My Life

As it is a balmy 8C in my room right now (I will admit it at this point, I am cold. I actually buy things that are supposed to be refrigerated and just leave them in my room if I know they will be consumed in the next 48 hours) I thought I would start my Christmas break with an update. I've been meaning to talk about an average day in Japan for sometime, and while I wait for my photos to be recovered from my old hard drive this seems like a good time. Before I get to that though here is a photo of me giving an introduction speech in Japanese in front of about one-third to half of our school:

I wrote the speech, it was about 1/3 of a page, I did not know when I wrote it though that I was going to have to memorize it so I was a little more ambitious with my vocabulary and sentence structure. It went well though, I memorized the whole thing the day before and was able to recite it from memory the next day with only a single omission. I accidentally said, "I came from California in September" instead of "I came to Japan from California in September". However, this is not really an error in speaking because the listener already knows where I am so it was fine, though everyone had a written copy of my speech so anyone following along would have noticed I skipped the "Nihon ni" part of my speech, of course I may have actually said it and just been too nervous to remember, those first four or five sentences just kind of rolled off my tongue rather quickly. In the end though I was congratulated and given a gift certificate for 1000 yen to a book store. I'm not sure where this store is yet, but there is a bar code on the gift card so I'll be able to find it. That does remind me, bar codes are very useful here in Japan. You see them on products all the time, but not the kind that are scanned for purchase. They look like this:

Japanese cellphones have an application that can read these codes from the camera and take you to the website that is encoded within it. I've even seen them on movie and concert posters, making it easy to go to the website, if you're interested, to get more information. The best part is, unlike the US, you don't have to remember the URL, just take a picture with the app and it does the rest.

So, what is the average day like for me here in Japan? I get up at 6:30am and begin waking up slowly as I look over facebook and do a little reading. At 7am I am heading downstairs to use the bathroom and to grab a few things to bring upstairs for breakfast. I place them on the small square table and turn on the 13" TV to watch NHK, I only understand about half of what is going on unless Okaasan explains it to me. I don't follow much of anything in the morning to begin with, and it's even harder when it's in a foreign language. Breakfast is almost always a piece of Texas toast cut diagonally and a fried egg with Canadian bacon and a side dish of fruit (banana plus anything else in season) along with a glass of milk and a cup of roasted rice tea. I like the chocolate spread here, it doesn't even pretend to be healthy like Nutella back in the States, having chocolate on my toast is great, or blueberry, strawberry, pineapple, or sweet peanut butter. I finish breakfast quickly and continue to watch NHK until about 7:40 when I leave and go comb my hair, brush my teeth and get dressed.
I leave the house a little after 8 being sure to announce Ittekimasu (I'm going and will come back) before I leave, even if no one else is home to respond with Itterasshai (please go and return). I head down the hill passing by a Sensei at the local grade school and we greet each other with a bow (more of a nod of the head really) and Ohayou Gozaimasu (good morning). I continue down the hill and may greet a few school children or a local lady with a little shop on the way down. Once I'm in out of Sakamoto Machi (the neighborhood I live in) I generally do not speak to anyone else and vice-versa, people do not seem to greet each other unless they are acquainted. I proceed down the side walk saying on which ever side is moving my direction, though not even all the Japanese follow this convention, I've found it's mostly the elderly that everyone works around here.
I reach the bus stop and stand there for a few minutes until I see the bus with the kanji for Nagasaki Gaikokugo Daigaku (Lit. Nagasaki Foreign Language College). I make a guess as to where the door will be when it stops and move toward it, the door slides open and I quickly step on tapping my smart card on the reader (and logging into the system) as the door closes behind me and I take a seat and we are moving again within seconds. I sit up straight in my seat and stay quiet just to fit in better and maybe be a little less foreign than being a 6'2" American makes me. Some times on buses and trains I will watch other Japanese to determine what the appropriate behavior is, though I do this less and less the longer I've been here when I'm in familiar situations. After about a 20 minute ride and several stops to pick up more students we arrive at the school. I get off, thanking the driver and tapping my smart card on the reader having the cost of my fare deducted from the total on the card (this is also how you do it on the street car).
I go into the school's lounge and hang out with friends for about 20 minutes until my first class starts. I learn about some aspect of Japan, Literature, Culture, Society, Business, History. After an hour and a half I get out and go to my next class... which is usually Japanese. I spend the next hour and half learning Japanese in Japanese. If I don't understand a sentence structure or word it is explained in Japanese and/or with pictures. After Japanese is lunch, if I am done for the day I hang out with friends for about an hour before taking the school bus (which is free) back down to Sumi Yoshi where I will take a street car to one of the malls and get something for lunch like Takoyaki, Okonomiyaki, or a bowl with meat and rice, the names of which vary with the type of meat and the style in which it is prepared. I will either then return home, hiking back up my very steep hill where I will do homework and watch TV until dinner, or will go shopping and/or exploring until dinner, which is at 6pm at Suisha (my family's restaurant). Usually, if it is raining that automatically eliminates exploration as an activity choice.
If I have another class I will get food in the cafeteria, it's great food compared to America, but compared to shops in Japan it is still lacking (it is cafeteria food after all, and mass produced never tastes as good as custom made). After lunch I will have one last class, generally a martial arts class (Kendo or Aikido) or some form of customary Japanese art like Ikebana (flower arranging) or tea ceremony. By this point going home is pointless and I will just stay and hang out with friends until the 6:10 bus that I can take down to Hamaguichi (my bus stop at the bottom of the hill).
Dinner is always amazing. Okaasan can cook, and I am treated to a variety of Japanese foods every night at dinner with the occasional seasonal specialty. The meals always have a main dish, soup, vegetables and rice. Though at times the main dish is the soup or contains the vegetables, but each dish is arranged in it's proper place (something we were taught after the second week). The main dish goes in the middle, the rice on the left, the soup on the right and the vegetables in the upper right. If there is another dish of some kind it is placed in the upper left.
After dinner I return home, hiking up that hill, it is really hard if the day has been a long one, and even worse if I've done a lot of shopping and my bag is heavy. Here are the rough coordinates of where I live if you want to see on Google Earth:
Lat 32°46'10.89"N
Long 129°52'17.08"E
That large field with a pool is the grade school I live next to.
My University is here:
Lat 32°48'50.94"N
Long 129°50'30.06"E
If you compare you'll see that I actually live pretty centrally in Nagasaki and that the college is on the northern end. And just for fun, here is where Suisha is located:
Lat 32°46'7.49"N
Long 129°51'55.52"E
That aside after I return home I usually check out things online, facebook, comic strips, weather, news, etc, and then take a shower do my homework and watch some anime before going to bed. When I go out with friends it is usually on a Friday night or Saturday. Sunday is largely reserved (whenever possible) as my do nothing day, where I stay at home all day and relax. This requires some planning as I need to buy lunch the day before so I have food. But since my family's restaurant is closed it is a good rest for me to not have to walk down and back up the hill again. And thus my life is such on days when I'm not out having an adventure of some kind. A year ago I never would have believed I'd be living in Japan, and certainly would not have believed I would find days like today typical. Well I hope you found this informative and that the locations on Google Earth helped to make up for the lack of photos, I will try in the future to identify other places I go, like Cocowalk (mall). Have a Merry Christmas!