Wow, my last post was a while ago. Here’s the rundown.
My last post was about needing to relax. Last weekend I spent most of Saturday watching dumb crap on the internet with friends and watching movies. I rewatched Lawrence of Arabia, which is fantastic. It’s been a while since I watched it, and this time around I got so much more out of it. Anyway, the following day was work, as was most of this week, because this week was midterms. Oh, and I had my first kyuudo lesson last Friday.
First, kyuudo. Kyuudo is a lot of fun because I’m the only guy doing it, everyone is really nice, and it looks really cool. I haven’t gotten to shoot one yet because my first lesson was learning the motions, of which there are a lot, and they’re all highly formalized. There’s a very specific way to walk, to turn, to enter the shooting area, and to leave it. The way you shoot is also highly stylized, but maybe that’s the wrong word. There’s a way to ready your bow, there’s a way to set the arrow, there’s a way to stand, there’s a way to ready yourself, and there’s a way to shoot, and that’s simplifying things. There’s a process to all of it and it’s very complicated, but it looks awesome, and I’m a sucker for looking cool.
It sounds intimidating, and it is, but like I said, everyone is really nice, including the sensei, and I feel like once I get down to the actual shooting, they’ll be very nice about it. I was actually supposed to fire a bow today, but I wanted to go see the Jidai matsuri that was happening, and my sensei was really understanding and didn’t seem to mind at all, so next week is when I’ll get to do it.
Next, midterms. FUCK midterms. What’s worse than one midterm? Two midterms. On the same day. What with my days being so busy and the other homework I have, I didn’t get a chance to study for midterms until the day before they happened. Luckily two of my friends are in both of the classes I had midterms in, so we formed a study group the night before and got some studying done, but I still felt unprepared the day of, so here’s how my day went: wake up with less than 6 hours of sleep, go to school, study for first test. Take first test, take more time than I expected, freak out when I realize I have 45 minutes to eat lunch and study before my 1:15 class, and my midterm is at 3. Ask teacher if I can make up the class somehow so I can study, get the spiel that they can’t let me off, I have to make the decision to skip or not. Skip class to study, joined by friend, study until midterm.
I’m glad I skipped the class because I went into the test way more prepared than I would otherwise have been. Plus, there’s a deeply satisfying feeling to skipping class for academic pursuits. As a reward for my trials and tribulations of the day I bought myself a nikuman, went home and watched Batman Begins, which was just what I needed.
Today was a fun day. I somehow made my way through Japanese and ate lunch with some friends before heading to the Budo center to talk my way out of kyuudo lessons today so I could go see the Jidai matsuri. But before I discuss the Jidai matsuri, a event worthy of note took place: I used a Japanese toilet for the first time. At the budo center I needed to use the bathroom, but all the Budo center has are Japanese style toilets. Some of you may imagine one of those fancy toilets that washes your butt for you, but that’s referred to as a western style toilet, or a washlet, here in Japan. Japanese toilets looks like this. Scary, right? Logistically they seem like they will pose problems, and indeed they will if you use them incorrectly, but I was lucky enough to have a friend waiting outside who had accompanied me to the Budo center, who I consulted with before entering the bathroom, and she informed me how to use the toilet.
After successfully using the toilet, I talked my way out of kyuudo, and we headed to the Jidai matsuri. Ok, so matsuri means festival, and Jidai means time period. What happens in the Jidai matsuri is there’s a huge parade of people dressed up in the clothes of different time periods in Japanese history, which starts at the Imperial Palace and goes to Heian Jingu, a shrine in the east of Kyoto. The Budo Center is right next to Heain Jingu, so my friend and I walked along the route the parade would take and found a good spot from which to view the parade, which had not yet arrive at Heian Jingu. Ultimately we got a good view of most of the parade, and I took a crapload of pictures.
However, before the parade was over we headed to the subway, because we had to get to yet another festival, the kurama himatsuri. Masturi still means festival, and hi means fire, so it’s a fire festival. Sounds cool right? Well, we headed to the station where we would catch the train that would take us to kurama, and there was a tremendous line of people waiting to get on the train, and herein lies the problem with the Kurama Himatsuri: way too many fucking people go to it.
The train ride up there was like sardines in a can, and the actual festival was something of a bust because, 1) we had no idea what the fuck was going on, so we didn’t know where to go and when and, 2) even if we had, there were so many goddamn people that we wouldn’t have been able to see anything anyway. So we walked in the opposite direction from everyone else and walked past lots of houses with their own little fires going and some little kids carrying around their own torches and yelling the phrase that was yelled when carrying a torch. It’s hard to explain when I’m so tired, but one of the main rituals in this festival was taking these great big torches which were a bundle of twigs wrapped in bamboo, lighting the tip on fire, and carrying it around yelling this specific phrase over and over before hoisting it onto one of the great big fires they had going in various places. It was very fun to watch, and seeing the little kiddies with these torches was very cute, but there were just too many people.
I’m glad I went though, because the residential areas that weren’t swarmed with people were quaint and interesting to see with each individual fire and stuff, and it was an experience.
So how do I feel right now? In this blog I talk a lot about what I’ve done, which is important, but this is also supposed to be a spot where I talk about how I’m feeling and what my impressions are. So right now I feel…normal. I’ve fully adjusted to living here. An example is that Oberlin is about to go on fall break, and to me the idea seems so foreign. I just had midterms, but I know I have more classes to go to for another month or so, and it just seems so natural. The novelty of living here is going away, and I’m beginning to have a couple complaints. Like my commute. I enjoy some aspects of my commute in that it gives me time to listen to music or read, but at the same time it cuts out a lot of time that could be spent hanging out with people or doing homework, and it also means I can’t be out past a certain time otherwise there’s no way for me to get home. It’s not too bad, but it does have its annoying aspects.
I’m becoming a resident of the country, which sounds cool, but it means feeling normal, living a normal life, and what that entails. Then again, I pride myself on trying to live a life which wouldn’t really be considered normal, so the question now is: what do I do? How do I distribute my time to things that are interesting and different and fun? And how do I do this while I’m in a foreign country? The first thing I want to do is go to some music clubs. It’s not something I do in America, and it might be an interesting experience which isn’t necessarily exclusively Japanese. We’ll see. This weekend holds more movie watching and giant parfait eating, and my birthday! I probably won’t end up doing anything special for my birthday because there’s no time, but that may change.
The time is currently 2:13 in the morning, and I’m meeting a friend at 11, so I should probably go to sleep.
~Shimon
