4/18/10
In the JASIN program at Nagasaki Gaikokugo Daigaku, you have two options for living accommodations: Live with a host family, or live in the dorms. Both have their pros and cons, but I chose to live with a host family because living in the dorms requires monthly payments for amenities. So in the next four months, I’ll be living with two different families. In April and May, I’ll be with the Hashiguchi family, and in June and July, I’ll be with the Matsuo family.
Life with the Hashiguchi has been pleasant so far. Haruko, my host mom, is very kind and works very hard at both of her jobs to support her family, as there is no father figure (I haven’t asked about it, figuring that it’s not really my place to pry). She always has a smile on her face and I’ve had a few good conversations with her over meals or just sitting at the table sipping tea later in the evening.
Haruko has two children. She has a 21 year old daughter named Shiori who is going to school in Arkansas for nursing. I’ve skyped with her once and she seems like a very nice girl. Her English is really good too. Also, I’m now facebook friends with her.
Haruko also has a son who is the same age as me named Taihei. He goes to a university waaaaaayy on the other side of down town Nagasaki and lives at home with Haruko. My conversations with him were limited at first, mainly because he is very shy and I was nervous about speaking Japanese. Then he got into his accident and spent two nights at the hospital. I went with Haruko to visit him the day of the accident, which was a little awkward, but ended up fine. The funny thing is that when he came home, he started chattering away with me over dinner about the fact that I want to be an animator/comic book artist (He’s a pretty big otaku. His bedroom is nothing but bookshelves full of manga and three guitars).
Since then he’s been on and off with me, sometimes quiet, sometimes talkative, but I like to think that he’s opening up to me and enjoying me as a guest in the apartment he shares with his mom. We’ve had a few moments of bonding, including a night of me teaching him to play War (as in the card game), and talks over dinner with Haruko about how to pronounce things in English.
Little by little, I get to see more of who Taihei is. Recently, I’ve discovered that he and I are really quite similar. Though he’s very shy and I’m more outspoken, we both like drawing and music and (as I recently discovered) finding quirky little treasures. Yesterday, I was on my way home from seeing Alice in Wonderland with a few friends and Taihei happened to be on the bus that I boarded for home. He got off a few stops later, explaining that he was going to do a bit of shopping before coming home.
He came home a couple hours later with some interesting finds that I can only assume he got from some odd hole-in-the-wall shop. Aside from a Beatles poster, he also picked up an old ad poster for Campbell’s soup, a bicycle bell with a smiley face on it, two funny looking rubber ducks (One with Groucho Marx eyebrows), and a Tootsie Roll flashlight. For a good portion of the night he was ringing the bicycle bell, much to Haruko’s annoyance, but I couldn’t help but find it funny. Even today, he’s been ringing it. It makes me see the same child-like wonder and curiosity that I have in him, and though Haruko thinks his findings are strange, I think they are wonderful little treasures that would go along with my collections of keys and things I’ve found in antique stores.
No pictures yet, since Taihei's face is still healing from his accident (Though it's been healing really fast). Also, I'll be making a new photobucket account since my first one is already nearly full.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Screw Penguins. I'd Rather Dance.
4/11/10
So an update is long overdue. Here’s a quick catch-up of what you missed between Hiroshima and now.
-Day trip to Miyajima to see the temple, climb a mountain, and feed wild deer.
-Night bus and JR Express to Nagasaki, then bus to Gaikokugo Daigaku.
-Meeting my fellow new JASIN students.
-Meeting my host family.
-Host brother getting into a car accident and having to stay at the hospital for two nights.
-Going to a public bath.
-A week and a half’s worth of orientation, including a welcoming ceremony, meet and greet, and meeting our conversation partners.
-Going to a karaoke bar.
-Finding a great bar/restaurant to hang out at on Friday nights.
-Learning Japanese and Chinese words for sex and poo while waiting at a bus stop after a night at said bar.
Also, my foreign friend situation is beginning to turn out like a bad shoujo manga, as I seem to be meeting (and remembering) more boys than girls.
Now for the good stuff.
So I’ve been in Japan for a month now and while I’m perfectly aware that I’m in a foreign country, I’ve not yet had a moment of epiphany where I’ve realized “Wow, this place is really different.” This may be due to the fact that I’ve been to Japan once before, or that I had a fair amount of knowledge about cultural differences before coming here. Today, my mind has been blown. I have been introduced to the world of yosakoi.
I happened to stumble upon this by chance. Today I was planning to go to the penguin aquarium with some other JASIN students. We met at Nagasaki station, but I got there early with another girl (Toni). We heard music coming from the courtyard in front of the station and went to see what was going on. We came across a group of dancers waving their arms, shouting, twirling, and jumping as a man waved huge flags behind them. We whipped out our cameras and moved in to get a better look. It turns out that it was a festival of performances by yosakoi teams all over Kyuushuu.
After a couple performances, the other girls came and watched for a few minutes before they decided to go ahead to the aquarium, while Rachael stayed behind with me and Toni. The costumes were vibrant and varying, ranging from traditional gi and hakama to flowy flamenco dresses to sweatpants and hoodies. There was a general theme of liveliness and certain motions, but there were differences within each performance. Some teams integrated J-pop dance moves, others imitated martial arts stances and motions. One group had break dancers and an all-male group reenacted old gang wars between Nagasaki and Fukuoka. The age range was really wide too. Children as young as three and adults as old as sixty were integrated in the same groups and dancing just as well.
As mentioned before, the costumes were varied and all fabulous, but some of the dances included costume changes in the middle of the number. Just a few pulls of hidden straps or tucking of the gi and the dancers had completely new outfits. One group had five costume changes in their dance. Some groups used various props as well. Fans, parasols, flags, etc. But everyone used naruko, which are little wooden paddles that make clapping sounds. Also, after the performances, some of the event organizers ran up to particular dancers and put necklaces with wooden blocks and kanji symbols burned into them around their necks. This apparently symbolizes an award for being the best dancer in the group.
