I have been continuing to try to think about things to tell you about my year in Japan. I think the best I can do... is to just give you little snippets - remembered observations, feelings. Events.
The whole Japan thing started with an orientation hiking trip when I started college. Students had an option to sign up for this 2 day backpacking trip to meet other students prior to true "orientation". I signed up. Which was supremely ironic - because despite only being 17, I was NOT in particularly good shape. I was at that point already a 2 pack a day smoker, and heavy drinker. I didn't exercise AT ALL, and I was probably a good 20-30 pounds heaver than I am now. One of the leaders of our hiking group (which had, I think, probably 8-10 freshman in it), was a sophomore who was talking about his Japanese class. He told us that Williams happened to be blessed with a visiting professor, Eleanor Jordan, who was world famous in her approach to teaching Japanese. As fate would have it, I had also JUST finished reading the novel "Shogun". I really had no idea at that time what I wanted my major to be, but because of the Japanese program, I signed up for the class without ever having had any intention of taking Japanese.
"Jordan-sensee" (Professor Jordan), truly was revolutionary in her approach. Rather than focusing on teaching students to read (which I never really DID learn to do very well, and which doesn't serve a whole lot of purpose if you drop someone in the middle of a Japanese city), she focused on useable, realistic, conversational Japanese. Each lesson was built around everyday situations - learning how to ask directions, describing your school, asking for a restaurant menu.... and the accompanying vocabulary enhanced that. We had lecture 3 days a week with Professor Jordan (an American), and then 2 days a week we spend 90 minutes in intense conversational drilling - our teacher for that was a native Japanese woman who ONLY spoke Japanese to us. It wasn't until several years later that I found out she was actually fluent in English, because we NEVER heard her speak it.
I pretty much intended to go to Japan from the moment I started taking those classes. It was my junior year of college, and the program (co-sponsored by my college) was called the "Associated Kyoto Program" (AKP). Students were placed with "host families", and attended a Japanese university in Japan - but our classes were all with our American colleagues. So, we were on campus with the Japanese students, but didn't actually take classes with them.
We got pictures of our host family prior to departing the States. My family was a couple in their 40's - my "host mom" was "Yuko" and my "host dad" was "Yutaka" - (last name Kozu). Unusually for a Japanese family, they didn't have any kids - AND, she was a professional - interestingly, an administrator at a hospital. (Most Japanese women still stayed home and took care of the house and kids, at that point).
There was one damper on the trip - which was this: about a month before I was supposed to depart, I was at the girly-doctor, and they discovered (during the fucking internal exam - god, those are really a treat!)... that I had a cyst on my right ovary. Probably 6 cm in diameter? It was pretty big. This was actually kind of terrifying for me at the time - because when the doctor talked to me, they didn't know at that point whether it was benign or cancerous. This was actually the summer my parents had moved to Cooperstown - I was pretty unhappy there, not knowing anyone, so I went back to White Plains, where my old boss gave me a job and let me stay with him and his wife, who actually lived in my old neighborhood. So - when I got this news from the doctor, I was actually alone, away from my folks. Once they found the cyst, my summer in White Plains was effectively over - my brother came down and picked me up and brought me back to Cooperstown where I had an ultrasound exam... which was not particularly worrisome, but... not overly reassuring either. They ultimately decided to send me over to Japan, but to make sure I went to the doctor to get an ultrasound once a month to see if the damn thing was growing - and if it was, I'd have to come home for Christmas.
But... they let me go. My flight actually left from JFK in New York City. Which is actually about a 5 hour drive from Cooperstown. I vaguely remember the drive, and remember arriving in the airport and meeting my fellow students for the first time. I was excited and a bit nervous. What I remember about the flight was... I was one of the only smokers in the group, so I sat in the second to last row in the smoking section while most of the rest of the group was up frong. The flight was... 20 hours long. Which is a LONG fucking time to be on an airplane.
So... what I was looking for, from this experience, was "different". I wanted exotic, new, exciting. I remember the feeling, first arriving in the airport in Tokyo. The overhead announcements were all in Japanese. Almost everyone around me had black hair. I changed some money at the airport to be able to buy something that I couldn't buy in the states. Probably something from a vending machine. I don't remember.
One of the kids in our group - a guy with long hair - was given a pretty hard "going over" by customs - they thought he was carrying drugs. Probably because of the long hair.
We took a bus from the airport to this hostel place that we were all staying at, as a group, before being placed with our families. I discovered, on the bus ride, that they drive on the right side of the street in Japan. I hadn't known that. And (I just recalled this RIGHT NOW), the bus driver wore white gloves. In fact, all the taxi drivers did too. The Japanese were pretty health conscious. You'd see some of them wearing surgical masks around.
My strongest memory of that first couple of days was my first foray, alone, around the city of Kyoto. After I finally got something sort of like a good night's sleep and woke up feeling (sort of) like something human, we had a day to ourselves. So.... I fixed the landmark of the hostel in my head, and just started out walking, by myself. I walked probably for miles - stopping occasionally at coffee shops where I absolutely delighted in being the only foreigner in the shop, looking at the complete "otherness" of the menu - things were familiar, but different. Like... coffee shops would sell sandwiches - western style sandwiches - but they were nothing you'd ever get in the states. Rather than like a big old ham and cheese, they'd serve these little 'tea" sandwiches - these dainty things with cream cheese and cucumbers, or dainty little egg salad... one might have just one piece of meat and cheese. They all had the crusts cut off, and were tiny. I encountered my first covered pedestrian street on that walk - I loved, also, the "otherness" of the types of things for sale. The fabrics were different; the architecture was different. The food was different. The signs... well, I couldn't read the signs. The food was different and wonderful. Just the act of walking around the city by myself, discovering, was an adventure. I saw my first open air market, too, where all sorts of exotic Japanese foods were on display. I think I sent you that picture, actually, on Facebook.
The vending machines - they were great. They had vending machines for EVERYTHING, and there were rows and rows of them on various corners. One of the things we all made fun of was Japanese English. They'd take these English words and throw them on things in a way that was either ludicrous, or that just made no sense. Like product names. They had this sports drink (sold in vending machines everywhere, and advertised on huge dayglow billboards). The drink was called "Pocari Sweat". Like... we really wanted to drink something called "sweat". (I just went and found a picture and attached it!). And the things they would put on adverstisements or T-shirts! Just hysterical. We couldn't even make this shit up, although we tried. Like... "Japanese boy finds great big fun in strong athletics". Stuff where the words themselves were (generally) spelled right, but they were put together in a way that no native English speaker would ever do. I actually also just went out and found you an example of THIS phenomenon too. (Link below).
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