BOLO - Monkey on the Lam

“Look out for monkey.”

These were the first words spoken to me as I entered the teacher’s room at Shisui E.S. this morning. I kid you not.

After I received such an ominous warning from a group of 2nd & 3rd grade teachers, my coordinator at the school quickly approached to explain. A monkey had been spotted on the school grounds earlier that morning, but had escaped capture and his (her?) location was now unknown. This monkey is believed to have been the same one spotted in nearby cities of Ozu and Kikuyo.

Now, before you start to think that this is a common occurrence and that Kyushu is overrun with wild monkeys, let me assure you that is not true. Many of my co-workers were quick to tell me that this was the first time a monkey has ever been spotted in the town. There are some wild monkeys around Mt. Aso; indeed, that is where this monkey is believed to have originated; but they very rarely leave that uninhabited area.

Needless to say, this monkey is considered to be very dangerous. While about a team of 8 men roam the grounds with various monkey catching equipment, (I have not actually seen the equipment, but I envision some kind of rod with a banana hanging off the end by a piece of string) outside activities are being strictly monitored and recess is restricted to the gymnasium. Classes are being let out about ten minutes early (perhaps to throw the monkey off his schedule) and teachers are organizing groups to walk the children home. Advisory flyers are also being distributed with such helpful hints as:

1) Do not offer the monkey any food. - "Here monkey, monkey. I've got a tasty banana for you!"

2) Do not eat while standing. – I don’t really think this has anything to do with the monkey, rather the teachers are just trying to sneak in a bit of good manners. While they took the time, I wish they had added a bit about chewing with your mouth closed, but they didn’t ask me for my opinion.

3) Do not look the monkey in the eyes. – I’m having a hard time looking anyone in the eyes while they talk so earnestly about monkey safety.

Well, school’s out and the monkey is still on the loose. I kind of hope he (she) can evade capture and liven up someone else’s school day tomorrow.

Album currently playing on my IPOD – The Decemberists’ 2006 album, The Crane Wife.

- Jenny

There is No Escape

I’m sure that it will come as little surprise to most of you when I say that this is the time of year I wish I was back in the States. I really wish I could spend the season with my family and friends. However, I will admit that I was looking forward to the absence of one aspect of the Christmas season in America – the music.

That’s right, I confess. I don’t like Christmas music. And now that you’ve discovered you have been reading the thoughts and observations of a veritable monster, I’ll try to assuage your horror a little and clarify that I really just don’t like commercial Christmas music. The Pussycat Dolls, Alice Cooper, and John Waters may have some… interesting perspectives on the meaning of Christmas, but I’m okay with never, ever hearing them. Does the Barenaked Ladies’ Christmas album really fill a niche that the market was lacking?

And I’ve got nothing against the more traditional music of the season, but I have no desire to listen to Faith Hill, Celine Dion, or Brian McKnight’s musical stylings (acrobatics) applied to them. In fact, I don’t even want to listen to artists that I do like sing Christmas music - Johnny Cash, Roberta Flack, Frank Sinatra - I’m talking to you. Why do artists feel like they have to do a holiday album to complete their discography? The minor offenders who only contribute a song or two to a compilation disc (U2, Annie Lennox) must bear their guilt as well, though I suppose it can be mitigated if the album is for charity.

Now we come to the Bing Crosby / Rosemary Clooney genre of Christmas music. This is tolerable, though not necessarily my favorite. To be honest, I really only want to hear Crosby crooning “White Christmas” if I’m watching the movie.

Well, now that I have thoroughly appalled you with my dislike of Christmas music, I should explain why I have confessed my deep, dark secret. As I was saying, I was really looking forward to the absence of Christmas music here in Japan, especially the obnoxious commercial holiday music most restaurants and stores play. Given the fact that I have worked in restaurants and retail stores for most of the last 12 years, the untold trauma I have suffered… So, you can only imagine my horror when, a few weeks ago, I was walking through the home center store to purchase a space heater (Have I mentioned that central heating seems to be verboten here in Japan?), and over the speakers I hear a muzak version of Wham!’s “Last Christmas.” Oh, the humanity! I now live in fear. I know it is only a matter of time before I’m assaulted with Mariah Carey belting out “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”

But I do have some appreciation for holiday music, I promise. Here are a few albums that always find their way into my playlist during the season.

1. Tchaikovsky’ s 1892 The Nutcracker: Narada Artists; 1990
2. Handel’s 1741 Messiah: The Academy of Ancient Music, directed by Christopher Hogwood; 1991
3. December: George Winston; 1990

See? There is hope for me yet.

But, since I can’t be with my family during the holidays, I’m turning to my old comforts to remind me of home –

Recent DVD viewing – Normally, around this time of the time, I get the yen to watch Citizen Kane, the greatest movie ever made. Yeah, I know, I’m such a film geek. But since I don’t have it here with me, I've settled for Touch of Evil. The screenplay isn’t that good, but the direction and cinematography is masterful and Orson Welles is, as always, absolutely brilliant.

Current reading material – Ernest Hemingway’s The Complete Short Stories: The Finca – Vigia Edition. If I were stranded on a deserted isle and could only have one book, this would be it. I will never get tired of these stories and each time I read them, I discover something new. “Big Two-Hearted River: Parts 1 & 2” are my favorites, though each and every story touches something in me.

Album currently playing on my IPOD – The Beatles’ 1966 Revolver. From the startling opening chords of “Taxman” to the beautiful melancholy of “For No One” to the wonderfully child-like “Yellow Submarine,” I am enrapt in warm comfort.

- Jenny

Thanksgiving in Japan

Happy Holidays! I hope everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday with their loved ones.

My Thanksgiving passed fairly uneventfully and without most of the traditional food stuffs. I don’t know how available turkey is in the rest of Japan, but here in Kumamoto, it has to be special ordered. Pumpkin pie was also absent. Though the Japanese eat a lot of pumpkin, it’s really only used in savory dishes. The idea of pumpkin as dessert strikes many Japanese as odd. And though I do prefer Japanese savory pumpkin to the sweet route Americans take, many traditional Japanese desserts are made out of rice paste with beans, so I don’t really think they have any room to talk. Sweet potatoes were to be found on many dinner tables, including my own, but it’s not the mushy orange dish covered in burnt marshmallows that I think of when I think of sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes in Japan are more yellowy-white and are usually boiled in soups.

Japanese do celebrate Thanksgiving in their own way, however. Japanese Labor Thanksgiving is observed on November 24th to celebrate the rice harvest. It’s not quite as big a holiday as American Thanksgiving, but they do make steamed glutinous rice dumplings. I know, sounds delicious. These dumplings had a place in many of my school meals during the past week and though I wouldn’t say I am a fan, they’re not as unappetizing as they sound. Often they are filled with anko - a sweet bean paste and much more delicious than it has any right to be considering it is sweet bean paste - and served as a dessert. They can be savory, however, and filled with minced meat or veggies.

Though I didn’t do anything special on Thanksgiving, I did join some fellow English teachers the following night for dinner and drinks. I introduced them to a Mexican restaurant downtown that serves delicious, authentic Mexican food. One of the other teachers, a guy named Bobby from Hawaii, and I had to laugh at the way the tortilla chips were served in a very small bowl, about the size of a coffee cup at a trendy coffee shop like Central Perk, when we were both used to getting big baskets full of chips at Mexican restaurants in the States.

After dinner, the other teachers introduced me to a German restaurant that is known perhaps as well for their extensive beer menu as they are for their food. I think we’re planning to have dinner there next month.

Just as I was finishing up this post, Ricky Martin’s Livin' La Vida Loca came on the radio here in the teachers’ room. Except, it isn’t Ricky Martin and it isn’t Spanish. I have to admit that I despise the song, but there is something incredibly funny about hearing it in Japanese.

Album Currently Playing on my IPOD – 1990 The Narada Nutcracker – in spirit of the season.

- Jenny

Echo of Footsteps

A few weeks ago, the international news out of Japan was a report of the hanging of two men. Now, given Japan’s relatively low crime rate and the nature of the act, this might have made international news on those merits alone. The truly extraordinary fact about these killings – at least in my eyes – is the fact that they were state sponsored. Yes, you read correctly. Japan employs capital punishment.

A few months ago, if you had asked me to list countries that have the death penalty, I would have said Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, China… you know, all of the countries that opponents of capital punishment catalog and then ask if we really want to be on any list with these ‘evil’ countries. It’s interesting how they always conveniently omit Japan from the list. That may be because Japan executes a significantly smaller number of people than the U.S., Iran, and North Korea, etc. But I think it has much more to do with the idea that Americans typically regard Japan as a highly civilized ally and if Japan employs capital punishment, then the argument that only uncivilized and morally inferior countries believe and use such a practice falls apart.

Now, I want to go on the record in my opposition of capital punishment in the United States and elsewhere - though more for practical reasons than philosophical ones. And I regard America’s practice of it as a blight on our international reputation. However, the more I learn about the way Japan employs it, the more I find America to be almost enlightened by the whole process.

First, as I stated before, Japan continues to use hanging as the method in capital punishment cases. Now, perhaps they have refined their technique, but this remains a relatively problematical way to kill a person – especially for the prisoner.

Except, they aren’t prisoners. Once a person has been sentenced to death, they legally lose their status as a ‘prisoner’ and are no longer awarded even the basic rights of prisoners. They are held in special detention centers where they are kept in solitary confinement with only three books and they are let out for about an hour twice a week for exercise – exercise in their small cell is strictly forbidden. Many of these men spend 10 years or more in these conditions waiting to be executed. One man died at the age of 95 after spending 32 years on death row.

What I truly find cruel and unusual, however, is the fact that these executions are carried out in secret. Neither the family of the victim nor the family of the prisoner are informed until the day after is has taken place. The lawyers aren’t informed. And most horrifically, the prisoners themselves have no idea until the guards come to escort them to the gallows. When sentenced to death row, these men live under the weight of knowledge that one night, without warning, they will be taken to be killed without the opportunity for any final goodbyes. And it could be tonight or it could be many years from now.

