Small Graduates, Big Ceremony

Guess I had some good timing with the year I came to Japan, because today I had the opportunity to go to my host brother's graduation.

From elementary school.

I can't even remember if I had a ceremony for graduation from elementary school. Regardless, I was sort of expecting something fairly low key, maybe a few little speeches, people would get certificates, and so on. However, I knew that it had to be something more intense when my host sister suggested that I wear a suit and tie for the occasion.

The nice, big, healthily funded elementary school.

For starters, i'm fairly convinced that the elementary was bigger than my middle school (which can likely to be attributed to the fact that people and governments care about education in Japan). It's nestled in a neighborhood, and easily the nicest building to be found in the immediate vicinity. Not to mention, they have roughly 30 unicycles that people can use during recess!....okay, so I'm jealous.

So we arrived at the elementary school this morning and my host family and I walked to the gymnasium and took our seats to wait for the ceremony to begin. The gym was split into several sections, one for parents, one for teachers, and two for students, with a stage at the front and various percussion instruments along one side. Other than the parents section it was empty. Almost all of the other parents were also wearing suits, with the only exception being an occasional kimono sticking out in the crowd.

The ceremony began exactly on schedule with a voice over the intercom thanking everybody for coming, and announcing the entry of the teachers. All of the teachers from the school entered in a single file line, and bowed to the families before taking their seats. After them, the students from the 5th grade class came entered (in Japan elementary school goes up to 6th grade), most of them with a recorder in one hand, and melodica in the other. (At this point I'm thinking "Everybody gets a melodica and unicycle? Why didn't I go to this school!?)

After entering in the quietest line of 5th graders I've ever seen, some of them moved over to the percussion instruments, and one of the teachers stood up, revealed herself as the music teacher by striking a conductor's position, and began leading the group of students into a tune.

Now, I'm sure many of you have had the experience of attending an 5th or 6th grade music concert, and for that I am terribly sorry. It's no secret that these concerts generally are of the quality that one would expect from a group of 10 year old kids.

Because of that, you'll understand my surprised when upon the conductor's signal the resulting sound was not a squeal of instrumental jabber. It was actually music. Heck, it was pretty good! All of the kids were on the same rhythm, playing the right notes, following the conductors changes. I, for one, was impressed.

And with the start of the music also began the progression of graduates into the gym. All of the 6th graders were wearing suits or skirts, and filed in single file to find their seat near the stage. Once everyone had entered the principal of the school went to the center of the stage and immediately began calling out names to receive their diplomas. Each of the students received their diploma and left stage in exactly the same, clean format: bow, grab the diploma with the left hand, then right, hold it out while you bow once more. Bend the diploma in half and hold it by your left side, turn and walk off stage. The uniformity of the pageantry was pretty remarkable. Following the diplomas the principal then addressed all of the students, talking about how as they grow into adulthood they can be the ones to help solve the world's problems, and how they need to continue working hard to accomplish their dreams. It was roughly the same nature of the speech we received at my high school graduation, except in Japanese.

My favorite part was what came next. After the principal and a few other teachers gave some speeches. The recent graduates stood and turned to face the audience, and then recounted their elementary story for first grade to present day. While they stood as a crowd, each member said one or two sentences without moving from their spot, creating this effect where you could hear different voices from different parts of the mass of graduates piecing together their collective story. It was really cool.

They then sang a song about continuing toward their dreams while never forgetting the past, to which the 5th graders responded by rising and singing a song thanking them for their guidance as their seniors, and promising to continue to work hard as the followers of their footsteps. (And as before their musical pieces were surprisingly well performed).

Once it was all done, pictures were taken for each of the respective homerooms, and the ceremony was drawn to a close. I'm happy I was able to see it, not only was it a lovely ceremony, but it was definitely different from the way I remember elementary school. The best part though, was that as the graduates filed out, my host brother, diploma in hand, was wearing the biggest smile in the room.

Tokyo! I'm home!

