Yuenchi

After taking a rather long break from studying kanji, I entered school last week determined. As a result, my week was pretty boring. Up at 6, go to school, memorize kanji, learn grammar, read about Japanese history, and then home for dinner and some newspaper work before bed. Despite my goal to post more frequently, I didn’t seem to have the time. I’ve also learned not to rent good books from the library while I want to get work done. John Grisham is the latest author I’m racing through and the Abiko public library has several of his New York Times bestsellers. I can’t seem to stay away.

On Friday I spent all day reviewing some 200 words I’ve learned from the newspaper over the last two weeks. I had forgotten about half, but it only took a few passes for me to remember most of them. Kanji are tricky. Sometimes I can look at a word once and have it memorized forever, other times I can look at the same flashcard 20 times a day for a week and still not be able to remember it. I’m getting much better at identifying the hard words from the easy ones. And I know when I’ve learned a certain word. Even if I can recall it from a flashcard, I keep practicing until I feel that I know it. It’s a hard feeling to describe, the firm belief that I intuitively know that kanji. I think the best way to describe it would be that at a certain point I no longer translate the word in my head, but instead just grasp the meaning.

This weekend was far more interesting. My school had testing on Saturday that I wasn’t required to attend. It wasn’t a school test, it was a standardized test across the country. Since it wasn’t controlled by my school they couldn’t test me or something. I didn’t press for details. I was happy to have my Saturday morning free. So I slept in and read a little. Then in the afternoon, around five I left to catch a train to Kashiwa to meet with some friends, specifically Hazuki (head of the English club) and his friends from middle school Ayano, Megu, and Seijhun. We were there to plan a ski trip in March. They all want to go skiing for a day and invited me along. Skiing surprised me. I was delighted but none of them have a very much experience with skiing. It was not a destination I expected.

Our first stop was dinner to discuss the details of the trip. We decided on some place I’ve never heard of in a prefecture I can’t remember. Cheap though. Then we went to karaoke nearby. We sang almost exclusively American pop songs. No one seems to enjoy Japanese music. Probably because J-pop has a reputation for being completely awful. They were rather good at reading the English on the karaoke screen, much better than I am at reading Japanese. Hazuki, Seijun, and Ayano have all spent significant amounts of time in English-speaking countries. It’s nice to have friends who can occasionally drop a few words in English to let me know what they’re talking about. I was pretty good about keeping up with the conversation. My Japanese has improved a great deal since the last time I hung out with them. But listening to others’ conversations is still a weak point. Probably because I don’t get much practice. I usually just talk with one or two people.　Listening to four kids firing away in rapid Japanese is tough. I’ve been told watching TV will help but I don’t have the time, or the will. I find Japanese TV not terribly interesting.

After Karaoke we went to the game center to the picture booths. These things are like the booths in America that print a row of small pictures, except much more high tech. You can select different backgrounds graphically projected against a green screen. After the pictures are taken you (or more likely whatever teenage girls you are with) can edit the pictures adding lots of hearts and sprinkles. Then they’re printed. You also have the option of a picture being emailed to your cell phone (practically all phones here have email, mine being a significant exception). Then we went to Starbucks to chat for a while before it was time to go home.

Then Sunday, early in the morning I was out the door to the train station to meet Ishy and some almost-graduated third years, Aimee and Rei, for a day in Tokyo. More practice listening to fast Japanese. I’m getting better, that’s for sure. First we went to Akihabara, the giant electronic gadgets section of town. Except this time Ishy took us to a store with several floors of Japanese souvenirs. Those interested me much more than whatever camera they were selling on floor one. It’s definitely a place I’ll take my family when they visit. After fooling around there for a while and taking pictures holding samurai swords, we went to Asakusa. This is the most famous temple in Tokyo. You may have seen pictures of the gate and giant lantern that leads the way to the temple. I’m not sure how old it is. I think it was originally built in the 10th century, and then burned and rebuilt several times, the most recent being after World War II when most of Tokyo burned.

After Asakusa we went to the smallest amusement park in Japan and possibly the world. This place could have fit into a football field, maybe half a football field. Yet it had the oldest roller coaster in Japan, a Giant Drop-like structure, a few other big rides, then a least a dozen other attractions including a haunted house and a magic/juggling show raging. Leave it to the Japanese to cram all this stuff onto a postage stamp. It really couldn’t’ve been larger than a city block. But it was surprisingly fun. We went on several rides including the old roller coaster that was obviously built before smooth rides were the norm. It was stuffed up against buildings and over people waiting in line for other rides. I could touch the pillars as I rode. I kept my hands inside the car. The haunted house was hilarious only because Aimee and Rei was terrified beyond belief. The Japanese do not seem to be big fans of scary things.

After Hanashiyaki (the amusement park) we went to Ueno and wandered around the shop-lined streets there. Ueno is a fun place to wander around even if I’ve seen it before. The guys selling fish were very persuasive. I thought of buying some even though I have absolutely no use for it. Around five or so we started making our way home, which wasn’t hard. Abiko is thirty minutes from Ueno. We waited for a latter train so we could get seats. A very good choice. I got home and talked to my family for what seemed like a week. I spend nearly the whole weekend out of the house so I hadn’t seen much of them. Right now I believe the plan is for me to stay with this family until June, but I’m leaning heavily towards requesting a change. Not that anything is bad, I love it in Abiko. I can’t think of a single complaint I have with this family or the way they run their household. It’s a wonderful fit, but I also want to see other families and houses and rules and culture and all that stuff that I came here for. I’ve been with this family for two months. I think another month would be good but then I’d like to see how other families work. I’ll have to decide this week and then let my family and CIEE know. Talking to CIEE however, is not something I’m looking forward to.