September 9, 2010
I didn’t sleep as well last night as I did the night before. I woke up around 6 and couldn’t fall asleep again. I lay in bed for a while and eventually got up and studied a little. I met up with a group in the lobby around 8 and we went for breakfast. We went to a place in Kyoto Station that served various kinds of toast. Not like, tiny pieces of toast, really thick, fluffy toast. It was ok, nothing special.
We got to Imadegawa and got to the classroom in time for the orientation on homestay. I’m honestly too tired to remember that much about the orientation, just some basic expectations, like our own room, basic furniture, no other international students, food, etc. We also went over expectations for us, as guests. It basically amounted to: be adventurous, be careful about money, be a part of the family, etc.
After the orientation on homestay, we had a short orientation session on Alien Registration and Health Insurance. Basically, we need to register as Aliens, and we also qualify to enroll in the Japanese National Healthcare plan. We don’t get all of our expenses covered, but we do get 70% of all costs covered by the government. We went over the basics of what we needed to register, then we met up with our Doshisha students.
We were assigned a Doshisha student or a pair of students to help us locate our host family’s house, and then register as an Alien and register for National Health Insurance. I was extremely nervous to meet the students who would be escorting me, because up until today I hadn’t really been conversing much in Japanese at all, and I wasn’t sure if they would be talking to me in Japanese exclusively, or if they would let me talk in English when I couldn’t answer in Japanese.
It turned out to be the former, and for 5 hours I had to try and converse only in Japanese. A train wreck would be an exaggeration, but it’s safe to say that it didn’t go as well as it could have. First of all, I ended up telling them that I don’t each lunch, when I was in fact trying to say that I had not et eaten lunch. We never really had a real conversation going because the questions that they asked me were fairly simple, and the questions I asked them were of an even simpler nature due to my extremely limited vocabulary (one year o Japanese, and I’m sticking to that excuse).
Eventually I started to run out of things to say, so on the train ride to my host family’s house, and for the rest of the trip, we did not exchange that many words. Occasionally they would think of something to say, and I’d usually be able to respond. The slightly oppressive silence was broken up by the visit to the Otsu-kyo Ward Office to get me registered. More or less as soon as we found the office, I stopped trying to understand what the office workers were saying. I let the students do all of the talking, and usually managed to write the right thing when prompted and produce the right form of identification when prompted.
The whole experience was…frightening. I was nervous the whole time, I didn’t know how to act, I tried to think of things to say but I could never think of anything that I knew how to say, and I guess I was afraid for what the experience implied about my future interactions here. Not only did we not speak much, but I’m pretty sure I fucked up my grammar like nobody’s business, and I tried to stick to long form, but I think I slipped some short form in accidentally. Usually I don’t mind being quiet with other people; it gives me time to relax and not worry about social interaction, but in this case it’s almost the opposite. In this case, I want to talk as much as possible because it will improve my language skills and help me bond with people.
I probably shouldn’t be so hard on myself, I mean I do only have a year of language, and it’s not like you get better at the speed of light. But then again, I don’t want to use that as an excuse for not speaking. I guess as long as I try to speak and succeed at least some of the time, that’s something. Enjoy the falling.
After the registration, we ate some food at a really cheap Chinese place which was pretty good. After that we went across the street to the Higashi Honganji, a temple, which is very impressive as it’s one of Japan’s largest wooden buildings. We walked around the temple, then headed back to the hotel.
We said goodbye, and despite the fact that I thought it didn’t go so well, they both gave me their email and phone number, and I gave them my Doshisha email address. I honestly don’t know whether I’ll end up contacting them again. I feel like I should, and I want to because I do want to make Japanese friends, but at the same time my Japanese is nowhere near good enough to maintain conversation with them and I feel like being able to talk on close to equal footing with someone is necessary to connect with them.
After parting ways with them, I deposited my backpack in my room and tried to meet up with other AKPers. We went to a convenience store, then decided to go up in the Kyoto Tower. The Kyoto Tower is not a very attractive piece of architecture, but goddamn does it have a fantastic view. We stayed up there for a while, and I was smart enough to bring my camera, so I got pictures of Kyoto in late afternoon and sunset, and that, combined with my ridiculous 26x zoom, gave me some really cool pictures. Plus whenever there was something that people were curious about I could zoom in on it and take a look.
A couple of us tried to get dinner before 7:30, but the others ended up getting obentou, so I decided to wait…until after the ofuro. One of the things we got on our first day here was a ticket to the ofuro; the bath. I don’t mean a crappy little American bath where your knees stick out and the water is warm, I mean a Japanese ofuro.
Now, the one we had a ticket to was a public ofuro. The way ofuro work is that you go in, put your shoes in a locker and take the key to the locker. Then you go into the separate divisions for men and women. Then you strip, and wash yourself thoroughly. The other two guys who I went into the ofuro with didn’t take too long to wash themselves, but I wanted to be efficient, so I spent a lot of time sitting on a tiny plastic seat, pouring water over myself, scrubbing myself with soap and washing my hair.
Once you’re all clean, you get to go into the ofuro. Japanese ofuro are really deep, so you can submerge your entire body except for your head, which has always been a problem for me with American baths because they’re so goddamn small. Also, ofuro are really hot. Like you think you’re going to scald yourself, they’re so hot. When it’s in the high 70s, mid 80s, getting into a really hot ofuro is not that special, I’ll be honest. It does feel nice to a certain degree, but boiling yourself when it’s already warm outside is not super great. Although, it did feel great to get out, take a cold shower, then get back in.
Probably the best part of the ofuro, aside from the novelty of it all, is that after you get out, you feel great. It’s hard to describe; you just feel really relaxed, really warm, and…great. We spent a long time in the bath and we left as the bath was closing, more or less. After the ofuro, those of us who had gone went to dinner. We got ramen, which was good, and we wanted to get ice cream, but all the shops that were near us were closing. One of our group members saw that Mister Donut was still open, so she got a doughnut, however, apparently she was rushed into making a decision, and she ended up with a curry doughnut. Now, I’m all for trying new things, but a curry doughnut was totally not what I needed right then. It was pretty repulsive.
At that point, one of our group split off and went back to the hotel, and some of the rest of us went exploring. We started walking east of Kyoto Station and we went up some side streets. We stumbled around and found some sketchy alleys and got somethings from vending machines. I wanted to go a little further east, but people started to head back towards the hotel, so I went back with them. We discovered some cats, and I found a cool little shrine. Nothing really awesome happened, but it was still fun.
We made our way back to the hotel, and that’s all that happened today, really. I could talk about what the place where I’m living looks like, what my house looks like, the commute, etc., but there will be time for all of that in later posts. I don’t want to make this post as long as yesterday’s. Now, I have to see if I can nicely convince the many people in my room to leave so I can get some sleep.
-Shimon
