March 10

Sorry, there won’t be an entry for the ninth. To sum it up, I was really tired (on the edge of being sick), planning my trip to Hiroshima and Kyoto, and crunched for time on my homework. It wasn’t a very fun day.

Today though, was pretty action-packed. I woke up pretty un-sick, but by the time I finished breakfast, my throat was icky, so when I said “gochisousama” to okaasan, she insisted on giving me medicine based on my voice. It’s not that I like being sick, but since my symptoms have been coming one-per-day, I’m kind of reluctant to take anything for them since they might just be new-found alergies to Japanese pollen.

Since I didn’t study kanji the night before, I spent most of the morning studying. I think the stress and “sickness” were getting to me, because I wasn’t in much of a kidding mood. We studied the dreaded keigo (honorific, humble, etc. forms) in Japanese today. It was painful, of course. Tsuda sensei taught the second section of class though, so it was entertaining at one point at least. The listening practice we did had to do with McDonald’s in Japan, and it was pretty interesting. Speaking of which, the food they sell in Japan’s McDonald’s doesn’t look horrible, and I kind of want to try the ebi (shrimp) burger and the macha (green tea) milkshake. McDonald’s is pretty expensive here (6-ish bucks for a combo) so I will probably only do it once.

As for the third part of class, Fukatomi Sensei gave us yomimono renshuu. The topic is the culture shock of tipping for Japanese people visiting the US. Based on the details of the reading, Japanese people must stay in ritzy places when they visit the US because the tips they mentioned included bell boys and doormen as well as taxi drivers, waiters, and maids.

After Japanese, I raced to Valor and hanga class. I screwed up my hanga by accidentally cutting off the top of my corvette partially. Oh well...

It was after hanga that the real fun began: planning my week-long break. I had to decide on dates, apply for my student discount, get a reservation for the Mazda museum, and buy tickets to Hiroshima and Kyoto. Most of it got done, but not without copious trouble. First, I applied for my student discount. There was some confusing about how many I needed since I was not doing non-stop trips to and from Nagoya, and I was initially told I needed three and could only get two per day (though I had no time to wait an entire day). In the end, I was issued one because I would be buying all three tickets at the same time. Then, I talked to the lady at Mazda and made sure there were openings on the days I might be in Hiroshima. That was easy enough. Next, I visited the travel agency at Nanzan to check the rates for bus, train, and shinkansen fare to Hiroshima, then to Kyoto, and back to Nagoya. It was a long process (since the attendant insisted on showing us what time we would leave and arrive based on our choices, rather than just giving us the amount of time the trips would take) and I got pretty tired before we finished talking. I was told I had to go to the kokusai center to get a discount, but when I showed the one I had, it seemed to suffice. I was told that I could buy my tickets at kanayama or Nagoyaeki, but my host father told me I could buy them somewhere closer to Nisshin, so I called him and he told me I could buy them at the JTB (Japan Travel Beuro) in Jusco. I went there and tried to make reservations, but since my travel partner didn’t have a discount ticket, the lady told me she couldn’t get the tickets for us today, but if we waited until tomorrow (CJS was closed by now, so my partner couldn’t apply for a discount today) the agency would not be able to do their job on time for us to get our tickets for the day we wanted to leave. Finding this to be true, we made the trip to Nagoyaeki (not willing to waste possible fruitless efforts on Kanayama) to buy our tickets. On the way, my partner formed a theory about the “discount coupons.” I had told him that when I bought my tickets to and from Tokyo, the JR Bus employee told me I couldn’t use my coupon, but that my student ID would suffice. My travel partner thinks the coupon is actually just documentation that we are students, and having the original student ID’s at the bus station, the “coupon” (certificate) did not need to be submitted. The question then is, why don’t they just scan our ID cards at the travel buero to circumvent the “coupon” requirement if we don’t have the coupon? My guess is; it’s Japan, and if regulation isn’t followed, nothing gets done. So, if I learned nothing else from this experience, it is that when you want something, the best route is the most direct one to the source. Tsumari; avoid beurocracy at all costs.

When we had finally gotten our tickets (that cost about twice as much as the ones to Tokyo and back), we went to Tokyo Hands, which is a store in the multi-story shopping mall in Nagoyaeki. I can’t believe I’ve not been there before. It explains a lot about why Japan is the place where all the coolest/cutest items and fashion comes from. The place is a three-story store of all the crafts (professional and cheap end) supplies you could want or imagine. American craft stores are a joke by comparison. Among the more intersting things were crocodile skins (yes, real), model kits (moving and stationary), special resins and moulding supplies, and virtually every notion you could imagine. There was one interesting moulding kit where you make things out of clay, then put it in a kiln, and somehow the clay melts away and you have a metal item. My friend explained it rather badly, so I don’t really understand, but the thing is; they had this necklace on display that I wanted very badly. It even had a price tag, so we asked a clerk to tell us how much it was (since the tag was obscured). As it turned out, it was just a sample (with a blank tag) and they weren’t even selling the moulds to make it. I was really disappointed, but not being very good at Japanese (or having my dad or uncles around to negociate for me) I couldn’t ask for the manager so I could ask to buy it anyway. Oh well.

I got home around eight. Okaasan and otousan had already eaten, so I ate by myself. I had just walked (rather quickly) home from the heated chikatetsu, so I took off my sweater before dinner, but okaasan was a true okaasan and made me put one on before she let me eat so I wouldn’t have a worse cold. Throughout dinner, okaasan kept checking on me, saying things like “taberaremasuka?” “daijoubu?” and “hitoridetaberukarasabishi?”

I know I talk a lot about food, but today, dinner was particularly great. Okaasan made salmon with shitake and lemon, udou with seaweed, left over mame, rice and miso soup (of course), and salad with asparagus. Her fish and mame were particularly good. For dessert, I had the hina matsuri leaf-wrapped, pink momo half-mochi with an inside. It’s become one of my favorite Japanese okashi.