After a month spent working away at the Hotel La Montagne Furuhata in Hakuba, I finally returned to Tokyo a few days ago. My last post kind of makes it sound awful, and to be honest the beginning was pretty bad. However, as my time there went on things got a lot better, and so I'd like to sum it all up by listing off some of the good things that happened as a direct result of being in Hakuba.

I can now set a table in preparation of breakfast for 20 in under 5 minutes flat

My Japanese has shown noticeable improvement, as shown by several of the juggling members saying "What the hell, you got good at Japanese!" when I got back.

Right now I'm in the best physical shape I've been in since Japan. I think it's a combination of skiing every-other day, eating insanely healthy food for a month, and the fact that functionally the various kinds of work I did all boil down to moving things around all day.

Through much trial and error I have discovered the method to properly skiing, other than just bolting down the hill as fast as possible and praying not to hit a small child.

I made a few friends.

As working progressed it came to be more apparent that my bosses really appreciate the hard work that we put in. At the end of the month they made me a special dinner of my request, plus all of the things they had noticed I liked to eat as a way of saying thank you.

And to wrap it all up: a few pictures of good points for which words don't quite suffice.

There was a crepe shop at the ski slope, and there "special" has pudding, ice-cream, cake, tiramisu,  bananas, chocolate, strawberries and cream. It hurt, but it was delicious.

At one point the snow was really not fit for skiing, so instead I made a friend.

And as always the mountains on the ski slope were gorgeous... 

...but really, they were awesome.

白馬働き

My lack of recent blog-related activity has been mostly important to a fairly significant development in my schedule. As part of my study abroad program, everybody does what they call a "Cultural Practicum" for a month between February and March, which is just basically something out-of-the-ordinary from regular study abroad life. It can be anything from studying zen in a temple, teaching English in middle schools, or doing recovery work in Tohoku. The practicum that I've selected involves working at an inn for skiers in Hakuba (白馬), Nagano-Prefecture (長野県).

To give a little background, the city of Hakuba is where all of the skiing events were held during the Winter Olympics were held in 1998. Naturally it's a well known place for skiers both within and outside of Japan, and is has a sparkling, luxurious ski resort with all the bells and whistles right near Happone, the main ski area.

Map of Japan, with Hakuba labeled. It's almost directly northwest of Tokyo.

But that's not where I am.

I am working at an inn near the Iwatake Snowfield (岩岳), a sort of second-hand ski slope that's about a 5 minute drive away from Happone. It's functionally in the middle of nowhere (there is only one convenience store within a 2.3 kilometer radius, by Japan standards that's nowhere), and the city of Hakuba itself is pretty small as well.

A picture of the street near my inn. One of the perks of being in the middle of nowhere is the spectacular landscape (granted, I'll take a cityscape any day, but still..)

So what am I doing at a place like this anyway? Working. The basic agreement for this particular Cultural Practicum is that you get to stay at the hotel, go skiing, and eat breakfast and dinner for free. You just have to work for it.

A lot.

On average, my schedule results in about 10 hours of work per day. Every day. No weekends or holidays, just work for each of the 28 days that I'm here. The nice thing is that every day basically follows the exact same routine, so once you get it down it's not too bad (and that that also means that after I finish this blog post you'll know exactly what I'm doing for the next few weeks!).

So here's the routine:

Every morning at sometime between 5:30 and 6:30, we wake up and go start doing breakfast preparations. Along with rooms, the inn also provides breakfast and dinner for all of the guests, so we have to get that all set up. It's not buffet style, it's everybody-eats-exactly-the-same-thing-in-the-same-portions style, so we have to set out all the plates and load them with food. At 7:00 we open up and guests start coming in to eat. Whenever they are all done we cleanup, do as much setting for dinner as possible in the morning, and then eat our own breakfast. At 10:00 we start cleaning rooms, so if we get done with breakfast before 10:00 (we usually are done around 9:00), we get NAP TIME!!! (I never take naps, but here I accept them as a gift from the gods).

