Tokyo Trip: Part 1

Hello all!

I hope you are all doing well. I see that Oberlin is supposed to be in the mid-70’s this week, a fact of which I am very jealous. Osaka continues to range in the 40’s to 50’s during the day, and alternates between somewhat cloudy and rainy. It was sunny on Monday when I got up in the morning, so taking that as a sign that it would be warm, I made the poor choice to wear a sun dress and a light jacket to school. Big mistake—no sooner had I arrived on campus than it clouded over and began to rain, even with some snowflakes mixed in. Sigh. The rain ceased after a little while, but a frigid wind continued throughout the day, making the walk back home pretty painful. I will not be so fooled by the weather again! It’s supposed to rain again from today through Friday, and will hopefully clear up this weekend in time for no other than the famous O-hanami! O-hanami is the celebration of the arrival of spring as signified by the blooming of the cherry blossom trees, which are famous in Japan for being very beautiful, ubiquitous, and short-lived. (The name literally means “Flower Viewing.”) More to come later on that event, once it has happened.

Anyway, the point of this post is to talk about my trip to Tokyo! I will make this entry an introduction to the trip, with a description of our daily activities, and will post separately about our main sightseeing activities so as not to tire my readers and myself.

As previously mentioned, I was in Japan’s capital from last Monday afternoon until Friday night for Kansai Gaidai’s week long spring break. I went with 3 of my friends who are participating in the same program, and we stayed at the Khaosan Samurai youth hostel in Asakusa (浅草), an area conveniently located in the center of Tokyo. We did not come with very many concrete plans; we had previously discussed a few of the places that we definitely wanted to see (the Tsukiji fish market, Akihabara, etc.), but other than that had not figured much of anything out in the way of scheduling or transportation. That proved to be lucky in a way, since the uncooperative weather would likely have likely upset our plans anyway. Monday and Tuesday were, if cloudy, at least reasonably not cold, but Wednesday and Thursday were both extremely wet and rainy. Also, I caught a cold on Monday. It was not too bad, mostly just a sore throat in the morning and a runny nose, but it was still annoying. Thank goodness for the number of free pocket-sized packs of tissues handed out on practically every block (advertisements from anything from restaurants to blood donation services). In spite of the setbacks I think the vacation was still a success. Maybe we didn’t get to see as many famous spots as we had hoped, but I think we still got to see some interesting things, and I also appreciated the chance to relax with my friends without having to worry about classes or commitments with my host family.


Our quartet of travelers, photographed courteously by the middle-aged German lady from the hostel lounge

First I will introduce the characters, since I haven’t specifically spoken about my friends much here previously. From left to right, photographed here are Ryan, Emily, Alex, and of course yours truly. These three are the people who I probably spend the most time with at Kansai Gaidai. They are all top quality people, and I am happy to say that I did not get tired of any of them during the whole trip, as I am often prone to doing, in spite of sharing nearly every hour with them.

Ryan and Emily are both Oberlin students in the same year as I, but I had never really interacted with them before besides exchanging a few words here and there. We took a semester of Japanese together a year and a half ago, but all I really knew of them then were that they were the people who always did awkwardly hilarious skits together whenever we had to act out dialogues. (Ah, those were the days.) As such, I am glad that I got to spend this semester with them, as it turns out that I like both of them a lot, and I’m happy that we have gotten to be friends. I can’t keep up with their geekiness, and conversations in their company frequently revolve around detailed discussions of computer games and anime (Japanese animations) that I have never even heard of...Nonetheless, they both also know a lot about Japan and Japanese history, and they are a lot of fun to be around. Emily has always been really friendly to me, and we are able to relate in many ways. She also has a sharp sense of humor, and has come up with apt nicknames and accompanying rants for several of the weirdos who frequent the Kansai Gaidai lounge, such as The Pokemaster, The Creeper, and Darth Blobbular (actually I’m not sure if the last one was her or Ryan). Additionally, she provides much prompting and complementing to Ryan’s abundant and amusing stories. On his own, Ryan is usually not that talkative, but he has proven to have a vast store of knowledge of anything related to computers, the Internet, and Japanese history, in addition to many other topics. And, as previously mentioned, he possesses far more than his fair share of hilarious stories, as a result of which I am not sure whether, given the opportunity, I would be extremely excited or extremely terrified to meet his family and the residents of the surrounding town.


