Golden Week (May 6th)

So, I was going to post more, but apparently I decided to go nuts after Golden Week and write freaking 5 pages in my journal about it. So, this is only one day's worth of posts, but its pretty lengthy. Things are going well in the present Japan. I just switched back schools, so I'm at Sunami again, (I switch back about every month) I just got my first real sized paycheck last week, I get to play the national frisbee team again this weekend...ahh, I guess that's about it for the quick and dirty catch up. I'll write more later, but I just spent way more time than I planned writing down this post, and its 10pm: my bed time!

These are transcribed entries from the journal I am writing in at school. I started the journal for a number of reasons, one of the main ones being that I didn’t have internet yet so I couldn’t post things online. The other being that I had free time on my hands. These entries are slightly modified, but mostly for grammar. I suppose you’d never know either way. Surprisingly, I had way more to say than I thought. Unsurprisingly, I have been bad (abysmal) at keeping my online entries up to date with my written ones. Someday, the dates will match but for now…These are the voyages of a long time ago in a galaxy far far away:


May 6th Wednesday (suiyobi)
This is the last day of Golden Week, and Winston and I have both agreed that today is a do-nothing-and-recuperate (note: I spelled that word really wrong in my journal, I think its important everyone knows that; makes it seem more authentic, I think) day. Golden Week is a 5-day weekend that is caused by a string of national holidays , so its a pretty busy time to travel around Japan. Consequently, we decided to keep our travels to local day trips around Chiba prefecture, as opposed to longer trips around Japan.

So, on Sunday, we went down south to explore Futtsu, the city just south of Kimitsu and right on the coast of Tokyo bay. We took the train and got off at a tiny station - like cement platform and no electronic ticket takers, just an old man (they're always old men) behind the booth tiny-but we could see the ocean from the station so we were content to explore. On our way to the beach, we were stopped by a very old, very short Japanese woman (they're always short old women) who just started talking to us. Now, this is not so rare an event, and is usually really helpful, but whatever this woman was saying was in a version of Japanese that made even less sense to me than usual - and that is still saying something! Fortunately Winston caught the word for ocean (uma) and we worked out that this lady was trying to give us directions to the beach, which she made sure she did. And then she kept talking. So we said thank you, we understand, thank you very much, have a good day,and started to walk away. And she began to follow us, still talking. All the confused faces in the world (Winston and I have at least a couple dozen unique looks varying from distressed and confused to happily confused) and all the polite phrases we knew (like 3) were not going to get us disengaged from this woman, so we just backpedaled until she stopped following us. (she was really old) To this day, I still have no idea what she was trying to say to us.

We did find the beach, but before we went to explore it, we spied a group of old people playing something that we first mistook for croquet. (I also misspelled that word) Well, we were not about to miss out spectating (spectating...erm...what spectators do) a croquet match, so we sat down off to the side took advantage of what I like to call gaijin privilege, which I think of as the right to be slightly obtuse, overly curious, and easily excitable. (Lately, we have also begun to think of it as a shield that protects us from criticism when we say stupid/unintelligible/wrong things) Being gaijin, we quickly drew some attention from the people we were watching. As predicted, our personal magnetism (read: white skin) drew one of the croqueters over - an old man - and he jovially explained that the sport was called "gatebaru" (that's Japanese for "gateball") and that gateball was a sport for old people. We watched and cheered a little, tried to decipher the rules, and then went on to explore the beach.

Predictably, once on the beach, Winston got really excited about skimboarding, and we began hunting for good spots to skimboard. The beach we found at Futtsu was not as nice as Kujukuri, but it did have the virtue of being about two hours closer, which we agree was a big plus. Winston talked about how he was going to justify buying his board, which will cost him about 100$, with the ever-preset consideration that we're not getting paid until the end of this month.

We are still living pretty sparsely, making lists and plans for when we do have an actual income. Skimboards lead the list, followed by shorts (I want me some 5ultimate shorts, also its actually hot in Japan, no something I'm used to anymore. I'm excited to wear shorts!) restaurants, trips, accessories, electronics, furniture; all just waiting to be afforded. Not having income contributes to the feeling that this is not yet my home, and I think part of the reason I still feel like I'm traveling - transient. I'm pretty sure I haven't fully realized what moving and living in Japan for a year actually means- for better and worse. I mean, I'm not living out of a suitcase or backpack, but lets be honest, everything I own right now still fits into one. On the other hand, everything I do, and everyday I'm here seems to be another adventure, which is really neat! Lots of revelations, and there's nothing quite like a language barrier to make you appreciate the little things, even when it makes things in general difficult.

Yesterday was an interesting case in point. We headed out to the National Museum of Japanese History in Sakura, which is about 1.5 hours of train trip away from Kimistu. One of Winston's teachers gave him tickets - although we did have an exciting moment where we wondered if we actually had tickets and not just brochures, because, you know, we couldn't read anything on the paper - and we decided Golden Week was a good time to go see it. The train ride there was uneventful, with us navigating the train transfers with ease. On arrival, we decided to take a bus to the museum after walking around in the rain for 15 minutes. I was wearing sandals and a hoodie, and Winston wasn't really dressed more appropriately for the rain either. We made it to the museum, and yes, we did have tickets, and bonus: they have little mp3 devices with cataloged recordings about the exhibits! Good, because I was preparing myself to walk through the museum just looking at Japanese history and not really understanding it. (its just like samurai for like thousands of years right?) I'm getting pretty used to the not understanding aspect of being in Japan anyways. But no, with our little audio tour guides, we spend the next three hours exploring Japanese history.

Let me just say that there is a lot of it. (and its not really that much samurai) The first gallery (of 5) starts at 2-3 thousand years ago. We made it through 4 galleries before calling it quits - we were tired, and since we couldn't actually read anything, I felt like my ears were overflowing with audio recordings. As the day wore on, the ear piece changed from extremely useful to totally grating and - honestly - useless because my head was simply out of aural storage capacity.

With about 30 minutes left till the museum closing, an older curator (They're all old men!) came up to us to inform us that the museum is closing in 30 minutes and did we know about the special exhibit? No, we didn't, so he hurried us over the final exhibit: Japanese block printing. We got the impression that he wasn't supposed to actually escort us to the exhibit, or really leave his post at all, but we made the mistake of asking how to get to the exhibit, so he had to show us how to get there: its a Japanese thing.

Anyway, the museum was awesome, but the trip back home was not: we missed our bus back and had to walk through the rain to get to the station. That wasn't so bad, but then we spent over 2 hours riding home because we kept getting on the wrong trains. Bad times. Its the price we pay for gaijin privilege. Sure, it takes 1.5 hours to get home by the train, but adding in the hidden gaijin fees makes it about 2.5 hours. Bad times, but what are you going to do?