10 o'clock is when we start cleaning. This is pretty straightforward: fold up all the beds and sheets and whatnot, collect all the garbage, etc. There are two buildings to the inn: the main building and the annex. I almost always am assigned to cleaning the annex, which is the less-nice of the two buildings. The fun part about that, is that a large portion of our clientele is college kids going on retreats, and of course they always ask for the cheapest rooms. For those of us who clean the annex, that basically means that we have to clean up a college party. Every day. Not fun (but someone's gotta do it).

Whenever we finish cleaning (usually 12:30), we get our big break for the day. The next time they call us in is to prepare for dinner, which usually isn't until around 5:00, so the afternoon is to be enjoyed at our leisure. What does that mean? NAP TIME!!! Alternatively, if for some strange reason you are of the misconception that you have enough energy to not need a nap, the next logical activity is to go skiing. Luckily, I've come to learn how to time it to fit in both skiing and a nap, and so have hit the slopes here a few times. While I may have referred to Iwatake as the "second-hand" ski slope, it is actually a really nice area, and the view is absolutely spectacular.

View from the top of the Iwatake Snowfield.

As mentioned above, after the break we have dinner, which is basically the exact same as breakfast, just with a bit more cleanup. With breakfast me and the other workers just eat by ourselves, but after dinner we eat with the inn owner and his wife. I really enjoy it because in a lot of ways it feels very communal, and it's fantastic Japanese practice. With all of that combined, we usually get off of dinner at some time between 9:00 and 10:00 in the evening, leaving just about enough time to take a bath, maybe hang out a little bit, and then get some sleep before the routine starts over again.

One quick thing to clear up: The "we" I keep referring to isn't the Royal We, I have two roommates with him I do all this work. I'm literally with them 24/7, unless I decide to go off and do my own thing during the break. Fortunately, they're pretty cool, and I'd be going insane if I'd probably have died at the beginning if I didn't have them to help me figure out how things work around here. They are hardcore skiers, and so for them working here gives them free lodging and food so that they are near the ski area and can practice at least a couple hours a day.

All in all it's going well. By no stretch of the imagination would I summarize my experience so far as "fun", but it's definitely had some enjoyable parts, I'm constantly being forced to use and learn Japanese, and despite the exhaustion it's the kind of challenge I signed up for.

Dipping into Kansai

This past weekend Jeric (the other K College student in Tokyo) and I headed off to Hikone, a small rural-ish city in the area near Kyoto.

Why go to a random little city on the other side of Japan you ask? Well Hikone hosts the Japan Center for Michigan Universities, and a couple of our friends are studying abroad there and will only be in Japan for a few more weeks, so we wanted to visit them while we still had the chance.

As lovely as the trains in Japan are, they are not cheap when it comes to cross-country travel. The bullet train to Kyoto can get you there in about one and a half hours (which is wicked fast), but is outside of our poor-college-student-travelling-Japan budget, so instead we took a night bus. It was fine as night buses go...except for a small little issue that came up. When they were announcing over the intercomm when the bus would be making each of its stops, we heard the bus driver say 9:30 for our stop, not 6:30 (not that in Japanese there is a one-syllable difference in saying those two times). When I ended up waking up around 7, I asked the bus driver if he thought we would be on time for our stop, only to find that we had already passed it. But, being Japan, in any given region every city is connected by trains, so we just hopped of the bus, found the closest train station and made our way to Hikone.

One of the first thing that one has to do in cities like Hikone is rent a bike. Unlike Tokyo, there aren't trains and buses going every which way, in fact there were none. So, bikes it was. That actually became one of the best parts of the trip though. I had forgotten the absolutely freedom you can have when you have a bike. It's still significantly faster than walking, but unlike trains you can literally go anywhere. The first day we spent taking care of the necessary things to do. There is a castle in Hikone that is the obvious must-see for anybody going there, and we went to see our friends' campus and just get a better feel for the city in general. As with most trips, probably best shown in pictures.

Hikone Castle. Looks nice on the outside, but is way different from European castles. The inside was very stripped down and utilitarian, mostly just bare wood creating a system of different rooms. It was likely much more decorative back in the day, but for some reason that isn't preserved.

The various people we we went to Hikone Castle with. Dan (left) was our Japanese TA freshman year, Brenda (right) is our friend studying in Hikone.