The Japanese government claims that this is a more humane practice than giving the prisoners a date on which they will focus and dwell. Apparently, they believe that if the prisoners are not aware of the exact date they will be killed, they will be able to put out of their minds that such a date exists. Which is ridiculous. I’m reminded of Albert Camus’ The Stranger where a man sits on death row in such a set-up. He recalls (mistakenly, as it turns out) that all hangings are performed at dawn, so every night he remains awake in terror, frantically listening for the footsteps that will come to take him to his death. And every morning at sunrise, he falls asleep in exhausted relief that he will live one more day. Unsurprisingly, he drives himself mad.

Album currently playing on my IPOD – Tom Waits’ Beautiful Maladies: The Island Years


- Jenny

A New Day Dawns in America

Congratulations to Barack Obama on becoming the next President of United States. Not only have we elected the first African-American as President, I really look at this election as one where in spite of the current hardships and uncertainty we face; we, as a society, embraced hope and not fear. Hope for the future and the change we can affect in it.

I’ve gotten a few consoling emails, lamenting the fact that in this historic time in America, I should be halfway across the world. And though I certainly would have enjoyed celebrating with y’all, I wouldn’t change the view I have for anything. At the same time that election results were starting to come in, the Japanese students and teachers at Shichijo Elementary School were welcoming a group of English teachers from all over the world to their school. We had teachers from New Zealand, India, Jamaica, South Africa, Canada, and of course, a few from the U.S.A. And when I and my countrymen introduced ourselves as hailing from America, there were no questions whether we referred to small town, real America or big town, fake America, whether we were from red states or blue states, or if we identified with conservative America or liberal America. We are from America. We are Americans.

- Jenny

Playground Revenge and Halloween

The nights are falling sooner. The air is growing chillier. Autumn is here. And here to stay for a bit it seems, though Japanese will call it ‘winter’ here before long. I’ve already been warned by several of my co-workers that the temperatures can even get down to freezing occasionally, usually in the early mornings. Their eyes grow wide when I tell them that on good winter day in Kansas, the temperatures might get up to freezing by midday. Of course, it won’t be a day at the beach for me entirely. Like air conditioning, heat seems to be a rationed commodity in Japan. I might have it in the teacher’s room at my schools, but the classrooms will be without, and I never quite figured out the air conditioning / heating unit at my apartment. My little space heaters will have to bear the burden.

At my schools, the students are getting in as much quality time on the playground as they can before the weather becomes unbearable, I suppose. And I am often their honored guest during recess. Kids on both hands pulling me in every direction to the swings, jungle gyms, and teeter-totter (which they always crack up when I say the name of). I’ve gotten quite a bit of respect from the younger kids for scaling the jungle gym with them and sliding down the slides.

With the older kids, we usually head for the all-purpose sports field where there are always a number of matches going on: soccer, kickball, dodge ball, and a big favorite – dodge frisbee. There is occasionally a teacher or two playing along with the students, but for the most part, the kids are on their own during this 45 minutes after lunch. They usually stay divided by grade and class and can spend 15 – 20 minutes working out the rules – though once the game begins, I’ve never seen any fights erupt and all disagreements seem to be worked out very quickly and without hurt feelings – so, I suppose that time is spent well.

Choosing teams is a fun thing for me now. When I was a kid in elementary school, I was always in the bottom half of kids chosen. The first mark against me, of course, was that I was a girl, we’re always chosen last. The second mark was that I was pretty middle of the road when it came to athleticism and popularity, the two factors that can help a girl get chosen before others. I never realized how affected by that I was, or honestly, the fact that I was affected at all – I never remember a time when I was the absolute last kid picked. But, I have to admit that I get a good deal of satisfaction at always being the first one chosen for teams here in Japan. Finally, the popularity factor works in my favor. But being chosen first isn’t the only benefit I’m accorded. I’m rarely targeted during games of dodge ball and frisbee and ties always seem to go to Jenny-sensei. It would get old after too long, but at the moment, I’m quietly enjoying this small sense of playground revenge.

Starting last week, I began teaching lessons about Halloween to some of my older students. The existence of Halloween is certainly well-known here in Japan. I’ve seen images of jack o’lanterns everywhere from department stores to car dealerships to school classrooms. I walked past a high-end patisserie in the basement of a local department store with a large Halloween display consisting almost entirely of pumpkins and a large portion of their treats were pumpkin based – though nothing Americans would be familiar with.

I have little idea what Japanese actually know about the holiday other than faces carved on pumpkins, though. In fact, when I introduced ‘jack o’lanterns’ to my first and second graders, they called them ‘halloweens.’

I tried to compare Halloween to the Japanese holiday, Obon. But, it’s not a very good comparison. Obon is more like the Mexican holiday, Dia de los Muertos - a day where souls of the dead, particularly ancestors, return for a visit. But Obon doesn’t really have any of the fear element that Halloween does and I didn’t want to frighten my students, so I chose more cartoon-like pictures of ghosts, skeletons, and various monsters. From their laughter, I suppose I succeeded in not frightening them at least, if not really impress upon them the meaning of ‘scary’ in relation to Halloween. Oh well, at least, they all had a good time with balloon races and making paper jack o’lanterns.

Current reading material – Dorothy Parker’s Complete Stories. Her wit is legendary, of course, but it is her style that I admire so much. As an aspiring writer myself, I am in awe of how effortlessly Parker makes it look. I have to admit though, she’s best read when one isn’t in a relationship. Outlook on romance - not very sunny.

Album currently playing on my IPOD – Gram Parsons’ GP / Grievous Angel. I was introduced to Gram Parsons by my Dad when I was in high school and was immediately reminded that the phrase ‘good country music’ need not be an oxymoron, despite all contemporary evidence to the contrary.

- Jenny

Yes, But What Does Britney Think?

There are a great many things that I miss about America. Many, of course, I expected: my family and friends, favorite shops, and restaurants. It’s what I didn’t expect to miss that is really throwing me for a loop, however.

I miss Twinkies. I don’t really even like Twinkies that much and I rarely eat them, but somehow their absence is keenly felt.

I miss American television; particularly the guilty pleasure shows, the shows that I would never think to watch unless I was bored and had come upon them while channel surfing - the VH1 marathon of last season’s ‘America’s Next Top Model’ or the second-rate action movie on TNT.

Mostly, I find that I miss magazines. I miss reading the witty and thought provoking editorials and essays in The New Yorker and Time Magazine. Now, I know that I can read them online. Even the cartoons, which I admit constitute about half of my reading pleasure in The New Yorker, are included on it’s online pages. But, it’s not quite the same as sitting down in a comfortable chair and flipping through the pages.

And as much as I miss the respectable magazines, I must confess what I really miss are the gossip rags. I miss People and US Magazine. It’s all fine and good to read about the Pakistani President’s unsettlingly friendly relationship with the Chinese leadership in Time, but what about Jennifer Aniston’s love life? Where can I find photos of Nicole Richie at the supermarket or a picture gallery of recent celebrity ‘baby bumps’? And yes, I can find much of this online as well. But, there is something about actually setting out to find gossip that takes so much of the joy out it. And viewing the pictures online just isn’t the same. There is something about the glossy pages and splashy, exaggerated headlines that transforms them from tacky gossip into perfectly acceptable entertainment.

And where People and US Magazine are like Pizza Hut pizza– not my usual preference for dinner, but the subject of an occasional craving – OK! and Star Magazine seem to fill the role of Twinkies in this admittedly odd allegory. I never actually buy them, but there is something very comforting about their presence in the grocery check-out line; something reassuring about the competing headlines of a Jolie / Pitt break-up versus their plans to marry on Christmas Eve at the Taj Mahal.

More evidence, I suppose, that even metaphorical superficial cuts cause more irritation than deeper wounds. I wonder if I’ll spend one of my first days back in the States sitting in front of the television eating Twinkies and flipping through US Magazine while ‘America’s Next Top Model’ is on. And no doubt, remembering very quickly why I never thought I would miss them in the first place.

Recent DVD viewing– The 1987 BBC series of Dorothy L. Sayers Lord Peter Wimsey films starring Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Walter. I’m enjoying them tremendously and am now very interested in reading the original novels.

Album currently playing on my IPOD – Gomez’s 2004 album, Split the Difference. Great band, check them out.

- Jenny

E Cannibus Unum?

Recently, the sumo world has been rocked by scandal. Two wrestlers have been permanently banned from professional sumo for having failed drug tests. They were found to have used… wait for it…. Marijuana. Yes, that dangerous drug that gives a professional athlete such an unfair advantage.

The Chairman of the Japan Sumo Association has lunged to accept the full blame of such a disastrous scandal and responded by tendering his resignation, though he insists that he had no prior knowledge of it and in actuality, completely believes the wrestlers when they deny having used marijuana. The Japanese, as a culture, have such an amazing ability to accept full blame for a situation, while at the same time, completely denying any of the responsibility. As usual, it seems to be the opposite of America, where everyone wants the responsibility, yet accepts none of the blame.

And after recounting all of the dirty details of lifetime bans and resignations, the media then focuses on two, in my estimation, minor details in the scandal. One, the fact that the wrestlers are Russian borne, though they have been living and working in Japan for a good portion of their young lives. And two, they allegedly attained the pot while in America. The implications are unspoken, yet certainly not subtle; no true Japanese sumo would have succumbed to this terrible western drug. It’s as though the Japanese believe that they couldn’t possibly be corrupted by such things.

And yet, the more I see, the more I kind of believe it. Not that Japanese can’t be corrupted by things, but they seem to be completely unaware of marijuana’s existence, and at the same time, naively aware of it.

A slight digression, but stick with me. All Japanese schoolchildren have pencil cases in which they carry pencils (of course), erasers, crayons, rulers, and - somewhat oddly in my mind – needles and thread. The younger kids usually leave them in their desks and the older grades bring them to my class despite the fact that they never, ever use them. In fact, it was when I was directing them to set them down on the floor by the wall to keep them out of the way, when I noticed the large number of cases in very distinct colors of green, black, and orange-red. It was the unmistakable image of a cannabis leaf on the lid of one of the cases that really caught my eye, however. I won’t insult you by pretending that I didn’t immediately recognize it. Despite what social conservatives proclaim, to be raised in a small town in Kansas and not recognize the shape of a cannabis leaf or the distinctive smell when it’s being smoked, requires such a passionate commitment to ignorance that I am grateful to have never had.

