Three months later

I have been here for a little over three months. And here is what I have learned so far.

1) Japanese food is good, not great. Nothing I have eaten has been fantastically good or horribly bad. Well, besides the seashell intestine, that was horrid. I am enjoying finding new foods that I have never eaten before and I am sure that in the future wherever I live I will be seeking out a Japanese restaurant once in a while to eat some good food. That said, they don't use much spice and that makes me sad. I want spices! It is hilarious to me how little spice my Japanese friends can handle. The other day one was raving about how hot these jalapeno potato chips she had were. Well, I found them at the store, bought a bag, and....about as spicy as American barbeque chips. I could have eaten a dozen bags of those chips without breaking a sweat (well, without breaking a spice sweat. I would have definitely had broken out in the fat guy sweats after a dozen bags of chips). So, food, pretty good, nothing flavorful enough to be considered great. But, all pretty tasty. Especially croquettes. Yum! Deep fried mashed potatoes, why aren't these things in America?

2) However, nothing compares to the variety of food you can get in America. I miss variety. Everyday it is the same thing, rice, fish, and a cabbage based salad (yeah, that is another thing, salad without lettuce, just cabbage, I have never had worse farts in my life). To drink, green tea, cola, or orange or grape flavored soda. There is an Italian restaurant but it serves six varieties of the same pasta, all marinara sauce and thin noodles. One variety has fish on it, one has beef, one has vegetables, one has a fried egg on top. Where is the manicotti? Where is the eggplant parm? Where is the alfredo? Where is the variety of food? That is really what I miss the most about America. If I want a taco, I can easily find a Mexican place. Likewise for Italian, Chinese, Thai, etc. Here, at least in Tsuruga, nope. And the grocery stores don't have that variety either. I think it is because Japan is such a uniform society it even spreads to what they eat.

3) Speaking of which, the uniformity. It is amazing how similar everyone looks (yeah, and I don't just mean they look short and yellow, I am racist but not in this case). They all dress the same, they all have similar haircuts, and they simply don't make waves. The kids not only dress in uniforms for school but they wear the uniforms after school and on the weekend too. Every person has the same puffy down jacket with a fur lined hood.



Well, at least they wear different colors.

I haven't seen one person trying to "look different" in all of Tsuruga. I mean, I know it is a small town, but even in Frederick there were different cliques. Hell, even in Walkersville there were different groups of people who dressed and acted differently. Here, not the case, all the teens look and act the same, all the adults look and act the same. I mean, you can def. tell the blue collar from the white collar workers, but that is only because the white collar workers are always wearing suits. This society is definitely a nail standing up gets hammered down place. I have been reading and it seems to stem from their agricultural ancestry. Japan is a really inhospitable place to live. It is an island built by a volcanic mountain and the entire middle of the country is mountainous and difficult to transverse. Hell, even now, driving from Fukui to Tsuruga last weekend, I was on the windiest road going along the side of the mountain I have ever seen. I swear there would be a 200 degree curve to the left, immediately followed by a 150 degree curve to the right, immediately followed by another S curve, and then another. I think we probably traveled 75 miles to go 30 miles. Imagine trying to get through mountains before cars, simply walking. Hence, communities had to rely on every member of that community to help farm and reap the crops to ensure they could eat during the winter. Everyone had to work together and there was no room for individuality. Pretty much the exact opposite of America where the independent settler who decided to move west was considered the ideal. And I think that mentality has persisted to today. At least what I have seen so far.

4) That mentality of not wanting to stand out translates to my classroom as well. One of the biggest problems I am having at work is getting people to ask me questions when they don't understand something. They are embarrassed or ashamed that they don't understand something that their classmates do and therefore don't ask any questions. And then after class they complain to my manager that they didn't understand some of the stuff I was going over. And then I get yelled at for not stopping to explain to them. Well, dammit, I can't read their minds. I stop and ask if anyone has questions constantly and if that still isn't good enough, well, I don't know what to do. I can only do so much, and if they want to know stuff they are going to have to learn to ask questions.

Even my kid students just want to be like one another. We were making christmas decorations and in a class of three people, one would start drawing something and the other two would simply copy the first student. Easy to tell the leader in each class that way let me tell ya. And then, in other classes, the students would look at what kids in previous classes had done and simply copy that. Here is the Christmas tree in my classroom


How many exact same snowmen can you count? How about the black bomb ornament on the bottom left? Yeah, that is different, and I appreciate that one even though the kid drew all over my table making it.


5) I don't feel like a giant walking around. However, I do feel like a freak of nature when I try to buy clothes. I know I have lost a little bit of weight, my pants are loose on my and I have had to go down a notch or two on my belt, but you would think I am the fattest thing that has ever walked into a store here. I buy XL clothes and they are skin tight. The arms are short on my sweatshirts, the legs are short on my pants, and they simply have no crotch room (and I am not saying I have a huge crotch either). I understand that they are a slimmer people than me, however, shouldn't an XL still be for fat guys? That is what I don't understand. And I have seen fatter guys than me. And taller guys too. And guys with bigger feet. Where are these guys shopping? And can they take me? I am going to have to start going up to fatties and asking where they got their clothes. Awkward.

