Christmas, Christmas Time is Here~

Ah, Christmas. That beautiful time of year when we remember the birth of Jesus, spend time with family, admire the glimmering lights, carol with friends, cuddle under the kotatsu, write dozens of nengajyo, and eat a bucket of KFC. Wait, what? Okay, so Christmas in Japan is a skosh* different from America. I got a bit miffed when I first started to notice the differences between the two Christmases, but it isn’t such a big problem now, more like a nation-wide game of I SPY. “Can you see the difference? I spy with my little eye something slightly off”. Well, maybe not like that, but something that makes it more Japanese.

Some things that has been fun is seeing all the decorations. Everything is ornate and well organized, matched, and arranged. I love looking at all the displays in stores and along the street. Kichijoji has a display called "Underground Christmas" in which these little robot moles act out various holiday scenes in their burrows. I thought it was adorable! Even my dorm mates got into the decorating spirit. They put up a Christmas tree in the lobby. However, according to my friend Jerry, a Christmas tree expert of the 4^th degree, the branches have too many gaps, the tinsel only is on the top half of the tree, and someone started putting unrelated ornaments it which ruined the whole feel. Personally, the childish way the tree was put together made it rather cute, like the tree that my sister and I would have in our bedroom that only we were allowed to decorate. What is more, I came home today to find that one of the first floor boys had bought (if he made these, I will be floored) tiny, delicate Christmas cookies and hung them in the tree for people to take.

Another first floor boy made a gingerbread house that looks exactly, EXACTLY, like our dorm, complete with pod sections and the security entrance. He even had a window for each of the rooms and a little garden of sugar candies on the second floor terrace! The piece is uncanny. Working off of his inspiration, some second floor girls also made a little gingerbread and left it in our kitchen for the other girls to see.For example, my dorm wanted to join in the campus caroling session. Fine, no problem, I love a little holiday spirit. But when it came time to pick the carols, they choose Seasons of Love from Rent the Musical and Ookina Furui Dokei (The Old Grandfather’s Clock) by Hirai Ken. Both are fine, lovely songs, but neither are Christmas carols nor speak to the message, feeling, or season Christmas. Okay, fine, no problem, if this is what they want, and they are willing to practice, we shouldn’t fight it, after all it is their country and their Christmas, so just calm down now.

Another example, Christmas here isn’t a family holiday, it is a couples/friends holiday. Sort of like a winter Valentine’s Day. Kichijoji (my favorite little city), has a giant lights display outside the station, but it is of a huge heart and ribbons for Christmas Couples. Having a Christmas date is seen as the perfect way to spend the day and is what all the Japanese consider ideal. If you don’t have a date for Christmas, you are said to be having a “Lonely Christmas”, sort of like the Black Heart’s Club. Um, what about the entire reason for the holiday in the first place? Or, less religious than that, what happened to the season of giving and “going home for the holidays”? Once again, we just need to calm down, do things their way, not everyone is Christian and you shouldn’t force ideologies on other people. But it makes me wonder; how did all of this get lost in translation? How did Western Christmas get so altered while appearing almost identical at first glance?

At the beginning of the month, we were having a bit of a wet season, but that all cleared up soon enough and by the 23^rd, things were even starting to warm up! How strange is this! A Christmas without snow? I haven’t experienced that since I lived in Kansas. We did have a minor earthquake at 2 am the other day, got hit by a tsunami that afternoon (barely felt the effects of it here, though), missed out on the lunar eclipse due to cloud cover from the tsunami, but did get a clear, full moon on Wednesday night. So the last few days have been a tumult of natural phenomenon. Tis the season!

Christmas itself is going to be very exciting for me, though! I’ll be spending it with my best friend Gina from Witt who is also studying in Japan right now. We are spending Christmas together in Tokyo (going to see the new Tron movie and see a ska concert on Christmas Day), and then head off to trek across the western part of the island! I’m so excited I can’t sleep, which is good because I still need to pack and do laundry and write more blogs before I’m on hiatus for about 2 weeks, but bad because I’ll be super drowsy (maybe) when I see her tomorrow. All will end well, though – it always does with Gina.

To all of you back home (and to those who have just returned home for break), Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

*skosh comes from the Japanese word sukoshi (少し) meaning “small or little”, and is a prime example of gaijin Jingrish or Japanglish.

City Farms

What in name of Farmville has happened here?! Am I going crazy?! Seeing things?!

So, there are little farms in my town. I can get that. They are more like these little plots of land with an odd assortment of veggies and such grown by who-knows-who for who-knows-what. But they are cute, and our town is small-ish, so they aren’t so out of the ordinary. But I was riding my bike back from Kichijoji, a city which (I personally think) is rather large-ish in Japan (it is by Ohio standards, at least), and I’m riding, and I’m riding, and then I stop riding, because in the parking lot, I see a bird. But not a normal city bird, mind you. I saw a chicken; a live, clucking, walking chicken. Wait, no, there were three chickens. Two hens, one rooster, and a partridge in a pear tree~~ Haha, a little Christmas jest, that.