I had a class to teach, though, and no time to investigate this interesting development. Thankfully, I was scheduled to eat lunch with the one of the other 6th grade classes and would have the opportunity to check it out.

And we circle closer and closer. I think I’ve described in general terms lunch-time in Japanese elementary schools before, but to give you a little better picture of what happens – lunch period officially begins at 12:30. It’s at this time that about six students put on their aprons and caps and head down to the ‘kitchen’ area and collect lunch and all of the dishware for the entire class. This usually consists of a basket full of bowls, plates, and chopsticks, a metal bucket full of rice, another containing soup and a smaller covered pan with the fish and / or pickled foods. Another pair of students head to the school refrigerators to collect the milk for the class. When they return to the classroom, these students set up an assembly line and serve their classmates. Nobody begins eating until everyone is served and the students on lunch duty for the day have removed their aprons and caps and settled down to eat.

This entire process often takes a good twenty to twenty-five minutes. I’ve seen it take up to thirty minutes a few times. It’s odd to me how these students react at lunch-time - it’s beyond patient and bordering on the apathetic. We can have our food sitting in front of us for ten minutes and the kids never act annoyed or even curious as to why we haven’t started eating yet. I have to admit, I become both curious and annoyed, though I try to hide it.

My point – and yes, I do have one – is that I often have ten or fifteen minutes to interact and observe the kids as we wait for our lunch to begin. The kids are often reading, drawing, playing cards, etc. Most importantly, they are often opening their desks, revealing their pencil cases. During this particular lunch, I didn’t immediately sit down and start talking with the kids at my particular lunch group. Instead, I wandered around the room on the lookout for that distinctive leaf. Almost immediately, I spied a very sweet and somewhat shy girl named Naoko open her desk, and sure enough, sitting on top of her Winnie the Pooh folder, was her metal pencil case in that distinctive green color and covered with outlines of cannabis leaves. On the corner of the case, however, were the words ‘The Hemp Society.’ Now, Japan actually has a decently large hemp market, so I withheld judgment.

In the desk next to her, however, I hit jackpot. The boy threw open his desk to get his comic book to show his friends and next to it was his pencil case. It was black, green, and red striped and in big, black letters completely covering the top of the case, said ‘CANNABIS.’ I kind of caught his and Naoko’s eye, and tried to subtly look at the cases questioningly. Their faces as they looked back at me were the definition of childlike innocence. There was no hint of a smirk which I would have suspected.

I’ve had my eyes on the lookout since, and these particular pencil cases are everywhere and they seem as though they’re all from the same company or brand. And despite their wide dispersion throughout all of my schools, nobody seems to indicate that know what they represent.

But seeing young girls walk around with pencil cases advertising marijuana along with their Winnie the Pooh binders and their Hello Kitty pencils isn't the only incongruity to been found in Japan. A common sight in downtown Kumamoto are thin, young men with Clay Aiken hairdos and delicate features wearing oversized FUBU clothes, and small boutiques filled with lacy, frilly clothes and playing Bob Marley’s ‘Africa Unite’ on the speakers.

It’s like an entire country is in on the joke and nobody is blinking.

My Current Reading Material – Stanley Lombardo’s brilliant translation of Virgil’s Aeneid. Dr. Lombardo was a professor of mine at the University of Kansas and I’ve had the extraordinary pleasure of listening to him read from several of his translations, including Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. He brings such a modern voice to these classics, while still remaining faithful to the spirit of the author and work. I cannot recommend these translations more highly.

Album currently playing on my IPOD – Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings. And next up – Eric Clapton’s 2004 album, Me and Mr. Johnson.

- Jenny

Newman's Top Ten

In honor of my favorite actor, an extraordinary man, here are my Top Ten Paul Newman Films:

1. Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid - 1969

2. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - 1958

3. Cool Hand Luke - 1967

4. The Sting - 1973

5. The Long, Hot Summer - 1958

6. Slap Shot - 1977

7. Hud - 1963

8. The Hustler - 1961

9. The Color of Money - 1986

10. The Verdict - 1982

This is Covered, Right?

“To everybody out there who pays taxes, we just bought an insurance company! And it only cost us… $85 billion. Well, if it keeps our government from socializing health care, I’m all for it.” – Jon Stewart on the federal government’s recent bail-out of AIG.

Whenever election time rolls around (and let’s face it, with campaigns starting earlier and earlier, it’s always election time) we are bombarded with dire warnings that some people want to socialize our health care system. Even the name is enough to strike fear into the heart of any patriotic American. Socialized Health Care. It’s socialized. That sounds like Socialism, which we all know is just a another word for Communism. They’re communists! And they want to turn us into communists, too!

And now for a few caveats from our author. I am no expert on health care systems: free-market, publicly-funded, or otherwise. The statistics presented in this blog come from a 1994 monograph titled, ‘Japan’s Universal and Affordable Health Care, Lessons for the United States?’ by Victor Rodwin, Ph.D., Professor of Health Policy and Management at New York University. Observations and real world situations come from my own experiences in the American health care system and from what my friends and acquaintances here in Japan have related to me.

Back to our regularly scheduled program. The dangers and threats of socialized health care; or as the rest of the world calls it, publicly funded health care; have been fully catalogued by it’s opponents: no choices for the consumer, a labyrinthine bureaucracy impossible to navigate, a steep decline in the quality of health care received – ridiculously long waits to get a doctor’s appointment, shorter hospital visits, rationed high tech medical care, and medical decisions being taken out of the hands of doctors and patients and in the hands of the bureaucrats, and most threatening of all – the outrageously high cost in form of taxes.

When talking about the dangers of publicly funded health care, most opponents refer (often misleadingly) to the health care systems of Canada, Cuba, or European countries. Rarely, do they mention the Japanese universal health care system. So, I thought I’d share a few of my observations of how it works and it’s results with you.

First, the set-up. Yes, Japan’s health care system is compulsory for all Japanese citizens. For permanent residents, it is possible to not participate: however, once in the system, it is extraordinarily difficult to leave – kind of like what I’ve heard about Bally’s Fitness Club. (With my 1-year work visa, I am considered a visitor in Japan and consequently purchase my health care through my employer as I would if I were in the States.) So yes, there is little to no choice for the consumer. Though, as an American citizen who has purchased her own health insurance for almost 10 years now, I can’t say I’ve ever felt overwhelmed with choice as health insurance companies vie for my patronage.

But back to Japan, virtually all residents are covered without regard to any medical conditions they may have or to their actuarial risk of succumbing to illness. And they do not lose their insurance when they change jobs or move to a different region. Again, as an American who has had 6 different health insurance plans in the last 10 years, because of changes in my employment and situation, Japan’s system appears very attractive in this regard.

But what about the labyrinthine bureaucracy they warn about? Well, if you’ve never had to battle bureaucracy in the American health care system, then my hat’s off to you. Whenever I’ve gotten a new health insurance plan, I spent way too much time worrying and checking to see if my doctors accept that insurance and if not, which doctors will. I arrive at any new doctor at least twenty minutes early to fill out all of the insurance forms and expect to spend an extra fifteen minutes for the receptionist to ask her fellow co-workers if they deal with this particular company before calling the company to iron out paperwork discrepancies.

Here in Japan, there is never any question if the doctor accepts the insurance and no bureaucracy telling you which doctors or specialists you can or cannot see. There’s little to no paperwork, either. At the first visit, they make a copy of the patient’s insurance card and they ask to see it at all following visits – much like in the States. And since there are only dealing with one insurance provider, the workers in the doctors’ offices are experts at the paperwork and technical details.

Probably the biggest concern for most Americans is the quality of health care received. I’ll rely on Dr. Rodwin and his well-researched monograph for my data here. Japan has the lowest infant mortality rate and highest life expectancy at birth. Japan has 15.8 inpatient hospital beds per 1,000 persons, more than three times the American ratio. And at 50.5 days, Japan has the longest average length of stay for inpatient hospital services, focusing on bed rest and complete recovery while the patient is in the hospital- a rate more than five times that of the United States. Japanese doctors have the highest number of physician contacts per capita, almost three times the American rate, and 45% of appointments are same or next-day.

My friends and acquaintances confirm that last fact. I’ve never seen anyone wait longer than two days for a doctor’s appointment, even for a routine physical. I, on the other hand, once had to wait close to four weeks to get an appointment for a physical. A friend of mine also visited the emergency room recently for a severe cold - a national holiday had the doctors’ offices closed - and was in and out within two hours having received an I.V. of vitamins and fluid and a filled prescription of antibiotics in hand.

Regarding high-tech medical care, Japan has the highest number of computerized axial tomography (CT) scanners per capita and the highest number of extra-corporal shock wave lithotriptors per capita. Japanese have nearly twice as many magnetic resonance scans per capita as Americans do.

And as for bureaucrats, I’ve seen and heard of no evidence of bureaucratic interference in medical care. A friend was recently informed by his doctor of a possible reoccurrence of cancerous cells on his stomach. He was given the choice of an invasive surgery to confirm, and if necessary, remove cancerous cells, or he could visit the doctor once every three months for non-invasive tests which would alert them immediately if there was a need for the surgery. Either decision would have been similarly covered by his insurance. Choosing the quarterly non-invasive tests, the total bill for his appointment with the specialist to have the tests done and again for the results comes to the equivalent of $1.46. I suppose the insurance doesn’t cover the Winnie the Pooh band-aid or watermelon flavored lollipop.

As always, everything comes down to the money. Looking at the big picture, spending on health care accounted for a mere 6.6 percent of Japan's total gross domestic product versus 13.4 percent of America's. On the more individual scale: yes, Japan’s health care system is based primarily on payroll taxes. Once a year, citizens pay a tax which roughly equals or is slightly less than what American’s pay a year for their health insurance. And when comparing co-pay for doctor’s visits, prescription costs, etc., Japanese pay significantly less.

And once over the age of 70, Japanese pay nothing in premiums, yet receive a significant percentage of health care services. An friend’s 80 something-year-old mother was recently in the hospital for a little over two weeks. Her total bill including the hospital, doctors, tests, prescriptions, etc., came to about $1,000. That’s less than a hotel stay.

