Things around here have been pretty quiet. With moving in all done last week was pretty much devoted to studying Japanese and wasting time on the internet. Typical that as soon as I actually have nothing to do I start looking forward to classes. Aizu is divided into labs based on the sub-school of CS that they specialize in. Kawaguchi-sensei has been asking round to try and get us placed into one. Hopefully once that is done I’ll be able to find a little more to stay busy with. We’ve been talking about travelling somewhere, but with 4 people it’s going to be a little expensive. The idea keeps getting kicked around, but we’ve all seen a fair bit of Japan during the last trip, and no one is ready to commit the money to it. In the mean time it may not be too exciting, but I guess I am learning a lot of Japanese. It would really help if there were more students around here to talk too, but the school is still mostly empty.

Over the weekend we went to dinner at Orr-sensei’s house. He’s still out of town visiting US schools but his wife and daughter were there, as well as his daughter’s boyfriend, and a handful of staff from the school. Kawaguchi-sensei came, which was really interesting. He’s only a few years older than us (just finished with his PHD in the US) and seeing him in a more casual setting outside of school really just reinforced it. Dinner was really good, and it was a great chance to practice Japanese. Orr-sensei’s daughter is starting school in the US at next year, so a lot of what we discussed was the US college environment. In Japan, students work harder in junior high and high school, but once accepted to college, it’s more or less expected to be a free ride. Even at Aizu, the staff admitted that very few students are truly motivated on their work. Coming from the US this is almost the exact opposite; students in college are expected to work harder than in high school, definitely not a free ride. Again, this is part of the reason that Aizu is so willing to accept American students. All of them are ready to work hard, even though the environment here does not explicitly require it.

Sunday we stopped in at Superstar. Since it’s their least busy day of the week we were offered a special rate. When we showed up it was completely empty, which was really nice. Instead of doing karaoke like usual, we hung out with Hoshi-san and the hostess there. It was really cool to relax with them, and again to be able to really practice Japanese in an immersive environment. One of the things that we’ve been learning here is Aizu-ben (会津弁), the local way of speaking. In Japan, regional speech patterns consist accents (like in English) as well as large numbers of completely different words. These words are completely unique to the region, and not understandable as part of the regular language. It’s really pretty amazing the amount of variance in the language. In America we certainly have accents, but there are very few words that are entirely exclusive to a specific region. Another interesting discussion we had was over social interactions. Nick mentioned that he really liked the fact that in Japan people were always much more polite. The hostess at superstar disagreed. After living in New York for two years she said that she thought Americans were actually much friendlier. She said that while Japanese were kinder and more polite during initial meetings that Americans became friends with people much more quickly. I thought it was an interesting insight. That Americans were initially unfriendly, but opened up much more quickly.

This coming weekend looks to be pretty busy. Friday we are having a nabe (鍋) party at our apartment. A group of the Aizu students are coming over, and we are going to cook dinner in a large pot on the table. It’s nice that more students are starting to get back to school, I’ve really been looking forward to meeting more people here. In the mean time its back to trying to figure out the rest of the weeks before school. Where do we want to visit in Japan?

It’s been just over a week in Aizu now, and things are starting to become a little more routine. The apartment is more or less furnished. We have curtains and two floor chairs. Someone at school had an extra table, so we should have that soon too. Mornings I’ll get up around 9, grab bread and juice at the convenience store on the way to school, and then hang around there for a few hours before going to lunch. Most afternoons we still have little things to take care of.

Monday afternoon we went to city hall to get our alien registration cards processed. We also got our name stamps (hanko 判子). In Japan hanko are often used in lieu of, or alongside a signature for legal documents. Since I don’t have a Japanese name, my hanko was printed in katakana, the alphabet used for foreign words. It looks pretty cool.

The two teachers helping us are Izumi-sensei and Kawaguchi-sensei. They’re both really awesome. Kawaguchi-sensei is also new to Aizu, he’s only been here a few months, but his English is great and he’s been really helpful in showing us around. Izumi-sensei has been in Aizu for 27 years. He originally came here from Mexico as part of a mission. Nick was really happy to meet him, since he’s been looking for someone to practice his Spanish with.

This weekend was pretty amazing too. On Friday we met up with Yamauchi-sensei, and he showed us around some of Aizu’s nightlife. We met his friend Satou-san, who works at Arai laser in Aizu. He was really friendly, and spoke a little bit of English. Yamauchi-sensei kept urging him to speak Japanese with us, which was really great. With Yamauchi’s help I know I managed to pick up at least a few new words over the course of the night. We had originally planned to visit Midnight Angel, a sister business to Superstar run by Hoshi-san’s wife. Unfortunately we arrived a little late so it was already full. Instead Satou-san took us to a different izakaya where we hung out for the rest of the night. It was really nice to have the Japanese immersion. Since the school is on break there haven’t been many people to talk to here.

On Saturday we went to a party that Noda was DJing at. This party usually has a lot of the international students from around Aizu, so it was a great opportunity to meet some of the other people here. It turns out that there were a lot more foreigners in Aizu that I’d thought. Despite having seen no one from America besides ourselves the entire week before, the party Saturday was full of them. Most of them were working as English teachers at various schools around Aizu. The music was really cool and it was a pretty fun group of people.

