Anti-Americanism

This past weekend I went to visit my friend Stephen in Tochigi. It was a nice weekend - we actually went to a Western style mall with a food court, my first in ten months! Instead of traveling or doing anything exciting, we mostly just sat around and talked (and, of course, he subjected me to British Television - some good, some horribly bad). Anyway, on Saturday night he invited his friend Chris, a German guy, to meet us for dinner. From the moment this guy met me, he had it out for me, and all because - horror of horrors! - I was American. Everything I did, he would say it was because I was American - "You drink cheap wine? How American." "You like Guiness? How American." "You eat food? How American." Ok, not the last one, but you get the picture. Anyway, he was so blatantly rude to me all night that by the end of it I was just barely not slapping him - I mean, I am the first one to make fun of myself of being "American," but it is all in fun and I put no value on stereotypes of any nationality, German, American, Japanese or otherwise, if they are used in a derogatory way. This guy was just being mean.

So finally, after a while of just shrugging things off, I just countered by saying "Its nice to see that you don't have any preconceptions of people, how openminded of you." I really wanted to mouth him off, but I didn't want him to have the satisfaction of being able to say "You get mad and break your cool? How American." So it left a sour taste in my mouth about the entire weekend, not just because of him, but because Stephen (who is very proper and non-confrontational) didn't stick up for me at all and just let it happen. Oh well. The one lesson I have learned is that I won't ever blame my nationality for my personality traits or my choices - we are who we say we are, and shoving ourselves into a small, national box is only ever limiting.

On a funny note, the train station in Nishinasuno had a mural painted on the inner hallway - children catching butterflies, a sun beaming in the sky, flowers blooming everywhere, women and their daughters in summer dresses....and, of course, a man smoking a cigarette. Which makes complete sense.

Only in Japan.

I'm full

This afternoon I stir-fried (in Pam, not oil, of course!) ninikume (this long, delicious Japanese green vegetable kind of like a green bean), long mushrooms that look like they're props from the smurfs, and hamburger meat, all in this delicious spicy sauce. I ate almost the entire thing. I want to throw up (but in a good way).

Why I love Tomoko

For those of you who don't know, Tomoko is my downstairs neighbor, the one who took care of Lily when I was in America. She is so sweet, but she speaks no English, and as my Japanese is not exactly fluent, whenever we see each other we smile and laugh and say "konnichiwa, genki desu ka" but that's about it. Well yesterday her daughter was over to visit with her two children; I saw them and invited them upstairs to see Lily. I have had a bitter cold, so when I saw Tomoko I asked her if she had a thermometer (I had to look up the word in a dictionary beforehand, no, I don't suddenly know Japanese vocabulary). She asked me if I was sick, and I said I was. She lent me a thermometer and left with her daughter and grandchildren to go somewhere.

About one hour later I hear a knock on my door. It's Tomoko, bearing water, vitamin juice, banana yogurt and a lemon fruit jelly (kind of like jello). Can you believe that? What a sweetheart! I am going to bake her some peanut butter cookies next week.

The beginning of the end

So it is May 23rd, and I have only two months left until my contract in Japan ends. This has been perhaps one of the most difficult if not the most difficult experience of my life. I have had to confront an entirely different set of values, ideals, aesthetics, social norms, not to say a completely different language system. I have also had some of the most memorable experiences of my life and have been immeasurably changed, if not in my tastes for seaweed then in almost every other way.

It has not been easy to keep this blog updated - I have always been the kind of traveler who gets so caught up in the world that I am in that it is difficult to seperate myself intellectually and account for those experiences in words and pictures. From my trip to Africa, I have only 20 random pictures, all taken on my last day in Fosse; I never really explained my European tour to anyone, and the pictures lay languishing in a photo album which I have never really shown to many people. Is this because the experiences aren't important to me? Obviously not. It is just that the richness of experience is for me untranslatable into an easily understood paragraph or a photograph. I will never be a writer because I can't (and have no desire to) "trap," so to speak, the immensity of life onto the written page. At first I used this blog to talk about the interesting facets of life here - the green tea chocolate, the revolving sushi restaurants, the Japanese matsuri. It made people laugh at how different life here in Japan was, at how interesting cultural exchange could be in a foreign land. But after a few months, it was hard to keep that going. These were no longer weird, Japanese eccentricities to me but part of my life, part of my own sense of normalcy here in Gunma-machi. I still noticed new and interesting things everywhere, but they were part of my home, and it almost felt superfluous to write of them as if they were special or unique.

Experiences reminded me of other experiences, and I found that suddenly I had a network of sensory connections - a parking lot famous for cherry blossoms made me think of lovely plants set in the middle of a yard full of rusted metal made me think of my student's obsession with glittery stickers on dull notebooks made me think of the endless row of concrete fences and man-made rivers that are completely surrounded by the highest and darkest of mountains...How can I explain what these things mean, how they are linked together, how a serving of pickled cucumbers can remind me of a legend about cherry blossoms? If I were a writer, I would write these things for you. I would tell you the story of my life here, from one image to another. I would capture those times here when, like Virginia Woolf, I have stood in awe and said, "life stand still here," if only for a moment.

But I'm not a writer, not really. When I go home, I will come back to Japan for a visit once in a while in my memory, and thats where the true story will live - in a new web of images and people and inventions that I had never even imagined before I came to live here. Some of you might be a little resentful of this - I know that I leave many of you frustrated when I tell you that I can't put these experiences into words. Just know that I will try to keep writing, I will try to keep translating. I will try to keep talking even when the words are stuck under my tongue.

Decision made!

I'm off to Buffalo!

Ten reasons why the next 2 months are going to fly by

10. I'm going to see sumo in Tokyo this weekend, and after I will thrust myself into work so I won't have to remember the fat, half-naked men who look like my dad in his underwear....ah, its already grossing me out! :-O
9. Stephen and I are going to a love hotel in Tokyo (not in THAT kind of way, its a purely intellectual exploration - Gary and I didn't have time to go!)
8. Gary is sending me pictures of my new apartment tomorrow!
7. I bought Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory, and it singlehandedly makes my free time at my desk interesting.
6. I'm teaching with Makie this semester and she is the best - students actually participate in her class! They actually raise their hands and shout out answers! They actually laugh!
5. I'm going to Yokohama with Manami (Tomomi's sister) and am visiting Tomomi's wonderful family again in Hakone.
4. I am ALSO driving to Tochigi to visit Stephen and have more wonderfully horrible british food.
3. I am ALSO finally going to go to Hiroshima.
2. The countdown towards wheat bread, gardenburgers and cranberry juice has begun!
1. Tomomi and I will go on a big trip after my contract is up, so I can spend my last days with my best friend here.

The toughest decision of my life

So here goes...I was accepted into Brandeis University for the PhD. The one school that I said could vie with Buffalo for being my school of choice. And now I just don't know what to do. Brandeis in some ways seems like the better choice - in other ways, Buffalo seems like the best choice. I am so confused. Too much of a good thing, in this case, is just leading to a lot of trouble. I think the decision will thankfully come down to money (because judging on programs would be too difficult) - I think that Brandeis would be just too expensive to attend. I am waiting to talk to some grad students about it. I feel so stressed out about the whole situation - I can't imagine how Gary feels about it, our futures are both on the line. I'm not sure what is the right decision for both of us. We'll have to figure it out soon.