Alex proudly displaying Calorie Mate Block in Potato, Maple, Chocolate, Fruits, and Cheese flavors, from top to bottom.

I met Alex during orientation week for this program, and since then he has been my constant companion in my travels around Japan (as you may have been able to tell from name-dropping in earlier posts), as well as in my Japanese literature class and in other more mundane activities at school on a day-to-day basis. He is in his third year as a world literature major at Simon Fraser University in his hometown of Vancouver, Canada. Being the only non-American in our group, he often defends and cheers for Canada in conversations, in spite of their weaker dollar. He is also able to participate in Emily and Ryan’s nerdy conversations rather more than I am. Besides Canada, his interests also include Calorie Mate, a Japanese snack that he originally discovered in a computer game at some point, and which provides consumers with lasting energy and balanced nutrition in substitute for a meal. It usually come in “block” form (those Japanese sure know how to use language to market food), photographed above, and whose appearance and texture (and taste) are somewhere between a piece of shortbread and a dog biscuit. You can also buy Calorie Mate in jelly and liquid forms, and they grow increasingly gross (or, I mean, um, nourishing) as you go through the flavors. But I digress. Not limited only to Calorie Mate, he is somehow able to eat copious amounts of food, such as in his and Ryan’s “man contests,” yet remain somehow skinny. (Wait, I think I’m still off topic.) Anyway, he is always very nice to me, and provides much witty commentary for our situations. He is another person that I am glad to have grown close to over the semester thus far.


The front of the youth hostel. Picture from their website, since I didn’t get a good one.

We first decided about a month ago that we would be going to Tokyo for our break, at which point I began to research Tokyo youth hostels online. There were some sketchy-looking ones for as cheap as around $15/night, but I wasn’t so sure that I trusted them. We settled on the Khaosan Samurai because of its high rating across several websites, and although at $30/night per person it was twice as much as some other hostels, it was still very reasonable, and it turned out to be a really good choice. We shared two rooms on the third floor, which were small but clean and comfortable, and each included a bunk bed and a desk. There were toilets down the hall and showers and vanity sinks on the floor below. Also on our floor were a kitchen and lounge, complete with a large flat-screen TV and a number of DVDs free for watching, a refrigerator, utensils and pans for cooking, and even plates and cups and dining utensils. I could see how one could easily live there quite cheaply and comfortably for a long period of time. Again, everything was very clean and new. I was thoroughly impressed. Another perk was the free wireless internet. Other guests at the hotel included some European college-age backpackers, a young married couple from England, and a random group of five middle-aged German ladies who we observed sitting around in the lounge area eating microwaveable corn-on-the-cob.


My room, a.k.a. “The Dungeon”


The neighboring, far sunnier, room


The lounge; the kitchen area was to the left.

For meals, we usually ate out at a restaurant for dinner wherever we happened to be, which somehow frequently seemed to be areas with the most expensive restaurants, and for breakfast and lunch we usually snacked off of items bought in a grocery store or at conbini (convenience stores, including 7-11). It turns out that the onigiri (rice balls, often with some kind of filling, and wrapped in seaweed) from 7-11 are quite delicious. Hmm...