Sunday night was the real adventure of the weekend. We decided that we were going to cook curry at the apartment. The problem was that none of us here are really great at cooking to begin with, and none of us had ever cooked curry. On top of that our cooking set consists of half hand me down pots, and half bargain bin cookware. Finally, the curry box was entirely in Japanese with no pictures. So, while I started the vegetables and the rice McNees went to work translating the curry box. I’m almost done with the vegetables when we realize that 1) I didn’t add enough oil and the bottom of the pot is burning, and 2) the pots we were going to use are too small to hold the water for the curry or to hold the amount of rice we wanted. So, half way through I’m scrubbing the larger pot clean while the rice starts to boil over and Anderson desperately tries to stop the vegetables from overcooking. In the end it all turned out alright. The potatoes were a little burned, but everything was fine overall. We’re going to try and cook again tonight, hopefully it all turns out.

Till next time.

It's been really crazy getting back to Japan. Me and the three other Rose students left from Wilmette at 9AM Saturday morning for O'Hare. Jay got us a cab, and the drive down was pretty uneventful. The plane ride was long and boring. I slept most of the way since I'd stayed up the night before. We met our Japanese teacher, Hirotani-sensi at the airport and left from the to Aizu. That was probably the worst leg of the trip. It was about five hours on trains, about half of them local. Sitting there exhausted on a pubic train in the middle of a pile of luggage was definately not the greatest.

The next day we headed to the school to get acquainted with everyone. We met Orr-sensei, who is originally from West Lafyette, and heads the English department. He gave us a tour and introduced us to a lot of the important people on campus. For lunch we ate with the the international exchange faculty. It was really strange getting back into the swing of speaking and hearing Japanese for enitre stretches, rather than just during speaking exercices. Lunch was particularly wierd. Since everyone on the faculty was fluent in English and Japanese, the conversation alternated between the two. Neat stuff.

After lunch we met Nagashima sensei, who showed us our apartments and helped us buy things. Our apartments are actually really large. A lot bigger than I was expecting. The living room/dining room is bigger than at Rose (for those of you who know), although the bedrooms are a little smaller. The apartments were also really, really cold. So, after getting a look at them we headed out to buy things. Most Japanese homes and apartments don't have central AC or heat, so we had to buy electric heaters for our rooms. I managed to get a 900W floor model, realy cheap. Me and McNees (my roommate) also bought a rug for the living room and futons and comfoters to sleep with. Nagashima-sensei managed to round up some more things over the next few days, so we ended up most of a kitchen, and some dishes. An interesting note, apartments in Japan are completely unfurnished. So, moving in we only had heat in one room, and no refrigerator, stove, oven, etc. We now have a refrigerator, stove, and microwave. Still no oven.

On a side note, Nick McNees is from Advance Indiana, and also a Rose student. You can read his blog at hplinkett.blogspot.com/.

That night we went to karaoke with Yamauchi-sensei, a teacher from Aizu. He took us to Superstar (スパースター）a small place in downtown Aizu. The students last year had spent a lot of time after the program hanging out there. Most karaoke places in Japan have private booths that you rent out, and a phone to call for drinks. Superstar was much more personal. It had one small room with a short bar and an odd assortment of couches and TVs. The staff there were awesome, we met Kuma-san (a nickname, kuma means bear) the 'draftmaster' and Hoshi-san the owner. They both hung with us, popping in and out to grab food or drinks. I think we'll probably be back again sometime soon, it was a lot of fun, and everyone there was really great. Nick has pictures from superstar on his blog. None of mine turned out really well.

The next day we took care of some more business getting settled in, and Orr-sensei introduced us to some of the Aizu students, Endo Kunitaka, Noda Koichi, and Yuu Ito. They all spoke English really well, and we got along great. We went out to lunch with them at a katsu place and then headed back to the hotel. Noda DJs and invited us to a party this weekend. It usually has a lot of the enligsh speaking students and staff in Aizu. I'm really looking forward to it.

Wednesday we got tickets to the FIS Freestyle internation ski competition. It was being held in Inawashiro, about 15 minutes from Aizuwakamatsu near Mt. Bandai. The town was really beautiful. It was right between the moutinan and the nearby lake, and because of the higher altitude the town was still covered with snow. The ski competition was also amazing. I'd seen aerials on TV before, but in person the speed and scale of it was absolutely confounding. The number of flips that they were able to pull off seemed almost impossible. Really, really cool stuff. But, I forgot my camera so I don't ahve pictures. Again, McNees has a video: hplinkett.blogspot.com/

Thursday was pretty uneventful. We hung out and got things put away in the apartment. I savored getting internet back. We got orders in for cell phones. I ate pig intestine. (it was good)

Overall moving in has been amazing. I've been here less than a week, and it's already been great. I'm really looking forward to the rest of the trip. Everyone I've met has been really awesome, and the apartment is finally shaping up (we're buying curtains after this). Again, everyone should definately check out McNees's blog. He probably has a lot of things I've forgotten, and he has some good pictures. There are more pictures on Facebook, too.



Places in this post:
Nartita Int'l
Aizuwakamatsu
Inawashiro