Earth to Lisa...
To those who have been wondering what happened to me the past few weeks, I can tell you in two words: Japanese lessons. The recommended study time is 3 hours outside of class for every hour in class, which I am sure any of my teacher friends can verify. I'm with my tutor Monday and Wednesday nights and staying in Tuesdays to study and do homework from Monday for Wednesday. Weekends I study about 2-3 hours each day or cram 5-6 in on Sunday :) I am spending at least 8-10 hours each week outside of the 3 with my tutor and making maddeningly slow progress. After 2 weeks I can barely do more than introduce myself, use time-of-the-day appropriate greetings, recite a lot of vocabulary, and write some hiragana and katakana, but I will not give up. Let me be clear: I love learning, and this monologue is not meant as a complaint but a matter of fact statement as to how it is learning a non-roman language with an unintelligible (to my brain at least) set of characters, no verb tenses, and backwards word order :) If they can learn English, I can learn Japanese. More later in this post....
I have had requests for more pictures and less words (uh, I'm not sure if I should be grateful or insulted, but I'll take it either way, less work for me!) so here we go. Don't skip the captions on the pics, some of them tell a good story and there are a few more tidbits of text at the bottom of this post because I am to lazy to rearrange all the pics and text. (and for those of you who know me really well, too tech-inept and slow to do this with any degree of efficiency at 10:32pm)
Singles Parties are a GREAT way to meet educated, intelligent, articulate, open-minded, interesting, accomplished, amazing, age-appropriate, single....
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| My lovely friend Taeko |
...women who will become your friends :) I have a continuously expanding network of girlfriends who I have largely met through Meetup, Tokyo Gaijins, and other social organizations that host group events at a very reasonable cost in convenient locations within the city and lots of awesome locations outside of it. July 4th will find me overnight hiking Mt Fuji to arrive at the summit in time for a 4am sunrise... (yeah, see previous post about lack of daylight savings time and 4am sunrises which make lack of sleep the norm')- stay tuned for that race report!
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| I managed to find another Lisa from California- this one in the form of my good friend Elisa :) |
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| The elusive Mt.Fuji |
Many people are curious about the demographics of my friends in Tokyo, so here you go: most of my friends and acquaintances are Japanese with a handful of foreigners- American, Australian, Chinese, British. Most events I attend are mostly Japanese with a smattering of foreigners. I am more and more fascinated by this country and its' people each day but find that trying to articulate why is very difficult. Stay tuned as my time here expands and contracts in the same breath.
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| Fuji Shibazakura Festival and Shiraito Falls |
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| Shiraito Falls |
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| Izakaya accompanied by my British friend Simon |
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| More Izakaya, with Taeko. She's just too cute! And when they gave us a snack pack as a parting gift at the restaurant and I commented, "oh, it's a snack pack for kids, look at this cartoon!" she patiently explained "No, Lisa, it's not for kids, it's for everyone. We...We make everything cute." << ha! We make everything cute. BEST explanation of Japanese anime ever, of course it came from a native. :) |
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| Shinjukugyoen |
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| Shinjukugyoen |
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| Shinjukugyoen hydrangeas. Hydrangeas are apparently in full bloom in Kamakura in June- luckily Elisa is a Kamakura expert and will take me to see them :) |
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| Shinjukugyoen |
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| It's kind of an ugly picture but my mama loves turtles, so mom, I took this for you <3 |
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| Shinjukugyoen |
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| Shinjukugyoen |
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| Temp housing - but please erase that from memory, 'cause we've MOVED to perm housing in Azabujuban (say that word ten times fast, of course I'd choose the 'hood I can barely pronounce with my remedial Nihongo) |
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| Roppongi crossing |
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| Roppongi Crossing |
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| Roppongi Crossing |
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| Walk from subway to temp housing in Roppongi |
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| Izakaya with Simon |
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| Gaijin friendly Izakaya - English menu :) If they don't have one, pointing to things other diners are eating works just fine. |
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| Moving day - empty apartment |
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| Moving day - bedroom. Disaster zone |
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| Moving day - living room chaos. They told me my couch was HUGE and hard to get in the apartment. In the US, it's considered a smaller couch, apartment sized. LOL. They also hustled me into my bedroom to tell me there must be a problem with my bed - "Lisa san, problem with bed. Too high!" No, it's just an American style bed, don't worry, I promise it's supposed to be that high off the ground! |
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| Moving day. Even more living room chaos. |
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| Moving day- I couldn't handle cooking and wandered until I found this little place full of locals. Amazing food. Waitress gave me a stamp card before I left, if you fill it up you get a free meal or something. I took it to mean I was welcome back even as a clueless gaijin. She didn't have to give me the stamp card, I never would've been the wiser. |
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| Oh the Tokyo metro. Today was one of those days I was literally SHOVED harder than you'd imagine getting onto the train and literally couldn't move sandwiched between so many people it makes BART/MUNI look like an underpopulated picnic. Subways have this amazing feature where a lovely melody comes on and when it stops, you'd better get moving or you're about to miss the train. Japan runs on time, people. |
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| Some solutions are universal. |
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| Night view from my living room window. That's Tokyo Tower, not to be mistaken for the Eiffel Tower, haha. ;) |
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| View at 8am from just outside my apartment building in Azabujuban (right before I got on the subway and was squished) |
An Odd Moment
I was eating at an italian restaurant with my friend Sunny and we ordered a seafood carpaccio as a starter. When the dish arrived, I had a genuine, unanticipated moment of want because there were no chopsticks, akin to the feeling you get when there's something dripping off your chin and there are no more napkins on the table. Instantly, simultaneously ever so slightly crippled, desperate and frustrated that you don't have a tool you need when you need it. What is wrong with me? Well, we asked for some chopsticks and were quickly gratified by their arrival. I didn't realize until then how accustomed I had become so quickly to using chopsticks as opposed to a fork. On a related note, I was shopping at IKEA (after taking the wrong train and making a 1 hour journey into a 1h45min trip, but I digress into the not so exciting world of continuing public transit failures...) and ate lunch in their cafe close to a table with a 2 year old using training chopsticks. I didn't know they made such a thing, but I'm now determined to figure out if they make them for adults. My technique is improving, but I think my form needs work. And I love that in this last sentence, I could be talking about swimming, running, skiing, yoga, or chopstick usage :)
Learning to Read and Write....
...is really hard but one of the most rewarding and humbling things I have done in a long time.
I am now halfway through the Hiragana and Katanana alphabets and will be reading children's books in two weeks, says my teacher Kyoko-san, who by the way is another complete gem (this country is full of gems). She is a great tutor and I love working with her. I'm entertained endlessly that at least twice per lesson she speaks to me in snippets of Portuguese instead of English since she lived in Brazil for 35+ years and therefore Portuguese is her "first" second language, but luckily most words are similar enough to Spanish that I understand what she's instructing me to do. I absolutely love being engaged in learning this language as hard and frustrating as it is. It gives me satisfaction to no end to make flash cards and worksheets for myself and study on the train, at lunch break, and every night when I could be doing something more enjoyable. Hearing office chatter all day is hard when you can't understand, but now that I am learning more and more vocabulary I feel like it's Christmas morning each time I understand a word or two. One of my colleagues told me today to tell her when I start understanding whole conversations. I told her not to hold her breath.
A special Thank You to our close family friend Gail who is a teacher and gave me several learning tips- And I welcome learning tips from any of my other teacher friends out there!
Sushi for Expats Tip: If you are not actively using your chopsticks, they should be lying flat on the table or across your bowl, parallel to one another. Never leave them sticking out of a bowl of soup or rice, this is considered exceedingly rude.