A map of the Tokyo subway system

For transportation, we did a good amount of walking, but we also managed to navigate the intricate subway system pretty successfully. There were many more routes than I was able to keep track of, and in addition, half were owned by the Toei Line, and half were owned by the Tokyo Metro Line. What is the difference, you ask? Well, I’m not really sure. The two halves are not extricable from each other, and there is no way to tell them apart on the map except by checking a key in the corner, but you have to pay for each of them separately, and sometimes different entrances to the same station only service one of the two lines. So, that provided additional confusion particularly when we were trying to transfer trains, but it all worked out in the end. Prices varied, but I would estimate that it only added up to about $8-10 or so a day on transportation.

In spite of our best efforts to get an early start, I think we never left the hostel before 10 am. Most attractions close at around 5, so we usually migrated back to the hostel at around 8 or 9. But, like I said, it was relaxing, and I had a good time. I wish I were on spring break again. Is it really over already?

On Friday, Emily and Ryan decided to take public transportation back to Osaka, which is much cheaper than any other mode of transport, but also took about 10 hours and involved many transfers. They left at 10:30 in the morning, leaving Alex and myself an additional day to wander the city before catching the night bus to Kyoto at 11:45 pm.

Alright, this post is getting long so I will end it here, but I hope it has been enlightening and entertaining to you, and I will write more soon.


As if you needed any enticement to return for the sequel to this post, I will leave you with yet another teaser photograph to study. This gem is an ad for a male escort service that Alex and I spotted in Kabuki-cho, a seedy neighborhood in Shinjuku. Sorry the faces are a little hard to see, but I think that amid the “Casanovas,” mustache-man merits contemplation. (Click for a larger view!)

Posting from Tokyo!

Hello friends and family!

I am posting from my hostel in Tokyo! Tonight is our last night here, and tomorrow night I will be catching the night bus to arrive in Kyoto at approximately 6 am on Saturday morning. We're staying at a youth hostel called the Khaosan Samurai, which has proven to be very cheap, convenient, and clean. I will hopefully write an extended post about the trip including a description of the hostel, which I highly recommend, as well as all of our other activities, over the weekend so I can post it when I get back to Kansai Gaidai on Monday. Highlights include a visit to the Tokyo National Museum, meeting relatives, and numerous famous shrines and temples! I'm hoping that I will be able to visit Tokyo again sometime soon since it has been really cloudy and rainy pretty much every day since we got here, which was a letdown. Also laziness prevented us from seeing quite as much as I originally planned (i.e., getting to the Tsukiji Fish Market 20 minutes before it closes at noon (the peak hours are from 5-8 am) is not advisable since all that is left are fish guts). Still, I think it has been a successful spring break.

In the meantime I leave you with the following teasers!


Dancing Jomon-era figures!


Ginza at night time!


And last but not least, an all-you-can-eat dessert buffet!

Hiroshima Trip

Last Saturday I went to Hiroshima! It was a school-sponsored trip, school-sponsored in that it was organized by a professor as a field trip for his class but was also open to anyone else in the Asian Studies Program who wanted to come along, not school-sponsored in that we had to pay for ourselves. (But it wasn't that expensive.) On the whole I enjoyed the trip a lot, and although all of the atom bomb related stuff was very sad and difficult to hear/look at, it was also a really nice day and it ended up being a lot of fun, really.

I had to get up at 6 in the morning (ugh) before the trip, and I ended up convening with most of the other people on the trip at the Hirakata City train station at 7:33 as arranged by the organizing professor. We took a series of trains to Shin-Osaka where we caught the Shinkansen to Hiroshima. The Shinkansen is Japan's famous bullet train, and indeed it went really fast--the distance that turned out to take around 6.5 hours by bus took only 1.5 hours by train--and they even had a lady come through with a cart of snacks and drinks and toys like on the Hogwarts Express. Almost everyone who was going on the trip (I think there were around 80 people) went on that Shinkansen, although I believe a few people went early by themselves.



