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Friday, December 30, 2011

Seoul - First Impressions

“Welcome to Asia,” I told myself as I hauled my suitcase down the sidewalk of Sinchon district in Seoul.  I’ve been living on this continent for quite some time now but this was the first time it really hit me in the gut.  Seoul is insane.  Travel books most often use the words “vibrant” or “energetic” to describe it, and with good reason.  Neon illumination is taken to a new level in this city.  Signs are so common that they become completely ineffective as you’re pulled into a blur of neon and hangul characters.  It’s so bright, so loud, so busy, that you are completely unable to focus on one thing for more than a few seconds before you have to dodge pedestrian, cross an alleyway, check the map, and then realize that you’re completely lost again. 

Seoul, in general, is chaotic.  However, all cities are chaotic so the word has no real meaning.  Sinchon is an area characterized by its many restaurants and bars that are frequented most often by students from the two universities that bookend the neighborhood.  Arriving in the late evening at Incheon International Airport and making the long trek into Seoul set me there at about 10pm on a Friday night.  Seoul and I certainly had an aggressive introduction.  When I finally settled into my lodgings, I felt as though I had traveled halfway around the world rather than just 2 hours from home.  From that point, I knew Seoul wouldn’t disappoint.  

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Holiday Wishes

I'll be posting from Seoul, Korea soon!  Have a wonderful holiday season!

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Two Words

When preparing for my move to Japan, I browsed countless online resources for “insider tips” on dealing with the small aspects of daily life that most travel collections overlook.  I asked anybody who knew a friend’s friend that had traveled, taught, or lived in this country for stories and email addresses so that I could try to bypass the idealistic depiction of Travel Channel and Lonely Planet and develop a foundation of solid information that would best prepare me.  What I found interesting is that both kinds of sources, mainstream and personal, commented on what to expect from the Japanese people in a similar fashion.  Words like “shy” or “standoffish” were littered through publications of all kinds as travelers and authors discussed daily life in this country.  The most common of examples is the dreaded public transport experience that forces immigrants from their traveler’s honeymoon stage into one of isolation, desperation, and sometimes a kind of traveler’s depression. 

More optimistic authors tend to refer to the Japanese people’s inability to maintain eye-contact as an “endearing shy quality.”  Cynics, on the other hand, discuss some kind of strange superiority complex that our hosts feel so inclined to hold over our heads on every train, bus, or plane.  I apologize ahead of time for choosing the bipartisan route from here, but there are parts of both arguments that I’ve come to believe as true.
 
Like all countries, Japan is made up of millions of individuals.  While, officially, the nation claims 99% homogeneity of the population and proudly embraces the stereotype that all sidewalks are spotless and all citizens courteous, the fact of the matter is that Japanese people still come in all kinds of shapes, sizes, and personality types.  This is why I believe both arguments are correct.  Any traveler who spends an extended period of time in a foreign country will experience highs and lows.  Travel is not about reclining on a sunny resort beach, but instead about adventure and discovery.  It’s about breaking free of the desktop wallpapers, calendars, and Samantha Brown travel specials to see what substance lies underneath. 

The Japanese people, as a whole, are very kind.  They are very deserving of any praise they receive on that front.  However, I’ve also witnessed treatment of Brazilian immigrants that could easily make one want to black out my previous sentence.  Lucky for me, this is the 21st century and readers are less able to vandalize publications without causing damage to their own computer monitor. 

What one should know when planning to travel to Japan is that, like any of the world’s endless destination, it is a real place.  99.9% of what you think you know about this country from Google Images covers the spans of about 10 days in spring when cherry blossoms bloom and color the countryside pink.  Almost never, outside of Kyoto, will a geisha glide by you in full traditional kimono or will you stumble upon an isolated temple complex. 

You will, however, begin to feel lonely when sitting on public transportation.  You will find yourself in a situation in which you might as well not have a voice.  You’ll step off a curb too soon, you’ll find yourself unable to order food, you’ll find yourself in a barber’s chair with no idea how to describe how you want your hair cut, etc.  What separates a tourist from a traveler is how they handle the “deer in headlights” look from every person they attempt to communicate with.  You begin you really enjoy your time here when you realize that locals are just as terrified by the inability to communicate, if not more so, than you are.  This is a population that prides themselves on providing quality service.  When they are unable to do anything but just that, most of them feel guilty and many of them will apologize to you.  Imagine that for a second.  A visitor to Los Angeles or New York sits down at a local diner and begins to look over the menu.  When the waitress arrives at his/her table, she is surprised to find that the visitor is unable to speak English.  They point at the menu and use their hands to attempt to describe what kind of food they’d like to order, but are unable to do so.  It’s at that point that the waitress apologizes to the patron for being unable to communicate in their native tongue.  Yeah right, not on our side of the Pacific.

