once or twice on the weekend (at six or seven hours) PLUS, having to cheering for doshisha's sports teams at their games. furthermore, practices are held at tanabe campus, about an hour an a half (one way) from imadegawa campus, where i have my classes. it's also expensive for me to commute there because my 定期 (commuting passes) take me nowhere near tanabe.

so until tonight, i thought joining  a cheer squad in japan was pretty much 無理 (impossible)

^_^

my crazy sports club ^_^

another quick post.  

because it seems like it's all i can handle nowadays :) 

and i'll get to "updating" those three missing weeks of october soon.....

so i happily going along on the elliptical when a trainer approaches me---the same one who i had orientation "g" with.  i already knew what she was going to say.  one, i should do more weight-training. i've been avoiding that part of the gym because i didn't do orientation "i" yet. two, there was a period of time that i had been absent. i got sick, and homework had piled up. 

at renaissance, everyone has a file---but it's hardly private. at the end of each session, one puts the file in a separate place for review (and gets filed away by a trainer afterward for easy finding the next time one goes)  so they know everything i do on any given day.  members also take their blood pressure+heart rate and note their weight before and after each session. maybe that's how it's also done in the US, but it seems like this sports club is intensely attentive. they greet you several different times when you arrive and say お疲れ様でした at least twice on separate occasions when you leave; they are always floating around, and meet with you at regular intervals to discuss your progress, goals, etc.

it gets a little suffocating at times, but i think i'll get used to it. i just dislike that feeling of guilt if i don't do a full workout---and knowing that the trainers know i didn't. for instance, i had one really busy night in which i was lucky i was even able to go at all. i only spent thirty minutes on the elliptical ~ so that day's column was practically empty >.<  and it shows... oh well, not my problem :P

a feast every night

quick post about my host mother's delicious food.

i've been meaning to write an entry about this for quite some time now. anyway, it's delicious. and she cooks A LOT of it.

tonight's dinner consisted of:

• a bowl of rice
• a giant (and i mean, HUGE) bowl of ramen
• veggie tempura
• little dumpling-like things with tofu <--they were really good
• chicken wings made with amazing spices
• korokke

i'll never starve so long as i'm living with the nakamura family ^_^