Out the window of the Shinkansen

We arrived at Hiroshima at a little past 10, and from then we were free until 1, when we were supposed to meet in a lecture hall to hear a talk. From the station you could opt either to take a trolley to the Peace Park, the location of most of the atomic bomb memorial items such as statues, buildings, and the museum, or take a (supposedly) 20-minute walk. I decided to walk with my friends Alex, Emily, and Ryan (more to come about them in a future post, and they are the same people I'm going to Tokyo with next week), and we ended up getting a little lost along the way, meaning that instead of 20 minutes it took us about 45 minutes...no worry though, it was just the scenic route, and because of it we got to walk along the "Promenade of Peace," which was a road lined with various kinds of trees donated from foreign countries after all the trees were wiped out from the bomb in the 40's. We were supposed to visit the atomic bomb museum before the lecture, but we ended up not having time. Nonetheless, we did visit most of the other monuments around the park, and most notably we got to see the Genbaku-Domu (Atomic Bomb Dome), one of the few buildings that survived the blast. It is pretty scary to imagine being in the building at the time of the explosion, as it is so wrecked now. The government decided to maintain it as a symbol of the destruction of the bomb, and it is pretty famous. (i.e., we read about it in Genki (the widespread elementary Japanese textbook).)



The Genbaku Domu

We also got to see a new smaller museum-like thing that was built sometime in the past few years, and it was very moving. The central part of it was a huge circular room which you enter by walking down a ramp that encircles it, and at every few feet along the walk was a little plaque that had information about the bomb and the situation leading up to it. (All of the information had translations into English, Chinese, and Korean.) I thought they did a really nice job of presenting the information impartially--it was all matter-of-fact, did not put blame on any one country, but was still very engrossing. The central room itself was quite thought-provoking; it was mostly empty space, but the walls were covered in 100,000+ tiles representing each person who died because of the bomb, and together they depicted Hiroshima shortly after the bomb was dropped. There was also a fountain in the middle, and benches where you could sit and contemplate. At the exit were computers that had a database of every person who died because of the bomb, and you could search by name for the profile of every person, which included their name, photo, their age in 1945, and some basic personal information such as their occupation. Very hard-hitting. As Stalin said (am I really quoting Stalin on my blog?), "the death of one man is a tragedy; the death of millions is a statistic." I thought that that database really helped to bring the focus back to individuals so visitors could truly appreciate how much had been lost.

I thought one of the highlights of the trip was the lecture we got to hear from a woman who survived the explosion. She is in her 80's now, and she spoke in Japanese and was translated by the professor organizing the trip. She was apparently a schoolgirl at the time, and the whole thing sounded pretty horrific. I won't go into details since they are pretty gory and unsettling, but actually what I found most interesting was her life afterward. Apparently Japanese people avoided marrying people who were exposed to the bomb since the radiation would cause birth defects in their children, something I never thought about. That must have been really difficult for them. She said that she felt a lot of anger and resentment throughout her life toward Americans for ruining her childhood and taking her father, but when she was older she was asked to tell her story to foreign students like us, she saw American students crying and asking for her forgiveness, and only then did her anger finally evaporate. I found that really touching.

After that we went to the atomic bomb museum, which was of course depressing...I don't have too much to say about it, besides that it, like parts of the lecture, was often gory and unsettling. I had visited it once before when I came to Japan when I was 11, but all I remembered were the gory parts that burned themselves into my mind when I first saw them. Yeah...I think it's important for people to see though. Certainly no one who sees all of that could possibly support the use of nuclear weaponry.



The Peace Park--you can see the flame that will be extinguished once the world is free of nuclear weapons, and behind it the Genbaku Domu

One famous element of the Peace Park is the incredible number of paper cranes. A girl named Sadako was exposed to nuclear radiation from the blast, and because of it she developed leukemia as a young girl. Going by the old saying that if you fold 1,000 paper cranes, one wish will come true, she began folding them in hope of saving her life. Sadly she died while she was still really young, but now people from around the world fold millions of paper cranes and place them around the park in a wish for world peace. Again, moving. There is a Children's Monument on a side of the park that specifically commemorates Sadako's efforts, and that is the location of the greatest concentration of paper cranes, but they were visible everywhere in Hiroshima. Some people had crazy talents with making and arranging paper cranes, and Alex's host family made a lot (I don't know if there were 1,000, but quite possibly there were...) for him to bring.