In a superficial attempt to bring this mindless jabbering full circle, let’s now return to the opening public transportation scenario.  Just tonight, I took different trains home from my lessons because my last class of the night cancelled.  Being about an hour earlier than normal, this meant that the trains were much more crowded.  Not once did I have a fellow passenger sit in the chair next to me.  More often than not, a person would squeeze in on the other side of the car just to avoid sharing a seat with Mr. Blondie.  I thought to myself how true many of the stories I was told really are.  I understand completely how this would make one question why they accepted a teaching job so far from home.  I’d look over at other passengers just in time to see them dash their eyes away in an attempt to hide their interest in the foreigner.
 
A few stops later, even more people flooded into the car.  Again, the seat next to me was the only one that was left empty.  At that point, I looked up at a middle-aged woman and greeted her with a quiet “konbanwa.”  She was completely unable to hide her surprise.  Not only was the giant blonde dude addressing her, but he did so in her native language.  She, eyes as wide as they could be, returned the greeting.  I then pointed towards the empty seat next to me and said “doozo.”  She smiled and sat down.  Just like that, I had made my very first Japanese train friend.  She spoke no English other than “ok,” but we had a very enjoyable ride together.  She pointed at everything from the moon to various types of shoes and told me the Japanese word for them.  We laughed together as I attempted to pronounce each exactly as she had.  As we reached my transfer station, I thanked her in my best Japanese and bid her an “oyasuminasai.”  She waved and said, “See you!”  Anytime I find myself in an uncomfortable situation, I will think back to tonight and remember how a simple two words resulted in such an enjoyable exchange.

Monday, December 5, 2011

Toyokawa Inari

Torii marking the entrance to the shrine complex


Small torii and stone foxes called kitsune



Saturday, December 3, 2011

豊川市

My adopted hometown is called 豊川 or Toyokawa-shi.  Toyo is a word most often translated to mean “rich,” but in a non-financial way.  It is, perhaps, most accurately “plentiful.”  Kawa is “river.”  As one might imagine, we are situated along the banks of the Toyokawa River in southeastern Aichi Prefecture.  Rather than states, Japan’s smaller administrative regions are prefectures.  Rather than counties, each prefecture is broken into cities.  One might say, I live in Toyokawa or Toyohashi when they actually live in a very small village far from the city center.  It’s confusing for foreigners that are used to the county system, until they realize it’s essentially the same concept.  The largest “cities” in Aichi Prefecture are Toyota and Shinshiro.  The latter is very much a quiet rural area that is sparsely populated.  Speaking in Western terms, Aichi’s largest city is Nagoya.  Nagoya city proper has about 2 million residents while the metropolitan area is around 8-10 million, similar to that of Los Angeles. 

Toyokawa is about an hour from Nagoya and is much smaller, at about 130,000 residents.  For the most part, it has a very suburban feel and is a comfortable and quiet place to live.  However, like in any Japanese city, everything talks.  Crosswalks chirp and women’s voices address you from signs, billboards, elevators, and shampoo displays in drug stores.  Japan itself is a symphony of theme songs, repetitive jingles, voices, and unfamiliar sounds.  In Toyokawa, love hotels, pachinko casinos, and shopping malls glow in the fierce neon colors that one can only find in this country.  Tiny cars zip around crowded streets, young and old cruise the sidewalks on their bicycles, and locals peruse vegetable stands which are as easy to find as a Starbucks in Seattle. 

As in all Japanese cities, there are countless restaurants serving everything from Western-style hamburgers and ice cream to Japanese sashimi and Korean kimchi.  What visitors need to understand is that food in Japan is nothing like food in America.  A dish may include familiar ingredients but, as with all aspects of Japanese life, the preparation is a perfect science.  Many people say that the Japanese have never invented something of their own.  They leave the ideas to Westerners and the Chinese.  What people in this county do best is to take something and work it until it is perfect. 
Food is prepared in the most traditional of ways, presented in the most balanced fashion, and respected to its full worth.  やきとり, yakitori, is one of the most simple and popular of traditional dishes.  The word yakitori, in my mind, means anything edible on a stick.  From chicken, fish, and pork to cartilage, liver, and heart, they do mean ANYTHING.  One sits at a table and orders any variety of things along with a Sapporo or Asahi beer.  The chef, as in most Japanese restaurants, is no ordinary chef.  Eateries here are manned by masters of the form that often prepare each order over a carefully monitored coal fire.  Cooking is more than a job, but an art. Grilling wonderful creations over a uniform fire year after year is something to take pride in, and the restaurant patrons benefit from this pursuit of perfection. No piece is overcooked, no section of flame too hot.  Each mouth-watering dish is prepared and presented in identical fashion. 