6) Oh, and I get stared at all the time too. That is fun. Especially by kids. Works to my advantage sometimes, I think I get preferential treatment because they just assume I am a big dumb American and can't understand better. I usually don't have to bag my own groceries, they double check with me when I buy medicine, etc. Pretty nice. Oh, did I mention you have to bag your own groceries here? Yeah, that is weird to me for some reason.

7) Japan is expensive. I don't care what any book tells ya, this society is set up to be expensive. Everything is seperate so it is hard to do all your shopping at once. The grocery stores sell smaller portions (good thing for a single guy who doesn't like leftovers) so it is hard to do a week's worth of grocery shopping at once. And I know for me it is impossible to go into a store for one item and walk out with only one item.

Clothing and household goods stores are the same way. There is no Wal-Mart as clear as I can tell so you have to go to many different stores to get what you need, and that makes it expensive. Maybe I am just a bad shopper.

Oh, and eating out isn't expensive per se, but you pay for one little dish and they bring it out and then you order another one, and so on, and so on, and at the end of the night you have ended up spending $40.

8) The Japanese people are too nice. Speaking of spending $40 on a meal, that is my cut when we go out to eat as a group. Multiply $40 by 4 or 5 people and you get...hold on, let me do the math....$500 bar tab! Wait, that can't be right. And I am the only one that drinks, or I am the one that drinks the most. I will have 4 or 5 beers, the rest of the group might have one each, and yet we all end up paying the same $40 cut. I feel like an asshole when they do that, but they won't allow me to pay for my fair share. They are too nice. And they really are, all of my students are really nice and helpful and constantly offering to take me places or help me to do things, it is a really good feeling. They kind of feel like a family over here, which is good when I am so far away from my family.

Hell, even my kid students are super helpful. One of my favorite things to do is practice my Japanese around my kids. They crack up when I speak Japanese and always encourage me to perfect my pronunciation. Yeah, I am a clown to the kids, but that is okay.

9) Japan is not very "foreign." I don't know what I was expecting when I came here, Samurai and ninjas running around. Geishas at every door. Everyone wearing Kimonos (which nobody wears because they are super expensive and a giant pain in the ass to dress in. One of my students dresses in a Kimono for her job, she is a traditional Japanese dance instructor, and she says it takes her 20 minutes to put it on, and she does it every week, normal people who only wear the Kimono for special occasions might take up to an hour to properly put it on, and need multiple people to help). Yeah, except for the fact that everyone speaks Japanese, eats with chopsticks, and drives on the wrong side of the road, it could be America. Well, minus all those other things I was talking about earlier. But on a day to day basis, I don't feel like I am in a foreign country. I don't feel the "foreign-ness." I am looking forward to Jessica's observations when she visits on how different Japan feels from America.

I guess any first world country would probably feel the same way. It isn't like I am in freaking Afghanistan or Peru with people running around in barefeet chasing after mountain goats. The real differences I feel are with the architecture of the buildings and the trees. The trees are much taller and skinnier than in America. And way more heavily packed togther. I have been eyeing trying to hike up one of the mountains around Tsuruga, but the damned forest is simply too dense to travel through.

Also, it rains too much. Grr. I didn't know I was moving to Seattle.

10) Which brings me to another thing I have discovered, it is a giant pain in the ass to not have a car when it is raining. Many of my decisions are based around if I am willing to go out in the rain or not. Today I was thinking of going to look for some inexpensive shirts, but it was raining all day and I didn't feel like walking the three to five miles it would be to get to the store and back in the rain, so what did I do? I stayed in bed and watched TV all day.

I have completely underestimated how chilly I get walking to and from work. Definitely need to invest in some more layers. Good thing I had worked at the airport in the freezing ass night for the last couple years, used to layering.

11) The last thing I have noticed is race. Or rather my lack of noticing race. I don't really know how to say this without sounding like a racist, and maybe it is, but in America I always noticed race. I don't think I judged people based on it, but I always noticed it. It is hard not to. A black person looks different from a white person who looks different from a hispanic or asian person. I mean fuck it, that is the truth. People of different races look different and it is one of the first things you notice. Just like you note if a person is a man or a woman or young or old.

However, here, EVERYONE looks the same. And I do mean everyone. They are all Asian. Except for about a dozen whiteys, all of whom I think I met last week at my Japanese school, eveyone I come into contact with on a daily basis is Japanese. And the thing is, I feel like I don't think of them as Asian. They are just the people that live around here. And I think that is kind of cool. Or maybe I am just an ass and really am a racist.