There are, of course, significant cultural differences between the two countries and systems that would be dangerous to ignore. The overall good health of Japanese citizens in comparison to Americans can also be attributed in good part to their traditional balanced diet of fish, rice, fruits, and non-processed sugars. Japanese also put a high value on exercise. Most companies begin the work day with a mandatory stretching session with the employees and often have another in the afternoon after lunch. As I drove to work one day with the radio on, the radio station even stopped it’s programming for ten minutes to broadcast the traditional stretching routine. However, though I don't have the statistics, I would assume that the rates of lung cancer and emphysema here in Japan are much higher than America. They really are chain-smokers here. And to their great concern, studies show that the effects of globalization and Westernization are being felt as obesity, diabetic, and heart condition rates are on the rise in Japan.

And while Japanese blame rising obesity rates on McDonalds, I will admit that I find the following Japanese medical detail terribly disturbing. Though Japanese visit the doctor almost three times as often as Americans, the length of appointment is less than half the time. Japanese doctors rarely explain their diagnoses to the patients and to my horror to discover, often withhold their diagnoses from the patients if it is terminal, informing the family instead and often encouraging them to lie to the patient rather than ‘depress’ them with the truth. I've even heard of doctors not labeling the medicine they prescribe their patients to prevent them from discovering what is really wrong. That is a cultural issue, however, and not an effect of the state run health care.

It would be impossible to wholly compare the health care systems of Japan and America and decide definitively which is better. At least, it would take a much more intelligent and dedicated mind than mine. The Japanese publicly funded health care system is more complicated behind the scenes than I have described it here. Even the average Japanese citizen would be hard pressed to fully describe how it works. I do not claim America should import the Japanese system wholly and without pause, but I do hope that as Americans, we can open up our minds to the possibilities offered around the world without dismissing them categorically as un-American and therefore evil. There is much we can teach the world, but only if we keep our minds open to what the world has to teach us.

And there’s my $0.02 on fixing America’s problems :)

My current reading material – The Norse Myths by Kevin Crossley-Holland. Though I haven’t felt the transcendent impression of ‘these are my people,’ as Stewart described he did when reading these myths, I do admit that the fatalistic attitudes expressed does ring some bells in this mid-western girl. My favorite line so far: “Every morning the two ravens, Thought and Memory, are loosed and fly over Midgard; I always fear that Thought may fail to wing his way home, but my fear for Memory is greater.”

Album currently playing on my IPOD – Steely Dan’s 1972 ‘Can’t Buy a Thrill’. The first album released by Steely Dan and number 238 on Rolling Stones’ list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

- Jenny

Politics as Unusual

This is perhaps the most interesting time to be an American living in Japan.

The above sentence is hopeless vague and unwieldy. It can be interpreted, construed, rebutted, denied, bolstered and defended innumerable ways. In my opinion therefore, it is the perfect lede in a blog about politics and politicians.

As many of you know, I love politics… the Platonic ideal of Politics, that is. It can be beautifully demanding and challenging: intellectually, philosophically, and ethically. Consequently, watching current politicians and their campaigns for office, I feel akin to a trainspotter watching a head-on train collision. My amateur enthusiasm and knowledge make it all the more horrifying and compelling to witness.

With the internet, my view of the American political stage is no less clear from halfway across the world than it would be from America’s Heartland. I can find just about any clip of a speech, interview, or off-hand remark made by well… anyone. I can find press releases, news articles, and editorial columns from basically anywhere. And I do. I am perhaps more up-to-date regarding this Presidential Election than I would be if I were living in the States. Living in Japan, however, has reinforced and magnified my belief in the importance of being aware of the bias not only of one’s news sources, but of oneself when gathering information this way. It’s something I’ve always believed, but feel even more strongly about it as I experience living outside of the United States.

In the States, I would without any effort on my behalf, encounter news stories and opinions from sources much more right-leaning than I am. Now, I have to go out of my way to find them. And finding them is important. We naturally tend to gravitate towards sources that we feel share our perspective and opinions, and there is no end to such sources on the internet. But, this wouldn’t give me a very well-rounded view of the American political reality. So, I watch (with gritted teeth) Bill O’Reilly on YouTube as well as full Daily Show with Jon Stewart episodes (thank you Nate, for pointing these out to me.) I’ve bookmarked and track the conservative news site, TownHall.com as well as the more liberal HuffingtonPost.com. The most vital site recently added to my bookmarks is FactCheck.org to help me sort out all of the various truths, half-truths, misleading statements, and outright lies I read and hear. This is a full time job.

However, no matter how hard I work to keep up with it all, I find a vital element of politic-watching missing– the watercooler talk. It’s something I used to roll my eyes at, but I find that I miss it desperately. I know what the liberal and conservative bloggers and analysts are thinking, but I have no idea as to what they ordinary men and women who don’t post their opinions to the web think. I have a fairly good idea as to what campaign claims are true and which are false, but I don’t know what Joe and Jane America accept as the truth, what they believe are the important issues of this campaign.

I recently saw a poll on CNN International that showed the percentage of people claiming to be highly interested in the American Presidential Election by country. According to this poll, 83% of Japanese are highly interested in this year’s election and only 80% of Americans. Whenever I mention the election to some of my acquaintances, though, it is the historic element that draws their attention. The individual candidates’ positions on the issues is given little notice. Most seemed to favor Obama because they liked the fact that he would be the first African-American as President. But now Sarah Palin has been named McCain’s running mate, they seem genuinely excited over either possibility as it would be either the first African-American in office or the first woman as V.P. It’s an interesting observation considering the ambivalence many Japanese felt regarding the suggestion that royal succession rules be amended to allow the Crown Prince’s eldest daughter to succeed him to the throne and their relief when a son was born to the younger brother of the Crown Prince whose birth allowed the debate to fade into the background.

It’s also interesting to compare the American President Election to the current campaign and upcoming election of the Japanese Prime Minister since the current P.M., Yasuo Fukuda, announced his resignation a little over a week ago. He was in office not quite one year and whose approval ratings mirror President Bush’s current approval ratings. There has been very little talk on the subject among my co-workers as fair as I can tell. Of course, this election is one in which only members of the Diet (parliament) can vote, not the Japanese citizens.

Candidates for the post were just announced a few days ago and the election will be held in two weeks. But even in normal elections, the campaigns only run for 6 weeks before they vote. My acquaintances laugh when I express my wish that American campaigns were similarly short, especially considering Obama and McCain have been on the campaign trail nigh on 19 months by now.

Even more enviable is the post-election clean up of campaign signs. In my first week in Kumamoto, they held the mayoral election I believe, and the day after the election ended, city workers were out in full force taking down all of the signs decorating the city. The next day none remained.

All of that said, I do hold the American political process in even higher regard today than ever before. I am so happy that such a wide range of thought and opinions are available for consumption. And I am proud to have to opportunity to have my own voice heard in such an important decision.

- Jenny

Lessons at Lunch

As I was trying to ward off a sneak tickle attack by a rambunctious 4th grade girl while we were settling down for lunch, I noticed an interesting poster on the wall behind her.

If you’ve ever been instructed on the correct way to hold chopsticks, you’ve probably been told to hold one like you would hold a pencil, keeping the other one stationary while using the one to move and pinch the food. Well, it turns out Japanese children receive the same lesson in reverse. This poster gave directions on how to hold a pencil, by showing pictures of a hand holding chopsticks that gradually morph into it holding a pencil. It makes sense, of course. Japanese children have been using chopsticks since they were old enough to sit upright. It still struck me as funny to use something fairly complex, using chopsticks, to describe how to do something so simple, hold a pencil.

Speaking of chopsticks, a few days ago, one of my co-workers again showed concern / surprise at my using chopsticks to eat. About once every couple weeks, one of my fellow teachers will ask if I’m comfortable with chopsticks or one of my students will giggle that I do eat with chopsticks. After assuring the teacher that I was fine without a spoon, fork, and knife: I turned back to the group of 6th graders I was sitting with and tried to tell them that Americans often eat with chopsticks, too. It’s a slight exaggeration, but I do get the feeling that they believe no American has ever seen chopsticks unless they have traveled to Japan themselves. I made the mistake however, of listing some of the foods I’ve eaten with chopsticks, among them being sushi, when one of the girls quickly set me straight, informing me that I shouldn’t be eating sushi with chopsticks but with my hands. And in Japan, that’s true. If you are at a sushi restaurant, it is traditional and expected that you eat the sushi with your hands. Sushi from the grocery store, on the other hand, would be okay to eat with chopsticks, I think.

As usual, I tried to show these Japanese children that Americans can be cosmopolitan and worldly, only for them to decide that I was quite the opposite.

- Jenny

Is There Anybody Out There?

My dear friends, I have not abandoned you.

I'm actually in Kitakyushu for a few days for training. I'm learning all of the things that would have been nice to know before I started teaching. Such as, did you know that it is impolite to blow your nose in public? You're supposed to leave the room or at the very least hide in a corner or something. That would have been nice to know a couple months ago when I had a cold. Oddly enough however, It is not impolite if you have a runny nose to constantly sniff even if someone is talking to you. It's so gross and annoying. I constantly want to shove a box of kleenex at people as they sniffle throughout the day. Just blow your d**n nose!

I've also discovered that about a quarter of the paperwork that I am supposed to be filling out I've been doing wrong. And I've realized that I am expected to bring gifts - usually some kind of cookies or something - to my schools since I've done a little traveling over the break. This is a very gift giving culture. I'm going to have to hit the stores at the railway station to find something that I can pass off as purchased in Kyoto.

On the other hand, since I've already been teaching for four months, I do know a lot of what they are going through and am occasionally asked to speak as a voice of experience for the new teachers coming in. That's always fun :)

Anyway, sorry for my recent absence and I'll try to get a new post up soon. Thanks for reading!

- Jenny

Kyoto: The Finale

I woke the next day to find it raining. By the time I left the hostel, however, the rain had tapered off, leaving the almost unbearable humidity in it's place.