Apparently, and I didn’t stop to ask too many questions, but the person who owns the parking lot built a super-sketchy "chicken coop" next to the Pepsi and coffee machines and trained his birds to avoid cars (very important) and not to leave the area or go into the street (another useful trick since now no one can ask him, “Why did the chicken cross the..” Oh, you’ve heard that one? My bad). These chickens were rather flustered as I stared at their odd, fowl selves, but they never left their area of safety around the roost. One of them even scampered up to the top shelf to hide away. The others started running in circles which didn't help my confusion.

I just didn’t get it. I still don’t get it.

The Emperor's Birthday

I had such a productive day, it wasn't even funny! I woke up early, cooked some food, got some last minute shopping done, cleaned my room super-thoroughly (I mean broom AND vacuum, ladies and gentlemen), organized my pantry because I have so much food from home that I now have a legit pantry, and now I'm packing for my long-awaited, cross-country, pan-Japan, Giant Robot invasion with my partner in crime, Gina Gray! But as I was out and about, I couldn't help but feel that something was off. What could that something be? We go now to the field where correspondent Me tells Myself what I think. Don't mind the hat, by the way, it was falling off during the shoot. Camera shy, I guess. And the freeze frame? Priceless, as usual.

Soul Run's Disney Sea Videos

I'll admit right now that I'm not the world's most interesting narrator, so I'm sorry for all the repetition in the videos. The first clip is the entrance of Disney Sea all decorated for Christmas; you can hear me most of all, but my friends are chatting and aww-ing in the background, too. The second snippet is of Agrabah, my future home.

Classes Winter Term

When it comes to school and homework, I am soooo bored! I knew that college in Japan was easy, but this is almost pathetic. If it weren’t for the language problem, I’d have almost no work. This term, I’m taking Japanese Level 4, Thai Ethnology Studies, and the History of Japan in Asia in the 14^th-17^th centuries.

Japanese class is pretty cool, but they separated us into smaller groups and now it is all the Keyaki kids minus one: Ellie! They put her in the other class, so now we can’t all talk and practice together. We're watching Totoro, too! That is part of the class: watch and understand the movie Totoro in Japanese. Sounds good to me! Besides that, the Japanese teachers this term seem to be pretty interesting, and one of them is a former Wadaiko player from our club. Since visiting an English class at another nearby college, I've gotten a chance to see how hard teachers try, almost beg for class participation. It made me really pity language teachers, which is why I have been volunteering for more stuff during class this term. And I need the participation grade. And I need to improve my speaking. Okay, so there is a host of reasons and I'm not just doing it out of the ever-flowing kindness of my heart. We can't all be prefect.

As for history, it is pretty much the same course that I took last term with the exact same teacher. That professor complimented my final paper, too. He said, "I recently read a very well done paper on fashion in the 16th century which was able to incorporate images in the reference section of the..." That was my paper! So take that, academia! If it weren't for the two annoying groups of freshmen in that class, it would be pretty good, but these kids drag the professor off on random tangents for DAYS. He knows too much, so whenever they ask an unrelated question, he knows the answer and feels it is his duty as a teacher to tell them. Very sweet, but it takes away from the actual lesson! And they ask about basic, basic stuff! Just let the man lecture, then ask questions at the end!!! We actually had to say straight out that he hadn't spoken about the syllabus for 2 days, and the freshmen got really defensive about it. They should, it is their fault. Besides being a self-proclaimed History Otaku, our professor is also a huge Harry Potter fan, which makes me so happy. He even has the class divided into dormitories and periodically gives 10 points to Griffendor and goes off on all sorts of tangents. The thing about being a history professor is that he can act as a time-traveling-tour guide, “And now let’s jump to the 13^th century, but in order to better understand where this name came from, we should visit the 7^th century.”

Besides those two easy classes, I have an Ethnology class in Japanese….I might die…probably. Luckily, the teacher takes extreme pity on me, gives me extra readings in English, letting me do my presentations and reports in English. As long as I don’t fail, it should all be fine, but every now and then, I can’t stand it. This class is definitely not a class for people who care about their grades. But I was saved the other day! We had to interview these two Thai students for 1 hour and a half, but thankfully the students wanted to do it in English. Praise heavens!! I had spent the whole day in dread for that interview and was prepared to cry myself to sleep that night, but when I found that I knew more Japanese than the Thai kids, I nearly jumped out of my chair! This makes my life so much easier, there was no way I would have survived if it had been in Japanese. Hopefully I’ll get better as we go on, but…hahah, let’s be reasonable now.

The good thing about have very few classes is that I have more time for fun and random activities. Like what? Rakugo, practices, and traveling!!