After our touristic-efficiency during the first day, Jeric and I were all out of plans. We literally did the most minimal planning possible for the trip. He booked the bus, I booked the hotel, and then we just went there and figured stuff would happen. Every day that we were there we stopped by the tourist center several times, just taking a look at what there was to see in the area. Throughout the whole process we came to know the women working there pretty well. It got to the point that when we came into the building we'd say "I'm home!", to which she'd reply "Welcome back!". It was a lot of fun, and she gave us some great ideas for what to do the next day.

The first order of business on the second day in Hikone was to figure out how to get to Tagataisha (多賀大社), a fairly well known temple in the area. I use the term "area" lightly, it ended up being about a half-hour bike ride away, but hey that's the beauty of bikes right? And the fact that the act of getting there on its own was an adventure just added to the enjoyment.

A gorgeous stream going under the bridge that leads up to the temple.

Entrance to the temple grounds. This was one of the bigger temples/shrines I have been to. It actually had several different shrines, with one main temple in the middle and paths leading off to other areas.

By the time we had gotten to the temple and back it was early in the afternoon, and our friends were still busy with various study-abroad related activities. So after a nice long bike ride what did we decide would be a good idea? Climb a mountain. Yea, let's climb a mountain.

Another temple that was at the foot of the mountain. 

Jeric hiking through a bamboo grove that was along the path to the top.

View from the top of the mountain, overlooking the city of Hikone, some other mountain in the distance, and then Lake Biwa to the right. 

Once the mountain had been conquered, we met up with our friends and just spent the rest of the day hanging out with them and biking around more of the city. By the time we got home it was around 11 at night, and we were absolutely wiped out from the most physically active day that I've had in a good long time, but it was a ton of fun, and all the exercise got me really excited to start skiing soon.

Our last day there was equivalently busy, it just involved less biking. That day I had made plans with one of our friends to get lunch with her old host family, because through a happenstance I ended up Skyping with them once and they wanted to meet me. They were really cool and very nice, and I had a great time meeting them. In many ways they were very different from my host family, but you can definitely see the same cultural background that they all share. It's definitely got both good and bad parts, but regardless it's interesting how much of a person's foundation comes from their cultural setting.

After that we met all met up and went to an event hosted by the the Japanese cultural exchange club at one of the local universities (by local I mean it was only 45 minutes away). Upon coming to Japan, we were told that Waseda is one of the top private universities in the country. Granted, it's nice to hear that, but honestly I never held that much stock in it, I mean everybody knows about it, but everybody knows about all the universities here. It wasn't until that event that I realized how true it was though. When I first mentioned to somebody that I was a study abroad student at Waseda, all of the Japanese students in the immediate vicinity let out a synchronized "WHOA!". Needless to say, for the sake of preserving social balance I began saying that I was just studying abroad in Tokyo. Apparently, going to a rural college and saying that you are a student at Waseda is roughly equivalent to saying that you are a law student at Harvard and cure cancer in your free time. With Japanese universities, it seems like it really is the name that matters most. Once I caught on though and people got over the whole Waseda thing, I had a great time meeting all of the students there and mingling.

I ended off the night by going to Kyoto to meet up with a friend who is studying there, as well as an old TA of ours. It was nice to catch up with them, and we ended up doing karaoke which is always fun, not mention the fact that I realized I can actually crank out a good amount of songs in Japanese now.

Overall it was a great little vacation to cap off the end of the semester. It was fun to see old friends, make some new ones, and see a part of Japan that I had yet to explore.

Bathing done right

Unfortunately for the interest of this blog, the past week has been pretty standard. Classes, juggling, friends, speaking Japanese - the works. The one thing that has been of particular interest lately is that this week and next week are finals, and so beyond having to begin studying for those, the end is drawing near! Don't get me wrong, I've definitely enjoyed several of my classes this semester....and there are several others that I have definitely not. Regardless, now that I know how the system works I some good ideas for what to do next semester, and I will be not be sad once this one is over.

With the lack of particularly interesting things happening, I'm going to take this opportunity to talk about something that did absolutely blow my mind this week. Baths.