My first destination was a Buddhist temple in the southwest part of the city named Rengeo-in temple. Rengeo-in translates to the mythic sounding, ‘Hall of the Lotus King.’ However, no one knows it by that name. Rather, on all of the maps and guide books – including the pamphlet provided when I purchased a ticket, the temple is called Sanjusangen-do, which translates to ‘Hall with Thirty-Three Spaces Between Columns.’ Not quite as poetic, but perhaps more appropriate for the unremarkable looking building.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. The Irish couple I was rooming with had conflicting opinions on the temple. Sarah said it was her favorite, while Joe thought it was fairly boring. After seeing it, I am firmly on Sarah’s side. I understand why Joe didn’t care for it, since he was all about the gardens and the wonders of Sanjusangen-do have little to do with it’s gardens. It’s treasures reside inside the temple.

Sanjusangen-do was first built in 1164, but the original building was lost in a fire and was rebuilt in 1266. Inside the temple are 1001 statues of the Buddhist deity, Juichimen-senjusengen Kanzeon, often referred to by the easier to say, 'Thousand Armed Kannon'. I don’t think I can really explain how awesome the sight of all of these statues is. In a room the size of a football field, there’s one gigantic seated statue and 1000 life sized statues of Kannon standing on either side in 10 rows of 50. The large sitting statue and 124 of the standing statues were from the original temple, rescued from the fire. The remaining 876 were made in the 13th century when the temple was renovated. And if this wasn’t quite enough, there are 28 statues of guardian deities from the 13 & 14th centuries lined up in front of the Kannon. The two most famous are Fujin and Raijin, the Wind God and the Thunder God that are placed at either side of the temple hall on raised pedestals of cloud shape. The craftsmanship in all of these statues is truly magnificent. Unfortunately, they don’t allow cameras in the temple, so you’ll just have go there and see it yourself. You won’t be disappointed.

One kind of funny thing happened while I was there. As I was shuffling slowly down the room with all of the other visitors, one man strode by purposefully paying no attention to any of the remarkable sights until he stopped in front of the statue that was labeled the Buddhist deity of musicians. He stood there with his head bowed for several minutes, then walked away without a glance to anything else. Dressed in a sharp business suit and carrying a briefcase, he spent money to do nothing but pray to the deity of musicians. It’s funny.

After I left Sanjusangen-do, I spent some at the Kyoto National Museum across the street. Then I walked a little ways to Chishakuin Temple, a nice temple, but nothing special. Afterwards, I walked back towards the Gion district and bought some takoyaki (octopus dumplings) from the ubiquitous takoyaki street vendors. I spent the rest of the afternoon viewing so many temples, shrines, and gardens – to the point where I was pretty much templed and gardened out. They all start running together, but I will say the gardens of Heian shrine were pretty spectacular. I did some shopping at the Kyoto Handicrafts Hall and finally headed back to the hostel to clean up for the evening.

As I said in my previous post, I had made plans with the Irish couple, Joe & Sarah, to go to an English pub they had heard about, The Bull and Steer. Joining us were Robert, the language student from Missouri, and two girls from California that replaced the French girls in our room the night before. In the category of It’s a Small World After All, these girls, Abbey & Meg, were from Pasadena, California and lived only a few blocks from where I lived when was there. In fact, we decided it was very possible that we had crossed paths before. The fish and chips weren’t quite traditional, but the atmosphere was good and the company was fun. This was my last night in Kyoto and I had a great time.

The next day, I relaxed and finished up a bit of shopping. I had an early lunch at a Chinese restaurant I had seen the day before. I ordered shark fin broth with roasted pork and vegetables and not for the first time did I wish it was a cool, autumn evening. It was so rich, but it was delicious.

I grabbed my bags from the hostel and headed to the train station. It was back to Kumamoto for me. But, I hope I can go back to Kyoto one day. I left a good many things I still want to see.

- Jenny

Kyoto: Day 1, part 3

Warning: Content may not be suitable for children or grandma : )

Night-time in Kyoto is definitely when I wished for a traveling companion the most. I had returned to the hostel to take a much needed shower and hopefully meet up with some of my roommates. Unfortunately, they were all already out for the evening, so I plucked up my courage, slipped on my sundress, and headed out to the neon lit, crowded streets of Kyoto.

I had already seen a lot of the Gion district, so I decided to head in the opposite direction across the Kamo River. I walked about four or five blocks down Shijo Street before I came upon a large shopping arcade. Just one amongst hundreds, I had a good time wandering through the shops and taking in all of my surroundings. I was also keeping an eye out for something to eat.

Finding a good restaurant is not an easy process. In my experiences so far, the best Japanese food can usually be found in some small hole in the wall that you can only find if you’ve already been there before. I also get a little self-conscious when I’m in a Japanese restaurant by myself. I somehow feel like I’m being watched and judged, therefore I’m more likely to stick to the dishes I’m familiar with and less likely to discover anything new. That said, I found several foreign restaurants that looked interesting: Tandoori chicken and bhatoora at an Indian restaurant, lamb kebabs at a Turkish restaurant.

Eventually, I found myself at a restaurant called Paris 21e. Despite the name, the food was much more Mediterranean than French, and I was hooked by a delicious looking paella in their display. (Many, if not most, restaurants in Japan display plastic versions of their food to attract customers. It’s weird, but I have found it do be a great help when deciding on a place to eat.) Anyway, I hadn’t had a good paella in a long time and was very excited about it. Paris 21e also had a good selection of imported beers which was welcome – I don’t mind Japanese beer, but I was definitely in the mood for something darker. So I enjoyed paella with some of the best garlic bread I’ve ever had and a couple pints of Birra Moretti La Rossa. It was delicious. Now, before you scoff my lack of adventure in ordering something I’ve already had before, let me say that I’ve never had paella quite like this. It had the usual clams and mussels, but the shrimp was whole and unpeeled. I’ve never eaten shrimp like that and let me say, it was quite a challenge. There was also some Serrano ham which was an interesting touch and what I believe were escargot. You read correctly. I’m not positive, but that’s certainly what it looked like and escargot was on the menu, so I’m fairly confident that’s what it was. They actually resembled mussels in flavor and texture.

By the time I left Paris 21e, most of the shops along the arcade were closing and everyone was abandoning the brightly lit shopping areas for the bars, etc. which, unfortunately for me are located in what we would call small, dark alleyways off the main streets. Kyoto, and Japan as a whole, is much safer than the average American city, but I still didn’t feel entirely comfortable wandering around dark alleys by myself, so I stuck to the larger, slightly more populated streets. And despite the large number of tourists and Westerners in Kyoto, I still got a lot of looks as I walked around and the later it got, and the more the people on streets had been drinking, I had many different people trying to talk to me. There was a particularly amusing man who claimed to be from Cuba and was in Japan for a judo competition. He was a little in his cups, but essentially harmless and his teammates dragged him away after a minute or so. I also had a lot of Japanese guys stop as they saw me coming and wait until I reached them, then wave and say ‘hi’ very enthusiastically. It was kind of funny at first, but got a little annoying after a while. At one point, after a couple of guys flanked me and said ‘hi’ very loudly, I replied ‘Iie’ and kept walking. ('Hai' in Japanese– pronounced the same as 'hi' in English – means 'yes'. 'Iie' means 'no'.) I felt bad. They were just trying to be friendly.

Anyway, I decided I wanted to try and recreate the Lost in Translation scene with Bill Murray in the hotel bar. Unfortunately, I was told that most of the bars in the bigger name hotels in Kyoto have a one-time 3500 yen charge – that’s about $35 - and a four hour limit. It’s a great deal if you’ve got the time and desire to drink enough to make it worth it, but I wasn’t looking for anything like that. Instead, I found a place called Hello Dolly which advertised to be a jazz bar. Close enough, I thought. Instead of a bad lounge singer in the background, there was Bill Evans on vinyl. And instead of a large room with a view of the city, this was a tiny room with just enough room for a bar and eight barstools – fairly typical for a bar in Japan. Behind the bar was the owner, a middle aged woman who spoke excellent English, and a young man who was bartending. On my side of the bar, I was joined by four older gentlemen, obviously salarymen who had just finished their day of work. I contemplated ordering Santory whiskey like Bob Harris, but found that I just couldn’t do it when they had perfectly good Scotch behind the counter. So I enjoyed a couple glasses of Glenfiddich, Bill Evans on the piano, and the oddly relaxing cadences of the Japanese conversations going on around me. Occasionally, I could catch bits and pieces of what they were saying and they asked me several questions which the owner translated. When they found out I was from America, many of them told me about the time they or some member of their family visited the States.

All in all, I had a good time and though the nightlife was only just getting started when I got back to the hostel a little after 11 o’clock, I was happy to change into my pajamas and get ready for bed. Happily, I made plans with a few of my roommate for the next night. They were going to take me to an English pub they found.

- Jenny

Kyoto: Day 1, part 2

As I’m dropping my bags off at the hostel, I’ll take a moment to discuss the weather. In the month prior, whenever I mentioned my plans to visit Kyoto to my co-workers, the first word out of all of their mouths was, ‘atsui’ meaning ‘hot.’ So, I checked out weather.com and found out that although Kyoto looked to be on average about five to seven degrees hotter than Kumamoto, the humidity was not quite as bad. I wasn’t worried. Then of course, the entire time I was in Kyoto, the temperatures dropped and the humidity skyrocketed to the point of constantly threatening and only occasionally producing rain. Oppressive, muggy, yuckiness.

The weather did provide a fascinating contrast in fashion between Japanese women and Westerners, however. With temperatures in the high eighties to low nineties and humidity hovering around 80%, most Westerners including myself were clothed in as little as possible. Tank tops and shorts seemed to be the common uniform. Japanese women, however, are fervent believers in layering and so many pairs of opera-length gloves have not be seen in the La Scala on opening night, nor wide-brimmed hats at the Royal Ascot, than can be seen in a square kilometer in Kyoto on a Wednesday afternoon. They are absolutely terrified of the sun. I actually had a couple of my co-workers ask me once if I wasn’t scared of skin cancer since I only wore my sunglasses when we spent about an hour outside for Sports Day rehearsal. I didn’t say anything, but I reflected that their concerns might hold more weight if they weren’t both on their second smoke break of the day and it was only 10 ‘clock. And the fact that skin whitening cream can be found lining the shelves of every drugstore. It’s true. You would think given my glow-in-the-dark Irish skin, I would be ecstatic to be in a country where pale skin is valued so highly. Instead, it’s kind of frustrating to see these women who could tan so beautifully, be so fearful of it, where any attempt I made to tan would resemble putting a fork in the microwave – lots of sparks and pain.