So many paper cranes from Alex's family


The Children's Monument


Alex and me with the cranes

After that, Alex, Emily, Ryan, and I went out to lunch/dinner (what do you call a meal at 3:45 pm?), and then Emily and Ryan left, and Alex and I stayed around Hiroshima for awhile. We still had a lot of time to kill so we went to their shopping area, which turned out to be really happening. Most exciting for me was a food shop that we went into that carried foods from around the world, most of all America. I got myself some Quaker instant oatmeal and Baby Bell cheese--yes! Also I bought ingredients for oatmeal chocolate chunk cookies which I made a couple of days ago. (I'll have to write more about that later--what a mess. But they came out well in the end.)



A cool umbrella shop. I wish I had bought one

Alex and I took the night bus back to Osaka. The night buses in Japan are run by several different companies, but they go pretty much anywhere, usually leaving at 10 or 11 pm, and arrive at their destination pretty early in the morning, and they're much cheaper than the Shinkansen. Our bus left at 10:45, by which time most shops were closed, so we ended up sitting in McDonald's for awhile while we waited. (I think the fries I got there were the first thing I'd eaten from McDonald's in at least 3 years.) The bus was pretty empty, and besides a few other people who were on the same field trip as us, there were only 2 or 3 Japanese people. It was very quiet, and we arrived in Osaka at 5 am. Then I went home and crashed.


That's about it for now...I need to go home now or else maybe I would write more. Anyway, I am now done with midterms, and I'm on spring break! Yeah! I don't feel like it's spring break already. Crazy. On Monday I'm taking the Shinkansen to Tokyo with the abovementioned friends, so I'll post from there. Happy weekend!

Other Things

I have not really been keeping up with all of the posting that I meant to do on here, but hopefully things will look up soon. I have my last midterm in an hour, and then it will be spring break! I will be in Tokyo, where I will supposedly have free wireless internet, so maybe I will be able to catch up then. Anyway, I thought I would post a few links...

The Maru Blog. Super cute pictures of a fat cat in Japan, as well as charmingly bad English.

Funny article in The Onion about racial slurs.

My pictures from Hiroshima. Don't worry, they're not too depressing.

Happy Friday!

Food!

I need to leave school pretty soon, but I thought I would write a quick update since it's been awhile and otherwise I won't be able to post until next Monday. Anyway, things are still good here, and it was really rainy this week but it was sunny today, and to cap it off my friends and I went to an all-you-can-eat pizza restaurant in Osaka. And on the way we were approached by some guy who introduced himself by saying "I am not a terrorist," (always know you're in for fun when you hear that) and he went on to talk for like 10 minutes about how Japan does not support Japanese-Americans enough and thus the country itself is weakened. He would not stop talking. I thought we might never get away but eventually we did.

Anyway, I was going to write a post where I summed up my daily activities since I have not actually really talked about that here, but I think I might save it for later. Instead, perhaps I will talk about some of the interesting new foods I have eaten since coming here.



My MOS Burger

First of all, there is MOS Burger. It is a pretty widespread Japanese burger chain, and in addition to having regular hamburgers like you might find in America, they also have their own Japan-ified varieties, such as what I got, which consisted of a kakiage patty (fried...stuff, which I believe included some kinds of seafood and vegetables) and a rice bun. I think the rice bun was the best part. It was nicely crisped on the outside, and it complemented the patty and teriyaki sauce they put on it. You can also get the rice bun on a limited amount of other kinds of patty, including regular hamburger patties.



