You know when you live a day, and it’s a really great one, and your cheeks are sore from smiling so big for so long, but you can’t help but to keep smiling? This morning Junko San, the kids and I went to this gallery featuring an artist who bases her cartoons off the Japanese concept ‘mo-tai-nai.’ (I'm not sure how to spell it. I believe it is 'mottainai.' But it's not 'Mott' like the applesauce, it's 'Moe' like "Welcome to Moe's!") Mottainai can’t really be explained in English, but it’s kind of like when you’re younger and your mother puts dinner in front of you. So you immediately devour all of the good stuff and end up being too full to finish your vegetables. Then you say “Onaka ippaii! Gochisosamadeshita,” and excuse yourself from the table, but your mother looks at your plate and starts irately ranting about the starving children in Africa, and how you won’t even eat the healthy food that this family is so blessed with. OR when you’re brushing your teeth at the sink, and you keep the water running the whole time, so your mom reaches over and turns the faucet off, saying “Save some for the fishes!”I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s easier if you have a gallery full of comic strips to play it out in pictures. But this concept that I can’t spell is what you have in excess that you gratefully take because it is there, and because you are aware that it’s not there for everybody else. So in addition to the comics, the artist drew children from a bunch of different countries. She showed some of the unfortunate things these kids were born into. Like having to walk miles carrying pails of water on their shoulders just to boil some rice, or a boy learning to operate an AK47 before learning how to read. It’s one of those things that you are reminded about every once in a while, and each time you want to cry. Cry and then change the world. But something discourages you and makes you put off changing the world—at least until next time. That’s how it is for me anyway.
I went to a Japanese garden today as well. Whoever attempts to describe in words a Japanese garden is either an arrogant disillusion or Tolkien. I am neither. (I don’t really know about the Tolkien part. I only said that because that’s what is recently familiar and I could think of nothing better.)
- In Japan, you can get just about anything on a pizza. There is a fish egg pizza, as well as a fruit salad pizza and a pumpkin-tuna pizza. I regret not photographing the menu.
- I never, never ever wanted to fall in love until I met my host parents. That is all.
One fine morning I was biking to school and, unlike any other day, I saw a student from my school (distinguishable by the uniform) ahead of me. I carried on my route as normal, and watched him turn down a tunneled alley. I immediately assumed he knew of a shortcut, as he was, in fact, Japanese and had probably be going to this school for years over my 2 weeks. So I followed him. This could be a really long story, but I think you should just know that I was almost killed several times, and I’m confident that the student I followed, and anyone he will ever strike conversation with in the next month, thinks I’m a total creep. Quite the adventure.
September 7, 2010
Reasons Japan is superior to America:
1) Pyramid shaped tea bags
2) The metric system
3) School uniforms
4) Biker friendly streets
5) Mary Poppins baskets on every bike
6) Chopsticks
7) The rice cooker: add rice, add water, press start. Genius.
8) Ubiquitous refreshing shower sheets
9) Overall better hair and hair styles
10) Student-school cleaning system
11) Sliding doors
12) Ping-pong (table tennis) as a national school sport
13) Vending machines with better beverage varieties
September 9, 2010
There are 3 English classes at my school: English Reading (M, W, and F), English Grammar (T, R), and Conversational English (R). I am the teacher’s assistant in all three. In the short time I have been attending Hokuryo High School, I still can’t pronounce its name. But I also have completely lost any southern accent that might have existed prior to exchange, have attained patience that had not existed prior to exchange, and acquired abs as a result of laughing uncontrollably, near every day, that definitely did not exist a month ago.
Today, my English reading teacher told the class, “It is better to have loved and died than to have never died at all.” Seriously fell out of my chair. I am aware that is what people say when they laugh really hard, and they don’t literally mean they fell out of their chair. This is not one of those cases. In fact, I am still laughing as I type this. (I don’t want to make her look bad; she happens to be fantastic at English. I assume it was just a slip up, as she corrected her mistake once the chaos thinned.)
Little things like that kill me. Like when this super animated kid stands up in front of the class and yells with more enthusiasm than necessary, “I am so exciting!” Or when I tell them to correct a sentence written on the board and a student alters it further flawed than originally. It’s great. And then I feel like an idiot for laughing because I know my Japanese is substantially worse than their English.
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