Anyway, I seem to have gotten off-track. After dropping off a few things I’d bought at the hostel, I headed south towards a temple I had heard much about, Kiyomizu-dera. It looked to be only about a 15 to 20 minutes away by foot, I decided to walk and see if I could find something to eat on the way. The heat was actually a very efficient deterrent to hunger, so I ended up just stopping at one of the numerous street venders and purchasing some mochi (rice paste) grilled on a stick and wrapped in nori (seaweed). It’s not my favorite Japanese food, but it wasn’t bad and was certainly filling.

The 20-minute walk became more like an hour as I wandered small back streets and alleys. My map only showed the main roads, and as you’ve probably figured out by now, I usually stay away from the obvious routes. I knew I was headed in the right direction, so I didn’t worry too much. Along the way, I came upon several small shrines. One seemed to have something to pigs. It was filled with statues of wild boars, large and small.

Finally, I came upon a small street lined with shops that led uphill to Kiyomizu-dera, the shrine that many of my co-workers had recommended I check out. Kiyomizu means ‘clear water’ and refers to the waterfall in the complex. The temple complex sits on a hill overlooking Kyoto and provides some of the prettiest views of the city. Surrounded by a forest on three sides and the city on the fourth, it’s a fascinating contrast between the ‘natural’ and ‘man made’ Japan.

One of the first buildings I encountered on the complex housed what they called the ‘Heart of Buddha.’ This ‘heart’ is actually a large polished rock that you’re supposed to rub and make a wish on. It sounded easy enough, until I removed my shoes and started to head down the hallway that led to the ‘Heart of Buddha.’ “The body of Buddha is dark,” the women who sold me the ticket said. “Hold onto the rope lining the hall.” Dark does not begin to describe it. I literally could not see my own hand if I touched my nose. I’ve never felt so terrified. The hallway angled downwards and though I knew intellectually that there wouldn’t be any stairs – the Japanese might not be as litigious as Americans, but the liability issues of a staircase in pitch darkness are beyond imagination – still, I shuffled my feet slowly, moving only inches a step as I continued down. Finally after about five minutes – my heart beating pounding in my ears – I saw a spotlight in front of me revealing the ‘Heart of Buddha.’ I guess the terror you go through to reach this spot is something of a test to make ensure your worthiness to make a wish on the relic. Thankfully, the way back was a softly-lit staircase. 15 seconds and I was back in the sun, never so happy to have it’s rays pouring down on me.

I followed the paths of the grounds taking lots of pictures of the cityscape from the overlooking hills when I finally came upon the waterfall that gave the temple it’s name. There is a small structure beneath the falls that divides the water into three channels that spill into pond below. Visitors can collect the water in small cups on poles and it is said that if one drinks from all three streams he or she will enjoy wisdom, health, and longevity. I read, however, that some Japanese thought that the gods would curse with misfortune those who were so greedy as to drink from all three streams. I decided to drink from two and hope for health and wisdom. Longevity without either of the other two just doesn’t seem as attractive a prospect.

As I headed back to the hostel, I stopped in many of the small shops that border the temple. I realized from watching the multitudes of people walking through the streets that a small towel to wipe the sweat from your face and neck was really a necessity in Kyoto in the summer. So, I found a shop that had a small display of such towels – all the most tasteless, tourist trap things – but, they were cheap and therefore, perfect. There was Snoopy and Winnie the Pooh, but I decided if I was going kitsch, I was going all the way, and bought one that depicted Hello Kitty in a kimono walking along the streets of Kyoto all in a palette of hot pinks, oranges, lime greens, and electric blues. It’s quite something.

Well, back to the hostel I went to take a desperately needed shower and get ready to hit the town.

Next post – Kyoto after dark.

- Jenny

A Quick Olympic Break

I’ve mentioned before how much I love the Olympics, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to hear how excited I was when I realized that in Japan, I would be able to watch them in real time, rather than tape delayed. What I didn’t realize was that the Japanese coverage of the Olympic games would be much different than American coverage.

In these first few days, I have watched more hours of judo than I ever imagined I would. And I have to admit that I still don’t have any better understanding of judo than before. The competitors look like schoolchildren on the playground, slapping away the other’s hands and trying to sweep their feet from under each other. And just as it seems to get interesting, the schoolteacher (or referee in this case) blows their whistle and breaks them up. There’s also some point system that despite my best efforts to understand, appears to be completely arbitrary.

Badminton is also another popular Olympic sport here in Japan. Unfortunately, it is only slightly more comprehensible, but no more interesting to me, especially since they only seem to show one match over and over again – Japan wiping the floor with China in the women’s double badminton quarterfinals.

Speaking of watching things over and over, I have watched Japanese swimmer Kosuke Kitajima win the men’s 100 m breast stroke about 15 times. And I have see his 5-minute post race interview in which he cries into his towel for about 4 and a half minutes about ten times. And then, to dispel any mistaken belief that the American media has cornered the market on sappy Olympic coverage, the Japanese not only aired the post race reactions of Kitajima’s coach, mother, sister, father, guy that gave him a piece of candy when he was five years old, etc. (all of whose reactions can be described as hysterical), they also appeared to have a camera on each of these people during the race and insisted on airing each of those on split screen with the race as well. Now that I think about it, I’ve probably seen the race close to 25 times.

Luckily, in the last day or so, we seem to be getting more swimming. I have seen all of Michael Phelps races, including the incredible men’s 4 x 100 m freestyle relay – forget Phelps, that Lezak is amazing. And once more, the French surrender.

I love the Olympics.

- Jenny

Kyoto: Day 1, part 1

For my first full day in Kyoto, I decided to begin with what the Yahoo Travel Guide ranked as the most visited spot in Kyoto, a temple with three names. The official name is Rykuon-ji, but all of the Kyoto maps and guide books refer to it as Kinkaku-ji, and tourists call it the Golden Pavilion Temple. Whatever it’s name, however, it is a breathtakingly beautiful Zen temple. I would say that it was my favorite, but I know that I would end of calling all of them my favorite, so I will say that Kinkaku-ji (that is the name on the bags from the souvenir shop, so that’s what I’ll go with) was the most impressive sight in Kyoto. The main building of the complex sits on a small island in the middle of the Mirror Pond. Three stories tall, the second and third levels are completely covered in gold-leaf on Japanese lacquer. I can say without exaggeration, that it took my breath away. And as beautiful as the temple is, the grounds are amazing as well.

Originally built in 1397 as a retirement villa for Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, Kinkaku-ji was converted to a Zen temple after his death. And as always, it was inspiring to think about how much history is represented by these buildings and grounds. As usual, however, I am reminded of the story of a man who claimed to own the axe that George Washington used to chop down the cherry tree. The handle had been replaced four times and the blade three times. It is often the same way with these temples and shrines. The present structure of the temple was built in 1955 after being burned down by a crazy monk. The most recent coating of gold-leaf was applied in 1987 and the roof was restored in 2003. For me though, none of this takes away from it’s beauty or it’s sense of history. I highly recommend placing this one on top on your list of places to see when visiting Japan. Until then, please enjoy my pictures on Flickr.com.

After Kinkaku-ji, I walked about 15 minutes southwest to Ryoan-ji. (For your information, ji means imperial temple.) Where no matter how beautiful the gardens of Kinkaku-ji, the temple will always be the main attraction, Ryoan-ji is exactly the opposite. The temple itself is rather non-descript. It’s fame comes from the 25 by 10 meter Zen rock garden enclosed in it’s walls. Consisting of white sand and fifteen black rocks, it is acknowledged as one of the masterpieces of Japanese culture. According to the literature, infinite teachings can be learnt from the garden and the longer one looks upon it, the further your imagination will take you. I will admit that the first 10 minutes of gazing on the garden, my thoughts were primarily sarcastic and cynical. After a bit of time however, I felt a deep sense of peace take over and I spent about half an hour there basking in relaxation with the other tourists who seemed to also feel the calm of the garden.

The grounds of Ryoan-ji itself are also quite serene, though the signs did there best to dissuade me from enjoying the best parts. There were many forks in the trails with a sign pointing one direction with the words, ‘usual route.’ Well, it’s like waving a red cape in front of a bull… or not, I’m not sure how well that metaphor works. Anyway, seeing a sign that says ‘usual route’ does nothing if not ensure that I will head off the opposite direction. And, of course, the unusual route was always the least scenic, so I would eventually double back to travel the usual route to see the best views. These experiences didn’t change my decision the next time I came upon a ‘usual route’ sign, however. Obstinate? I prefer adventurous.

Anyway, back to the grounds of Ryoan-ji, the main attraction is Kyoyochi Pond, made in the late twelfth century. Circled by a walking path and a couple rock bridges, the pond until recently was home to many mandarin ducks. Now it is mostly covered with water lilies. And from one side, you can spy a small rickety wooden covering sheltering a rickety wooden canoe as picturesquely placed as Stoppard’s old hermitage, and no doubt as authentic.

Heading back to the Kinkaku-ji bus stop, I passed the Kyoto Museum of Fine Arts and decided to check it out. Inside I enjoyed an interesting exhibit of scenes of prayer in Oriental art. Again, it was so amazing to see so much art and relics covering such a large expanse of history.

By this time, it was close to two o’clock, and I decided it was time to head back to the hostel and drop off the few souvenirs I had purchased and find something to eat.

Stay tuned for the second half of my first day in Kyoto. More temples, more gardens, and more unusual foods.

- Jenny

Ahh, The Sound of Chinese... Bagpipes?

