Well, the pendulum's swung the other way.

My predecessor finally left on Thursday, so the past few days have been pretty slow/lonely after a hectic start to my time here. Especially considering that I still can't drive yet, outside of the occasional trip to the grocery store I've only traveled once--taking the train to a local festival in Chizu (which you might recognize as the town I wound up in when I got lost on the train--this time, at least, I knew how to get there!).

The festival in Chizu was pretty fun--a small group of JETs met there, and we perused the stands, ate some yakisoba (noodles with some meat and seasoning, pretty good stuff) and shaved ice, watched various town groups perform various choreographed dances with varying levels of proficiency and energy...and then we split. It was a fun evening, and Chizu is neither too far (about 40 minutes by train) nor too expensive (1200 yen, about $12.00 round trip) to get to for me.

My Japanese has been coming back fairly quickly. It's only been a couple weeks now, and inasmuch as I've been able to interact with Japanese speakers, I'm returning with some quickness to a conversational mastery. The tough part is filling in the gaps in my vocabulary, but once i get my first paycheck (due this Thursday!) I'll be off to get an electronic dictionary for that purpose (currently i use my cell phone's E-J dictionary--cell phones are awesome here by the way, mine gets TV!--but the cell phone dictionary goes from English to Japanese in kanji, which i haven't learned all the readings for--or else I wouldn't need the dictionary in the first place!).


More anecdoes...

I have a rice cooker (as does, I'm pretty sure, every single household in the country). It is spectacular. I put in some rice, add a corresponding amount of water, close the top and push a button. Later, I open the lid and enjoy perfectly steamed sticky rice, perfect for eating with chopsticks. (aside: Japanese people always seem to get a kick out of foreigners that use chopsticks well. Unlike my first time in the country, when I got a lot of amazed questions from my homestay families, so far I've only noticed them noticing. I imagine they assume that, since I've been in the country before, of course I would know how to use chopsticks properly!). At the same time that I was figuring out how to use the rice cooker--yes, it's simple, but I still couldn't read the kanji to know WHICH button to push (one is "start," one is for "taimu (time)" in katakana, which I can read; the other is for "warm"), I was also preparing some curry mix. Curry rice just so happens to be my favorite meal here, so the revelation that I could make it for myself, with ease and with regularity, was quite possibly the best news I've gotten yet!


Last week Jimmy and I hung out with a Finnish exchange student who was living with a homestay here--he left Japan to return home, however, because his homestay apparently sucks, restricting his freedoms to the point where they don't allow him to have his own phone or use the internet (read: complete isolation outside of his family and his schoolmates). We took him around town on some errands and got lunch, and when we finally got back, around dinnertime, they chatted us up and invited us all in for dinner. according to Jimmy, he's never been invited in for a dinner like that, ever. He thinks they wanted us there to keep Johannes busy while they made preparations for him to leave. Oi.

The family had some little kids who were SUPER cute and we played with them for a little bit in between bits of mixed-language conversation between my broken Japanese (Johannes had some too) and one of the home stay mom's broken English. at one point the obaachan (grandma) started going on about the war and how the perception of English has gone from unliked to ok with passing generations (though Jimmy suspected she was just being nice--she's the main reason Johannes doesn't like his homestay, she's too controlling). Kind of intense. And then they came up to us and were all "well, you must be busy! sorry for taking your time" (in japanese) and we were all, "oh, we don't have anything to do, it's cool!" What we didn't realize was that they were subtly trying to tell us it was time to go. Eventually they came to us: "We have to move our car, and you're blocking the driveway, but we don't want you to trouble yourself to re-park afterward since dinner is over, so...good bye!" Hilarious. They couldn't just say it was time for us to go. I'd forgotten how wonderfully indirect Japanese culture can be sometimes.


More transportation fun: Before I left for Chizu I made sure to copy down the train schedule so I'd know what time my trains would arrive (I had to do a transfer). As I was waiting at the Koge station, making sure to ask each train I thought might have a chance of being mine if it was heading to Chizu, one conducor told me that the train headed for Chizu would show up on the other platform soon. So I waited...and a big, commercial-class cruiser comes up, the express train. Figuring, "Hey, it's the right time. And the right place. This must be my train!" I boarded. Glancing out the window where the other train was still parked, I see the conductor from before looking at me through his window--shaking his head and making an X with his hands! I quickly disembark and he runs over to tell me that the much cheaper local train would be by in 10 more minutes, and that I should wait for that. All in all I saved paying an extra $10.00 to shave some 15 minutes off the trip, definitely a good choice.


I live in a small town. As such, Josh and I are the only foreigners within the town limits (I'm fairly certain). We live in different districts, and don't see each other with any regularity at the moment, so I'm the only foreigner for at least a couple miles. Case in point: yesterday I was walking to the grocery store. As I'm walking I notice a man on a motorcycle pull into and out of the post office as I walk past. About a minute after I see him pull out, he pulls up next to me from behind:
"Excuse me, are you Brown-san?"
"Who? no, I'm Mackey."
"Oh! yes. Mackey, Matthew Brian (in Japanese katakana: Ma-ki Mashu- Buraian. He misread my middle name as 'Brown, and also figured it was my first name'). Sign here, please."
He hands me the letter and rides off. I guess he had gone to my house to get my signature and, when he realized I wasn't there, figured I had to be the foreigner walking down the street--because is there any other foreigner in town? Nope. I stand out.