As some of you may know, the way of taking a bath in Japan is completely different from in the US. Before you can set foot in a bathtub in Japan, one must first take a shower. Seems a bit redundant at first right? The reason is because you don't use any soap or shampoo in the tub. You don't put anything in the tub. Ever. Nothing but your nice, clean body. In Japan a bath isn't about cleaning, it's about enjoying the hot water, having a moment to relax and to release the stresses from the day. Also, the same water is used by everybody in the family. And why not? Since everybody is clean before they get in, the water stays clean, and so it makes sense not to waste the time or resources to drain and refill the bathtub for every member of the family (since in most Japanese families everybody takes a bath every night). Because of this system, Japanese bathtubs are usually in a room by themselves with a detachable shower head so you can shower not-in-the-tub.

Thankfully, this very different method of bath-tubbery was taught to us during the first week we got here (prior to meeting our host families), so I was adequately informed by the time that first bath came around. Having been here for around 4 months though, this couldn't have blown my mind this week right? I mean, yea it's a really efficient hot-water-enjoying-system, but I'm used to it by now. So what was so cool?

This week, I discovered what happens to that nice, still-clean water after it's gone cold the next day. I walked into the bathroom to brush my teeth the other day, and imagine my surprise to see a hose running across the middle of the (very small) room. I asked, my host mom about it, and it turns out that you can hook up a hose to the bathtub, connect it to the laundry machine, and it will use the bathtub water to do your laundry! Is that not the most efficient thing you've ever heard of!?!? I thought it was pretty incredible.

This is just a small example of an otherwise bigger thing that I love about Japan. In the US you'll often here people mentioning the "small things" that, if everybody did them, could make a huge difference in terms of cutting down waste and conserving resources. In Japan, these are already part of the culture. Water and food are never wasted, there are 6 different kinds of recycling and absolutely everybody sorts things out properly, people never use paper towels in restrooms. And those are just the examples that come to mind right now.

There's a lot more that could be said about baths in Japan, it's quite the thing here. While its pretty different, they seem to have gotten the bathtub thing right though.

Entering Adulthood

Despite popular opinion, I didn't actually become an adult until today.

In Japan, the official age at which one becomes an adult is 20, and today was Coming of Age Day (成人の日). While obviously not everybody turns 20 on the second Monday in January, that's the day that the hold the celebration. Every city holds its own, government-sponsored festivities, and so I was invited to the seijinshiki (成人式) for Shinjuku Ward (新宿区).

Typically, a seijinshiki involves all of the 20-year-olds gathering in one place, listening to a very long speech, and then being rewarded for their step into adulthood (and resolve for listening to the whole speech) with some sort of very nice gift. However, that ain't exactly Shinjuku style. Shinjuku is one of the biggest commercial areas in Tokyo, it houses the busiest train station in the world, and has the densest population of foreigners in Tokyo. So how does one come of age in Shinjuku fashion?

One has a party.

This afternoon all of the "seijin" (成人) of Shinjuku gathered at the Keio Plaza Hotel to have what was essentially an enormous mingle-party. Registration opened an hour before the actually festivities began, and so of course I arrived their five minutes early for registration. However, the hotel was already absolutely bolstering with activity. As I later discovered, the seijinshiki is quite frequently a huge reunion between individuals and their high school classmates, and so by the time I got there hordes of laughing friend groups had already formed. The hotel was completely overrun with seijin, and the first thing you notice is the sea of girls dressed in kimonos.

Now I'm not quite sure what you think of when you think of Japan, but kimonos are rare to come by these days, particularly in Tokyo. They're incredibly expensive, and typically only worn on special occasions, and a seijinshiki is one of them. Also, the kimono that is worn for seijinshiki usually has incredibly long sleeves (like, almost down to the floor), and apparently once you're married you can't wear a kimono like that. Just another example of how absolutely everything done in Japan has some kind of meaning behind it.