I just sat down to continue writing about my adventures in Kyoto when my doorbell rang. It was one of my neighbors, Endoh-san, inviting me to watch the upcoming fireworks display at Kumamoto Castle with her from her 3rd floor balcony. As I discovered twenty minutes later when I went to her balcony, not only was she graciously offering her fantastic view of the Castle and the fireworks, she had set up a small table with a bottle of red and a delicious dish of stewed tomatoes, calamari, onions, and potatoes. Just delicious despite her insistent protestations that she isn’t a very good cook.

The fireworks lasted over 45 minutes and were brilliant. Endoh-san said it was to celebrate the first night of Hinokuni Matsuri, which translates to the Land of Fire Festival, the Kumamoto local festival held every August. ‘Land of Fire’ is a poetic phrase used to describe Kumamoto since the city is located in a valley just below Mount Aso, the largest active volcano in Japan. That’s comforting and yet not mentioned in the ‘Gaijin Guide to Living in Kumamoto.’ Curious. Continuing the celebrations, I’ve heard tell of dancing in the streets planned for tomorrow. We’ll see just how wild and crazy these Japanese can get.

When I returned home, I had just enough time to take another quick shower to wash off the summer humidity before the Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony began. I love the Olympics. I have since I was a small child and I seem to revert to that little girl whenever I watch the opening ceremony. In many ways I am incredibly cynical, and I’ll admit to my fair share of criticism of these Olympics in particular. But when the opening ceremonies began, I was glued to the television screen, entranced by the elaborate choreography and visuals. And inevitably, as the parade of nations commenced, I cried like a quiet little baby. On a universal level, it’s so uplifting and hopeful to see citizens from all over the world come together to compete and celebrate. On a more individual level, to see the joyous expressions of so many of the athletes faces, especially those coming from little-known countries, is so breathtakingly inspirational. That said….

One hour into the Parade of Nations – Wow. There are a lot of countries in the world.

Two and a half hours into the Parade of Nations – There are way too many countries in the world.

Three hours into the Parade of Nations – Will it ever end?

So, no Kyoto in this post. I’ll try again tomorrow.

- Jenny

More Confessions of a Solo Tourist

I started my last blog by claiming not to be very skilled at traveling by myself. I stated I couldn’t find the balance between planning and spontaneity. Then I gave no evidence to back my claim. Bad form.

Well, here it is. I had found a few English tours of Kyoto and nearby Nara online and planned to sign up for them; at least for the bus tour of Nara, which was the Japanese Imperial capital before Kyoto during the 8th century and is home to many temples and shrines, including a very famous, huge bronze Buddha statue. I checked the tours several times in the weeks preceding my trip, but held off making the final reservations hoping that maybe I would meet some of my fellow travelers at the hostel that would be interested. Also to make the reservation, I had to sign up for pick-up at one of the specified hotels in Kyoto and I thought to wait until I got there and could find the nearest pick-up spot. There didn’t seem to be any urgency, though. It looked like I could sign up for a tour the day prior and there wouldn’t be any problems. I was wrong.

My first night in Kyoto, I got on the internet to sign up for the Nara tour only to discover that all of the tours had been booked for the next week or so, as well as all of the tours of Kyoto. Then, I found out that to tour any of the Imperial grounds: the castles, the gardens, and two villas at the edge of town, which I heard are quite something: I needed to make reservations for that too. So, I went online to sign up for that only to find out they were booked until the middle next week.

I confess, my first thought was, ‘I’m going home.’ It’s a childish response, I grant you. But, I’m admitting to it, so that’s adult, right? I didn’t go home, of course, but that was my first instinct. Instead, I decided to see what I could while I was there and plan to go back sometime before I leave Japan and do all of those things.

Anyway, the next morning, I hopped out of bed at 7 o’clock bright-eyed and ready to explore. I kid. I woke up about 9 o’clock, slathered sunblock all over my arms and face (missing my ears as I discovered later in the day), gathered my bus map and headed out with a very vague plan to see the city.

Now, I used to absolutely hate looking like a tourist, and fumbling around with a street map has always seemed to be one of the biggest flashing signs that say TOURIST. If I had no other choice, I would try to very inconspicuously look at the map before hiding it away. To be honest, I still despise looking like a tourist, but I quickly came to acknowledge the impossibility of looking like anything but an outsider in Japan, so I eventually gave in and had my bus map out almost constantly. Almost all of Kyoto is easily accessible by bus and the map I had was actually very easy to use. The bus system is so extensive, however, it can take some time to navigate, especially in the beginning. After about 10 minutes of wandering, I found the bus stop only about half a block from the hostel.

I grabbed the first bus and off I went.

- Jenny

Confessions of a Solo Tourist

I have a confession to make. I’m not very good at traveling by myself. I pretend. I ‘front’ as my homies in the hood would say; but in reality, it’s really not something that I’m very comfortable at doing. I’ve yet to find that balance between planning ahead and being spontaneous. In fact, I often feel like I come up on the wrong side of the argument between the two. Despite this somewhat ominous preface, however, my trip to Kyoto this past week was a great deal of fun.

I left home early Tuesday morning with a couple changes of clothes and my toothbrush and hopped a bus, then streetcar to Kumamoto Station where I started my journey to the old capital of Japan, Kyoto. And when I say ‘old’, I mean ancient. Kyoto was founded in the 8th century, designed specifically to be the seat of the Japanese imperial court. It remained the capital of Japan until the 19th century when it was moved to Tokyo. In fact, there is some – a very little – dispute that the move of the capital from Kyoto to Tokyo was ever officially documented, making Kyoto the official capital of Japan still. Since the Emperor and the Diet reside in Tokyo, however, lack of official documentation seems to me to be a futile argument.

But back to me. I had been very anxious about buying my tickets, practicing my Japanese constantly, and I am proud to say that I delivered my lines well and was even able to understand and answer the one question put to me in Japanese. I had no problems at all. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the poor girl I was buying the tickets from. She went through the transaction twice before having to void them both at the very end before finally getting it right on the third try. We got through it, though, and I caught the 9:30 train to Harata / Fukuoka where I got the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto.

To me, the term ‘bullet train’ has always called to mind the image of fields and seas whizzing by too fast to see any definition. It’s a completely unrealistic image, of course. While it does travel extraordinarily fast – almost 200 miles an hour - I could still see individuals working in the fields and waves in the sea. That is, of course, when we weren’t traveling through tunnels, which was about 70% of the time.

Kyoto is located in the central part of Honshu, the main and largest island of Japan. My train there passed through the well-known cities of Osaka, Kobe, and Hiroshima and was bound for Tokyo, which would only have been another couple hours past Kyoto.

I arrived in Kyoto at 2 pm, though it was another hour before I got to the hostel because of a misunderstanding which left me riding the bus for quite a while. I finally found the hostel, however, and checked in. And by this point, I was starving. I hadn’t had anything since some toast and jam earlier in the morning, so I dropped off my bags and walked into the very near Gion district to find a place to eat.

To anyone who has seen Memoirs of a Geisha, Gion would look very familiar to you. Or it would, if the film hadn’t used a set in L.A. to stand-in for Japan’s most famous geisha district where much of the story takes place. Though the numbers of geisha have declined considerably, you can still see women in full geisha regalia walking down the street in the evening. I will admit, however, that while I saw many women in the traditional clothing and elaborate hairstyles of a geisha, I never saw one with the makeup and all.

Today the Gion district is a great place to see some of the original style buildings and architecture. Tea houses dot the streets where business men can go and be served tea and cocktails and entertained by traditional geisha singing and dancing. As I am not a business man and I don’t have a lot of money - to gain entrance to one of these exclusive houses is very expensive - this was one Kyoto attraction I had to miss.

After enjoying a wonderful dinner of Okayodon (chicken and egg cooked over rice) in a small traditional Japanese restaurant in Gion, I walked to the nearby Yasaka Shrine. Yasaka Shrine was originally built in 656 AD and is the site of arguably the most famous festival in Japan, Gion Matsuri, which takes place the entire month of July and which I just missed. It is a beautiful shrine, however, with even more beautiful gardens and I enjoyed it tremendously.

After wandering around for a while, taking tons of pictures, I walked back through a long street of shops in Gion to my hostel. For the first, but not the last time of my trip, it had started to rain and I got back to the hostel just as the downpour began in earnest.

With the rain coming down hard on the streets and the fact that I was a little tired from traveling all day, I settled in for the night. I was staying in a dorm style room with eight beds. The first night grouped me with: a young, Irish couple that were spending the summer in Beijing on a school trip and were traveling in Japan for a week, a couple of French girls that if spoke English, certainly weren’t going to speak to anyone other than the other, a guy from New York interning at an engineering firm in Tokyo over the summer, and guy from St. Joe, Missouri studying Japanese at an international language school in Kyoto for a few months. I was very relieved to hear that he was going to school at Missouri State University and held Missouri in as much contempt as I do.

We got to know each other a little and I quizzed the Robert, guy from Missouri, about what I should see and do in Kyoto since he’d been there for over a month. I got a lot of good advice from the others regarding the bus system and how to read the bus map, which would be a vast help in the coming days. I read for a while and made plans for the next day and finally hit the sheets around midnight.

And so ends my first half-day of my Kyoto adventure. Stay tuned for the rest of my escapades coming soon (hopefully).

- Jenny

No More Teachers, No More Books...

Last Thursday was the unofficial beginning of my summer break - unofficial as I still have tons of paperwork to keep me busy until my official break begins in August – and the weather decided to celebrate by providing the most impressive, and I can only hope the last, storm of the rainy season.

I had only been home about 20 minutes when the heavens opened. I don’t know if there is any phrase like ‘raining cats and dogs’ in Japanese, but that’s exactly what was happening. I opened all of the curtains on the windows and watched the storm rage around me from the large picture window in my living room. My view only extended about 15 feet, however, before the scene dissolved into an almost supernatural silvery grey mist, the lights of downtown Kumamoto softly glowing in the background. Adding to the magic was the loud claps of thunder whose echoes bounced around the mountains surrounding the city. For this Kansas girl, it was quite something.

With the storm raging around me, I relaxed in the easy chair in front of the picture window with Beethoven playing in the background and a glass of red and became absorbed in Hemingway’s descriptions of the heat and dust and blood of the bullfights in 1920’s Sevilla. If only the temperature was cooler and I had a fireplace with a dancing blaze, it would have been perfect.