The dances went on until about 4:00 in the afternoon. One dancer had been particularly energetic and held some of his poses long enough for Toni to take pictures with her camera. After the show, he came over to us, asked us where we were from, why we were in Nagasaki, etc. He introduced himself as Masa, and he invited us to join the other dancers at the park near the harbor for another group dance. We followed him to where his team was waiting; a group called Melodious, who were all in bright costumes and had performed a dance that reflected cartoonish battles seen in anime.
When we arrived at the park, we watched a few dances before everyone was invited to join in on a big group dance. Masa pulled us into the middle of it and stood in front of us, providing a good example for the dance that we were to perform with everyone else.
The energy was high as we shuffled forward and back, hopped from one foot to the other and waved our arms over our heads along with the Japanese dancers in the group with us. Masa complimented us, saying that we were very good for beginners, and the event organizers even presented us with the same wooden necklaces that the more skilled dancers had received earlier. All in all, the three of us felt as though we’d had the better day.
To me, yosakoi was the lightning bolt that hit me and made me realize that this place is different and has cultural aspects that I have yet to uncover. I just need to keep looking under rocks and in the crevices for the oysters that will yield the pearls.
For more information on yosakoi, check out the Wikipedia page. I’ve still got loads of pictures to upload on photobucket, especially after today, but I’ll get around to posting a new link once everything is updated.
So an update is long overdue. Here’s a quick catch-up of what you missed between Hiroshima and now.
-Day trip to Miyajima to see the temple, climb a mountain, and feed wild deer.
-Night bus and JR Express to Nagasaki, then bus to Gaikokugo Daigaku.
-Meeting my fellow new JASIN students.
-Meeting my host family.
-Host brother getting into a car accident and having to stay at the hospital for two nights.
-Going to a public bath.
-A week and a half’s worth of orientation, including a welcoming ceremony, meet and greet, and meeting our conversation partners.
-Going to a karaoke bar.
-Finding a great bar/restaurant to hang out at on Friday nights.
-Learning Japanese and Chinese words for sex and poo while waiting at a bus stop after a night at said bar.
Also, my foreign friend situation is beginning to turn out like a bad shoujo manga, as I seem to be meeting (and remembering) more boys than girls.
Now for the good stuff.
So I’ve been in Japan for a month now and while I’m perfectly aware that I’m in a foreign country, I’ve not yet had a moment of epiphany where I’ve realized “Wow, this place is really different.” This may be due to the fact that I’ve been to Japan once before, or that I had a fair amount of knowledge about cultural differences before coming here. Today, my mind has been blown. I have been introduced to the world of yosakoi.
I happened to stumble upon this by chance. Today I was planning to go to the penguin aquarium with some other JASIN students. We met at Nagasaki station, but I got there early with another girl (Toni). We heard music coming from the courtyard in front of the station and went to see what was going on. We came across a group of dancers waving their arms, shouting, twirling, and jumping as a man waved huge flags behind them. We whipped out our cameras and moved in to get a better look. It turns out that it was a festival of performances by yosakoi teams all over Kyuushuu.
After a couple performances, the other girls came and watched for a few minutes before they decided to go ahead to the aquarium, while Rachael stayed behind with me and Toni. The costumes were vibrant and varying, ranging from traditional gi and hakama to flowy flamenco dresses to sweatpants and hoodies. There was a general theme of liveliness and certain motions, but there were differences within each performance. Some teams integrated J-pop dance moves, others imitated martial arts stances and motions. One group had break dancers and an all-male group reenacted old gang wars between Nagasaki and Fukuoka. The age range was really wide too. Children as young as three and adults as old as sixty were integrated in the same groups and dancing just as well.
As mentioned before, the costumes were varied and all fabulous, but some of the dances included costume changes in the middle of the number. Just a few pulls of hidden straps or tucking of the gi and the dancers had completely new outfits. One group had five costume changes in their dance. Some groups used various props as well. Fans, parasols, flags, etc. But everyone used naruko, which are little wooden paddles that make clapping sounds. Also, after the performances, some of the event organizers ran up to particular dancers and put necklaces with wooden blocks and kanji symbols burned into them around their necks. This apparently symbolizes an award for being the best dancer in the group.
The dances went on until about 4:00 in the afternoon. One dancer had been particularly energetic and held some of his poses long enough for Toni to take pictures with her camera. After the show, he came over to us, asked us where we were from, why we were in Nagasaki, etc. He introduced himself as Masa, and he invited us to join the other dancers at the park near the harbor for another group dance. We followed him to where his team was waiting; a group called Melodious, who were all in bright costumes and had performed a dance that reflected cartoonish battles seen in anime.
When we arrived at the park, we watched a few dances before everyone was invited to join in on a big group dance. Masa pulled us into the middle of it and stood in front of us, providing a good example for the dance that we were to perform with everyone else.
The energy was high as we shuffled forward and back, hopped from one foot to the other and waved our arms over our heads along with the Japanese dancers in the group with us. Masa complimented us, saying that we were very good for beginners, and the event organizers even presented us with the same wooden necklaces that the more skilled dancers had received earlier. All in all, the three of us felt as though we’d had the better day.
To me, yosakoi was the lightning bolt that hit me and made me realize that this place is different and has cultural aspects that I have yet to uncover. I just need to keep looking under rocks and in the crevices for the oysters that will yield the pearls.
For more information on yosakoi, check out the Wikipedia page. I’ve still got loads of pictures to upload on photobucket, especially after today, but I’ll get around to posting a new link once everything is updated.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