Taiyaki

Next, taiyaki. These are usually sold for 150 yen at any kind of outdoor fair or market, as well as also at small shops around town. They are basically a fish-shaped pastry type thing that is cooked inside of a heated metal mold, and they are usually filled with red bean paste, although other kinds of fillings are also common, such as green tea and vanilla or chocolate custard. I usually see them with pancake-like batter on the outside, although in this example, which I bought across the street from Kansai Gaidai's main gate, I think the outside was some kind of green tea flavored mochi (pounded sweet rice). They are really good.



Cafeteria food; the one above is the Hina Matsuri (doll festival) special.

Then there is the cafeteria food. Perhaps that is not something new for me, but they serve pretty different food than what I am used to. My lunches usually range between 300 and 550 yen per day, and they have a decent selection of foods to choose from. Usually I go for the donburi (rice with egg cooked with other things on top), although they change the availability of other things every day and sometimes they have pretty interesting things. For example, on March 3rd, it was Hina Matsuri, or the doll festival, so for 500 yen they had a special meal in its honor. It consisted of a bowl of udon noodles, a plate of [I don't know what it's called, but it has sushi rice on the bottom with scrambled egg and something pink and bits of fried tofu and fish eggs and other things on top], and a sweet jelly. One thing that I have come to love in the cafeteria, although I do not have a picture of it, is their black sesame ice cream. At first glance that may seem weird, but then I don't think it's any weirder than peanut butter ice cream. (I want peanut butter ice cream now.) It is dark gray and tastes like, well, sesame. But it's really good. I thought it was weird the first time that I had it but now I can't stop eating it.



Hot Lemon

Finally, I present you with perhaps one of Japan's greatest inventions, Hot Lemon. It's dispensed from vending machines pretty much everywhere, and it is SO GOOD. Sometimes it is also marketed as Vitamin Lemon because supposedly it has a lot of Vitamin C. Whatever. It is the best. Pretty much it's heated lemonade (they dispense hot drinks from vending machines here!), but then it is so much more than that. You just have to try it.


There are a lot of other foods but I don't have pictures of them...perhaps this will have to be continued later.

This weekend I'm going to Hiroshima with some friends, and it is part of a field trip led by a professor to the A-bomb museum. After seeing the museum we'll hear a talk from a survivor of the bombing, and then we'll be done by 2:30 so we will have time to look around the city. Post is sure to follow...

Happy weekend!

Culture Differences

Living in Japan is very easy. Japanese society is structured so that it's easy to live here. There are vending machines everywhere, the public transportation is clean and efficient, and everyone is really polite and will do everything they can to help you even if your Japanese is limited or nonexistent. That said, I do not love everything about Japan. I have noticed some cultural differences that nag me here that struck me as a big change from what I'm used to, and they really make me appreciate things from home that I never noticed before.

First of all, Japan is certainly a modern nation in terms of technology, government, and culture, but there are still some aspects of the culture that are a lot more conservative than in America. For example, attitudes toward women. It's not that women are repressed here or anything, but then there is absolutely no sense of the feminism that I'm used to at home, and there is a lot of pressure here to conform with Japan's gender standards. Women here generally seem to be expected to do all of the cooking and house chores, which I guess is somewhat similar to at home, but it seems a lot more pronounced and extreme here. My host father does not cook at all, and on nights when my host mother is out, she sets everything up so that all he has to do is boil water and put rice on a plate. I'm not sure what he would do if he were on his own, but I suspect that we would eat a lot of instant ramen. (Notably, I have not eaten any instant ramen since I got here.)

What I have found affects me the most is the bordering obsession on women's appearance. All of the women here are extremely well groomed, well dressed, and skinny. I have felt a distinct pressure to dress better and wear makeup every day since I got here, and I am feeling very chubby. Despite my best efforts, a lot of times I feel uncomfortable on the train compared to all the women around me, since by comparison I still look like a slob. In fact, no matter how well I might try to dress, I feel like I am still on the borderline of acceptability in appearance. I don't think I have seen a single woman on the train wearing a t-shirt. Most women wear high heels every day, even among college students (and I mean stilettos), and whenever I go to the bathroom on campus, it is always crowded with girls fixing their makeup or hair. I would never see that at home. If someone wore high heels and or stood around in the bathroom in the middle of the day adjusting their appearance at Oberlin, I think they would be laughed out of town. (Or rather, they would probably run out of town as fast as their 3-inch heels would let them when they saw the way everyone else looked.)