If all of that sounds a little too highbrow and snooty, I will redeem myself by saying I finished the evening with some popcorn and Monty Python DVDs. ‘Do you like pictures,’ she asked knowingly. Wink, wink.

It was a great start to my summer break which has since been filled with aforementioned paperwork – not fun, trips to the various art museums of Kumamoto – lots of fun, cleaning – definitely no fun, and catching up on watching the movies my parents have sent me – sometimes fun.

Since I’ve been watching several new movies and have had few people to discuss my many, strongly felt opinions, I will take this opportunity to impart them to you. And now we bring you Critic’s Corner.

Lions for Lambs – I will never get those 2 hours of my life back. Who thought this would make a good movie? It was like reading a position paper for the 5th time: dry, predictable, and with filled with straw-man arguments. Horrible.

There Will Be Blood – I loved it. This is a true example of flawed masterpiece. The ending was slightly off, but brilliant overall. Is there nothing Daniel Day-Lewis cannot do?

State of the Union – A 1940’s Capra film starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, this is a fascinating look at what it takes to get elected as the President of the United States and the ethical questions posited and the toll it can take on a man and his family, as well as the role the press plays in the entire process. It’s a fascinating film to watch in this election year.

The Savages – This was definitely not the comedy I was expecting. A story of a brother and sister, the always excellent Philip Seymour-Hoffman and Laura Linney, dealing with their sick, elderly father after he had been absent most of their lives. Very unsentimental and realistic, it was harrowing, but executed very well.

KU v. UNC and KU v. Memphis – No matter how many times I watch these, I still get excited and frustrated, angry and ecstatic. My heart still races and I still have tears in my eyes by the end. It suddenly occurs to me that I will miss the entire 2008-9 college basketball season. Well, that’s depressing. I’m going to have to give this some more thought. This cannot stand.

I’m finishing up my paperwork, however, and before I receive my next batch of movies from Mom and Dad, I will be traveling up to Kyoto for a few days next week. I’ve already made reservations at an international hostel and hope to meet some other foreigners in this strange land. I’m really excited and slightly nervous to finally be a real tourist on my own in such a special place. I promise lots of pictures and I’ll be writing about my thoughts and experiences soon.

- Jenny

Update and Corollary

It has just come to my attention that the bank has now been trying to contact me to sign some papers saying that they did send the money. So, I have to make yet another trip to the bank during their ever-so-limited business hours.

Corollary to previous truism - There will always be ten times more red tape than I expect.

In fact, I begin to wonder if the red tape ever ends. Perhaps there are only momentary pauses. And with that happy thought...

- Jenny

This will just take a minute, right?

I wonder how old I will be when I finally accept the truism that everything will take five times longer than I think it should, and no doubt cost at least twice as much. I keep thinking I finally understand, but then it happens again and I find myself caught by surprise.

4 days earlier: It’s the first full day of my summer break and I was going to the bank as long planned. (The banks here close everyday at 3 pm. Only the rare few are open for a few hours on Saturday, so this was the first chance I had to go to the bank in a long time.) I needed to transfer some of my earnings to my bank in Kansas and I had all of the information I could possibly need – or so I think.

I walk into the lobby to find it predictably packed. When I went to get a number, there was a computer screen that I assume was asking what kind of business I wanted to conduct. As I had no idea what anything said, I simply hit one of the buttons and got a number. Turns out it didn’t really matter what button I pressed as after a few minutes of sitting patiently, a bank representative approached me. I can only guess some alarm went off in the back rooms when I sat down – Gaijin alert! Gaijin alert! It’s this kind of discrimination that I appreciate, however, so I showed her the piece of paper that Nobie had so thoughtfully written in Japanese saying that I wished to send money to America. The lady led me to an out-of-the-way cubicle and handed me a very long form which, to my surprise, actually did have some English translations on it. Unfortunately, as I understood from the English, it was asking all kinds of information that I hadn’t a clue. What is the address of the bank that I wish to transfer the money to? What is the branch name? The phone number? Huh?

I filled out as much of the information that I could while unbeknownst to me, the lady found a young guy that spoke some English to help the whole interaction. Unfortunately, I just as little success explaining to him that I didn’t know that address, phone number, branch name of my American bank. I did have the bank’s routing number which I still believe is the only real information they needed. They didn’t actually have to physically go there. I ended up writing down an approximate address (I knew the cross-streets and town). Eventually, we reached a point where I didn’t really think I could give them anymore data and they accepted that they probably could do the transaction with the scant information I had provided. Then, of course, I had to wait another 15 minutes. I have no idea why. Finally, the lady came back with a bunch of paperwork and the gentlemen said it would take about a week for the money to go through. And I thought we were living in the age of technology. Foolish me. And not only was it going to take much longer than I thought; it cost, say it with me, three times more than I thought it would.

I wouldn’t presume to say that I have learned my lesson, but I am one step closer.

- Jenny

Awkward and Uncomfortable Party of One?

In my role as cultural ambassador to Japanese schoolchildren, I have spent the past week or so talking about the American Fourth of July. Since historically, Japan more often filled the position of conquering nation than of conquered or colonized, they really don’t have a corresponding Independence Day to reference. So, I have been telling my students that the Fourth of July is America’s birthday. (This was an easily segue in my upper level classes as they are learning the names of the months and I have been asking everyone when their birthday is. Which leads me to…)

Side note: I had never paid attention to just how confusing our names for the months were until I learned the Japanese names – ichigatsu, nigatsu, sangatsu… - which literal translate to first month, second month, third month, etc. Now, a septagon, octagon and a decagon mean a seven-sided, eight-sided and ten-sided figure respectively. So why do September, October and December refer to the ninth, tenth and twelfth months? I know the answer (I looked it up: the Julian vs. Gregorian calendar), but it feels unnecessarily complicated compared to the Japanese system. And where the heck does February come from? And I get Sunday and Monday – sun day and moon day (Interestingly enough, the Japanese names for these also translate directly to sun day and moon day)– but why are all of the rest of the days of the week named after Norse gods? All except Saturday, of course, which is either named after the planet or the Roman god of agriculture. I bet there’s a story there. Why am I still thinking about this?

Okay, I promised a less pedantic post, let’s move on. America’s birthday. My students got a kick out of learning that America is only 232 years old. Especially when I remind them that Kumamoto Castle – considered one of Japan’s great modern castles – is celebrating it’s 400th birthday this year.

I discovered the problems inherent in describing the Fourth of July as such, however, when I was eating lunch with a 6th grade class and after I went through my little spiel about America’s birthday, one of the girls tried to ask a question. As is the case when they don’t know how to ask in English and I don’t understand their Japanese, she grabbed a small notepad and pen and started to draw. My uneasiness when she drew a pregnant stick figure transformed into outright horror when she started to draw arrows indicating the baby’s entrance into the world. I have no idea what she was asking. I said something about England being America’s mother and quickly changed the subject. ‘Wow, this is good tofu.’ Oh, my goodness. Awkward.

And speaking of awkward, I occasionally get asked what Americans say in specific situations. For example, some of my 4th grade students visited me in the teacher’s room between classes the other day to ask me how to say ‘okaeri’ in English. I wasn’t sure, so I asked my coordinator who was sitting nearby. In response she asked what Americans said when someone says, “I’m home.” Ahhh, hello? Dinner’s on the table? Take out the trash? I eventually said, “Maybe, hello. But it depends.”

It doesn’t depend in Japan, though. They have very specific sayings that all Japanese from Northern Hokkaido to Southern Kyushu use. When returning home, they say “Tadaima” and get “Okaeri” in response – which I’ve discovered means ‘welcome back.’ Before eating, Japanese always say, “Itdakiamasu,” and afterwards, “Gochisou sama deshita.” While eating lunch with a 3rd grade class, the teacher asked me to translate these into English for the children. “Let’s eat” doesn’t sound quite as poetic or gracious as ‘itadakiamasu,’ it is nonetheless a decent translation. ‘Gochisou sama deshita’ translates literally to 'this was a feast,’ so I simplified it to a simple ‘thank you’ for the kids to say. There are many, many more examples. Whenever someone leaves the workplace, people say, “Otsukare sama deshita,” which literally means, ‘you must be very tired,' but is more often translated as, ‘thank you for your hard work today.’

So, I mentioned the no air conditioning in the schools, right? Brutal. Actually, despite the assumption of most everyone I meet, Kumamoto isn’t really any hotter or more humid than Eastern Kansas – at least, according to Weather.com. I do admit to rampant envy, however, when I am sitting in my classroom with two standing fans going full blast and I’m still sweating and I watch the students march past my door in their matching navy swimsuits and lime green and safety orange swim caps. That’s right, they have swimming classes once or twice a week. Every school, no matter how small, has a good size swimming pool. At first I thought it was odd, but I guess it does make since for an island nation to emphasize the necessity of knowing how to swim.

Comparing Japan to America is a favorite pastime to my students and co-workers. I am often asked if Kumamoto’s weather is hotter, more humid, rainier, etc. than America. I then do my best to explain that America is pretty big compared to Japan. The island of Kyushu is only about a sixth of the size of Kansas, though it has five times the population. So, I’m often saying that Kumamoto gets more rain than Eastern Kansas; tons more rain than Western Kansas; a little more than Seattle, and not as much rain as Hawaii.

Speaking of hot, I discovered a Sri Lankan restaurant the other week as I was wandering around downtown. Ran by native Sri Lankans, they did speak some English, so I didn’t have to tax my language skills too much, though I am getting ever so slightly more competent and confident in speaking Japanese. Back to Sri Lanka, though, I had their special Sri Lanka curry which was a three curry combination of chicken, potato, and vegetable. And though the menu indicated that you could specify the level of spiciness, they didn’t ask and I got the maximum of spice. It was so hot that I think even my Mom would say, “Well, that’s got a bit of a kick to it.” It was delicious however and I will definitely go back.

Before I end this, I should let you know that I uploaded some new pictures to my Flickr.com account. Remember to search for 'jennimcd' and you should find all of my pictures. I re-visited Suizenji Park with my camera this time and got a lot of good pictures of the gorgeous park.

Thanks for reading!

- Jenny