The ability to do one thing and only one thing is fascinatingly alien to me; to look at one thing and see many, all but impossible.  The focus, discipline, and respect for the form required to do something perfect is mind boggling.  This is what I most envy and admire about my host nation.  It seems that the longer I’m here, the more acute my senses become.  I see more and hear more.  Maybe this just means my Japanese is improving, or perhaps, just maybe, I’m beginning to see why so many foreigners visit this place and never go home.  

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Being dressed as kachi
Festival Princesses

Futagawa Honjin Festival

Monday, November 21, 2011

Settling In

Japanese Dinner
Futagawa Honjin Festival

First Impressions

Japan is a completely foreign place.  Most people come with some pre-conceived notion of what awaits them after they arrive at Narita or Haneda and, usually, they’re right.  From the quiet serenity of Kyoto’s many temples to the bustling technological metropolis that is Tokyo, Japan is perhaps the personification of contrast.  On one hand, Japan is leading the word through the technological age: smart phones and iPads are the norm.  On the other, 24-hour ATMs are still a work in progress and clothing is almost always dried on the front porch.  The language barrier is perhaps the most impenetrable it could be and the signs are all but impossible to read.  Cash is the way of the land, cars drive on the left side of the road, people point and giggle at you on the train, mothers take pictures of you with their children, and you hit your head on EVERYTHING.  The challenges you expect are very real but  this is much of the reason I chose to come here.  I wanted to live a life 180 degrees opposite of what I’d become accustomed to.  Japan has certainly delivered. 

Perhaps the most challenging of adjustments for me personally is the standard door height.  Most American doors are a standard seven feet or so.  The Japanese landed on 1.80m or 180cm.  Put your calculators down, I’ll handle the conversion for you: 70.866 inches or just under 5’11”.  Forehead bruising aside, this is a great way to break the ice with your new students or with fellow passengers on the train.  A little over a month in now, I’ve learned a standard duck that is effective enough most of the time and I’m usually able to make it through the day without grasping my head and rolling on the floor.  After all, I’ve found a new battle to fight.

Without a doubt, the most dangerous aspect of any country is something to consider when planning a trip.  Japan presents a unique challenge to its visitors that will surely catch most off guard.  Proper form should be practiced long before your departure date so that you may avoid as much trouble as possible.  Also, you should always remain aware of your surroundings and be prepared for anything that may come your way.  I’m speaking, of course, of the delay on automatic doors.  Americans usually fly through automatic doors.  From Target to Best Buy, we never consider how dangerous such instillations can be.  In Japan, I’m convinced, the government found an easy way to prank foreigners as a welcome into life in their country.  All automatic doors have a split-second delay.  Without stopping before each door, you look like one of the birds in a Windex commercial.  The worst is when both previous door issues team up against you.  At the Hotto Motto take-out restaurant across the street from my school, the automatic doors are the slowest of all AND they are the standard 180cm.  I will move on now, because I can feel myself getting emotion just talking about it.

The cash dependency is something that also still feels surprisingly foreign to me.  I’m not a person that chooses to carry large amounts of paper money around with me, so having tens of thousands of Yen in my pocket at any given time is strange.  Any smaller denomination than ¥1,000 (essentially the Japanese equivalent to a $10 bill) is in coin form, usually making for a very musical walk to the ¥100 shop (Dollar Store). 

Fact of the matter is that the Japanese people view the world in their own way.  While this is perhaps the most foreign part of traveling here, it is also the most refreshing.  To the modern Western tourist, Japan is a treasure trove of new ideas and new ways to appreciate things we too often take for granted.  At home, we too often find ourselves swimming against the current as a means of keeping control of where we are headed.  The Japanese seem to embrace this flow and find comfort in preparation and an open mind.  It’s very true that the language barrier will be a challenge, but I’ve never come across a country more excited to attempt to bridge it.  The locals understand the difficulty of learning their complex tongue and show more patience with clueless foreigners than I have come to expect.   

These are the kinds of differences that make travel to the Far East so incredibly interesting.  Literally every small aspect of daily life is different, if not the exact opposite.  Experiencing differences and overcoming challenges are a huge part of why I travel and Japan will never fail to catch me off guard.  It is truly one of those countries that require a lifetime to even attempt to grasp.  I will never understand the Japanese, but I can hope to continue to learn and embrace the different.