The diet here has also taken some getting used to. Eating in my co-op at school, we almost never have meat (and when we do, I don't eat it), and a large component of every meal is composed of vegetables, especially leafy greens. I try to make a dive for the vegetables whenever I see them, but still I feel like I'm not getting enough leafy greens. (I never realized I cared so much.) It seems to me that my host mother serves very few vegetables, maybe as a side dish or something, and central to every meal is always meat and rice. In fact, not a meal goes by without meat. I told her that I would eat meat but didn't like it, and she claims to have cut back on the amount of meat that she serves, but it is still everywhere. I wouldn't mind at all if she made herself and my host father a meat dish and just didn't give it to me, but that seems to be off the radar. Now I have given in, and I usually pick the meat out of the rest of my food and set it aside rather than trying to make myself eat it. Also, there is evidently no such thing as whole wheat bread here. The only bread that they carry in the supermarket is bleached paper-white, and it is baked so that each slice is a perfect square. (How do they do that? And why?) It is always sold pre-sliced and there are no end pieces. I guess it's part of the expectation that everything be perfect, but still...I miss whole wheat. I can deal with the brown. (Also, they carry almost no real butter in the supermarket. I'd say there is a 5-1 ratio of margarine to butter in any display. What's with that.) People always talk about how the American diet is so unhealthy, but while it might be true that most people in Japan are thinner than in America, I judge my diet here to be about 60% as healthy as what I am used to.

The thing that bothers me most about Japan is the smoking. Smoking carries none of the social stigma that it has in the US, which seems a little funny to me given the focus on cleanliness and politeness that pervades so much of Japan. Smoking in restaurants and cafes here is unfortunately legal and perfectly common. The karaoke bar that my host father frequents is really small (the whole thing is maybe the size of your average bedroom) and enclosed, yet there are generally at least 2 people smoking at a time. It is so hard to breathe. To me, tobacco smoke smells like death. If I were president, the first thing I would do would be to eradicate tobacco from the face of the country. I think that if I were considering moving to Japan, the main thing that would make me hesitate is the prevalence of tobacco. There are even cigarette vending machines on practically every other block. whywhywhy.

It has been funny to hear about Japanese people's perceptions of America. I was surprised when the first thing that people I talked to thought of when they thought of America was not fat people, or McDonald's or conservative Christians, but guns. Apparently they think that everyone in America has multiple guns and that it is dangerous to walk on the street because you might get shot. I was not expecting that. I asked my host mother about it, and she explained that guns are illegal for almost everyone in Japan, and if someone holds up a knife here it's as scary for them as if someone were aiming a gun in America. Thus, the fact alone that any adult can own a gun in America is frightening for them. (And it really is a frightening fact.) Still I find it funny, since I really do not know that many people who have a gun, and I don't see them as being a major part of our culture. Also, my host mother was very impressed that I, as well as all of her past host students, already knew how to use chopsticks, and then she asked me if we have soy sauce in America. Then my host father asked me if I had ever seen kimchi before. (I guess I have to grant him that I had never eaten kimchi before I went to college, but still.)


Anyway, I didn't mean for this to sound so negative. I really like Japan, and I'm having a great time here, but the fact remains that it is not a perfect paradise, and for all its flaws I still embrace my life in America.

--

On a funny note, my Japanese Reading & Writing professor told us the traditional marriage proposal in Japan: "毎朝、みそ汁を作ってくれ": Make me miso soup every morning. (Not sure what I would do if someone said that to me.)