Note that all of the females are wearing kimonos

Once the actual event started all of us made our way into the enormous ballroom. The festivities began almost exactly on time (I'm convinced that this only happens in Japan), and as is typical of pretty much any ceremony it started with a speech or two. I was actually able to understand most of the speeches. The covered your standard topics for such an event: follow your dream, work hard, take responsibility, thank those who have helped you grow. There were also several beautiful spreads of food, tables setup around the area, and probably over 1000 seijin.

The sea of seijin

The food was absolutely delicious, and we had a group of exchange students that had slowly grown throughout the event. At one point I was actually approached by a girl from Denmark who was there alone and asked to join us. And come on, who's gonna deny that? So she joined our motley crew and we all had a great time.

Today also happened to be the first snow of the year in Tokyo. And we aren't talking a flake here or there. It was absolutely pouring snow for the duration of the day, which was great except for the fact that there was a commute to be had to the seijinshiki and back. But hey, it felt homey, and when I got back my host family and I went out and played in the snow, so I've got no complaints.

The (as of today) Winter Wonderland known as the street corner by my apartment.

While I don't necessarily feel any more grown-up, it was great to go see how coming of age is celebrated in Japan, and to get a familiar taste of "real" winter....although just a taste will suffice.

Train Tracks in the Tokyo Tumult

This past week hasn't been particularly exciting. I've spent some time with friends, and classes have started again. I always enjoy going back to school, mainly because it means seeing a lot of people on a daily basis, but I usually enjoy classes as well. Other than that though, there has been nothing of note really. So today due to the lack of interesting adventures, let's take a look at trains!

Train System Layout

I usually joke that the map for the train system in Tokyo was drawn by a 5-year-old. It would be funny...except for the fact that I absolutely believe it. If you need proof, just take a peak at the map. Keep in mind, this is the "simplified" map, it's actually a little bit messier.

The Tokyo Metro train network map.

Here's the kicker: that map is only the trains that are operated by the government-run Tokyo Metro system. There are also the trains run by Japan Railways (which are equally as numerous), and a handful of other privately owned lines that snake all throughout the city.

After living in Chicago this summer, I thought I had trains down. However, going from a system with 7 or 8 different colored trains to one that has more colors than I even know how to say in Japanese was quite the leap. Turns out it can be hard to determine which of 3 different shades of blue represents the train that you actually want to get on....

But you know what's even crazier about the psychedelic ball of yarn that Tokyo calls a train system?

It works. Tremendously well. It's the single most effective, well-oiled, convenient transportation system I have ever seen. All of the trains usually run every 3-10 minutes depending on the line and station, and are almost never late. Ever. It's absolutely incredible, and once you figure out the diagrams you can know exactly how long it will take to get to your stop, and which car of the train to board in order to be closest to your transfer just by glancing at a sign as you walk by.

Train Etiquette

In some ways train-goers in Japan are much more polite than in the US, and in some ways getting on a train can be the most stressful part of your day.

First for the polite part. On trains in Japan, absolutely nobody ever talks on their cellphone. It doesn't matter of the emperor himself calls you, you do not answer your phone on a train. Nor do you eat on the train, or do anything that could generally be perceived as disturbing. Because of that, riding the train  can be a really pleasant experience, and everybody is usually very cordial in the way they respect the other passengers.

That is, except during rush hour.

Despite popular belief that you have a "personal bubble", no such thing exists on a train in Tokyo. The only restriction to how many people can fit on a train is how hard the station attention can shove people in. Literally, the attendants will start literally packing people in when necessary. Fortunately I never cared much about personal space, which is good because on a rush hour train, you ain't gettin' it; you're lucky if you have wiggle room for your nose.

Tickets

The only thing more efficient than the trains themselves in Tokyo is the ticketing system. Instead of buying an actual train ticket, almost everybody has an RFID card that you swipe when you enter and leave a train platform. Fares are based on the distance that you traveled, and are automatically deducted from your card. All you have to do is charge it up, and you can literally use that card to get to the other side of Japan.

Despite the moments of insanity, overall the train system in Tokyo is astounding. It's wicked efficient, connects all major areas of the world's biggest city, and has a color spectrum that could give the rainbow a run for its money.