kdblog

It really was nice to only have to prepare for and teach one course today. I was supposed to have 14 students, but only eleven showed up. Nine of the students are Japanese-native speakers, and two are English-native speakers. Both of the students from the US are very kind and anxious to interact with the Japanese-speaking students. They are careful to not dominate even in the small group discussions. The students were all very shy, but expressed sincere interest in the course. I think it is going to be a great group, and honestly I am very excited to be teaching a course with mostly Japanese students.

One of the students from the US, Daniel, has been in Japan for about three years. He volunteered to take me to the SILS library to get reserves figured out. He is studying human rights law in Asia. That was a big relief for me and the students!

All this time, when people talked to me about the library, I thought they meant the huge, main library, but they meant the SILS library. The SILS library has the book I will be using first, and has ordered the other two to put on reserve! Can you imagine that! I don’t have to give them my copy of the text for reserve.

It was a very pleasant class, and I am looking forward to an exciting semester! David had some good experiences today, too. He’ll have to write about them, however, not me. 🙂

Preparing for the semester has been a bit challenging. I only had one of the three books I assigned for my course, and the book co-op only had one of the books—the one I had brought with me. I didn’t have a schedule to tell me the holidays, an orientation, or a faculty guidebook. This week, little by little, everything got worked out. One of the books came in the one box of books we have received, and the coop got the other one in, so I could purchase another copy. Do not ask me why I mailed the books instead of carrying them with me!! Honestly, I though mailing books in July would be plenty early. The new media rate the post office has is cheaper, but definitely slower! We have gotten a box of clothes we mailed from Seattle, about five weeks AFTER we mailed books from Galesburg. Anyway, the syllabus was done before 6:00 tonight; I am all prepared for Friday and Tuesday next week, and I am looking forward to teaching the course. And I have all three books!

Some of the trials and tribulations have not yet been worked out, but we have made progress. I do not have an ID yet, so I can only read material at the library. The ID will be 3-weeks in coming, so I am running a little low on patience related to library use. I would have liked to have used it weeks ago!

We also have yet to get our wireless Internet connection at the apartment. We are very happy to have DSL, but only one of us can use the Internet at a time. Since we have been in Tokyo, we have been trying to work out the kinks. The good news is that Japan Study is going to pay for our DSL each month, but the bad news is that it will be at least one more week before the wireless will be connected because we still do not have the account number or the password to allow us to connect the hub. David had a wireless hub sent to Tina and Lorrin, and one of them graciously sent it to us, so David would have instructions in English.

David is working away each day at learning to read labels! He started with food labels, and he is quite good (although not speedy) at reading labels. He has now moved on to other items. Tonight he bought bleach (a diluted variety) and drain cleaner. (Japanese drains are not made to handle hair like David’s and mine—too long and too much of it!)

The temperature is lower these days, too. We still don’t need jackets when we go out, but sleeveless shirts are not quite enough on some evenings. We actually stopped using the air conditioner a week or so ago and now even need a thin blanket at night.

Tuesday September 13, 2005
火日、九月　じゆうさんにち

I have spent 4 nights and days at NWEC thus far. It is a 10-day orientation, so we are not yet half way through our ten days. My responsibilities are lighter now as students are spending most of their time in Japanese classes. Michiyo, the Japan Study bilingual Program Associate, and I interviewed all 36 students independently for 15 minutes each in order to get information to help Michiyo find homestay families for them. Michiyo returned to Tokyo on Monday, and David returned to Tokyo on Sunday, so I spend most of my time in my room either studying Japanese or preparing for my course I will be teaching soon. I still have some interactions with students, but because I did not go to the cafeteria for lunch or dinner tonight, even informal time with students has been reduced.

I did not go to the cafeteria for lunch or dinner because I have not had good experiences trying to find vegetarian food at the buffet. The only place to purchase food outside of NWEC is a convenience store. Generally, convenience stores have several choices for vegetarians, but this convenient store is atypical. Several times I have gone to it and not found any actual meal-type food that I could be sure I could eat. I have only found o ni gi ri once. We got red-bean bau-dz once, and they seem to have them more regularly, but I didn’t care for the bau-dz that much. I have eaten a lot of peanuts over the course of the last few days. For breakfast, I do okay with two plain buns, a cup of coffee and a small box of pineapple juice in the NWEC cafeteria. For lunch and dinner, I have been having white rice with a very small dish of green pickles with sesame seeds or a very small, uninteresting salad.

Dining here is a big contrast with meals prior to coming to NWEC. The freshness of vegetables in Tokyo and a bit more flexible schedule gave me the opportunity to prepare some great meals. I am ready to return to our apartment and the Tokyo grocery stores!

I must note, however, that for our welcoming dinner, we went to a restaurant, which prepared vegetarian food for the vegetarians. It was the best Japanese meal we have had that was not prepared in someone’s home kitchen!

The NWEC facility is quite nice. Groups stay here for educational purposes, so it is like a hotel for educational groups. It also has things like a pool, tennis courts, a sports field, a small Japanese garden, and hot baths. Unlike a hotel, it has lobby space that is actually used by the groups to hang out in informally. The food is cafeteria style, and if the group is only here for a day or two, it is probably quite satisfactory. A 10-day stay means that the food choices get old quickly. The vending machines have drinks (many of which appear to be alcoholic) and cigarettes. I haven’t seen one that would be typical in the US with potato chips and candy bars. Places to eat outside of NWEC are few. Although we are only an hour from Tokyo, there is a 10:00 curfew, so student can’t really go into Tokyo easily after classes. Also, there is no obvious Internet access. Michiyo says she is able to take her computer somewhere and connect to send messages that she has already written, but it is quite expensive and troublesome. Since I even have trouble using the phone in the room and my cell phone, I have not pursued use of the Internet.

Because we are supposed to be in educational activities during the morning and afternoons, the air conditioning is turned off in our rooms, and when the cleaning women come around to clean the room, they seem to expect me to leave. The rooms can get kind of warm but they do turn it back on during lunch. It turns out to be off for a couple of hours in the morning and a couple of hours in the afternoon, so it isn’t that bad. It is still quite warm here, which means that staying in the non-air-conditioned room is generally cooler than going outside in the sun.

The Japan Study Students met and went with their host families today which means Karen and I are back in Tokyo and have access to email, the internet, phones, and food. Karen is no longer sequestered in Musashiranzan with 36 20-22 year olds. That was an experience she will need to describe.

We did celebrate the autumn moon festival with moon cakes (actually we split one), tea, and the closest thing we could find to a pommelo (a large grapefruit). The moon was big and bright.

We have discovered that we can get anman (red bean paste manto) and three different kinds of onigiri–ume, kombu, wakame–from most convenient stores. Actually the convenient stores here are really convenient. We shipped our luggage from musashiranzan through a convenient store so we didn’t have to take it on the train. It was delivered today in the evening when we asked them to deliver it. One can also pay most bills, get money from the ATM machines, and recycle, cans, bottles, and plastic trays.

Neither Karen nor I have written anything for a couple of days because Karen’s Japan Study Program students arrived Friday. They go on a ten-day orientation about an hour out of Tokyo as soon as they get here so we have not had computer access and have been quite busy. I just got back to Tokyo but Karen is still there and will be there for the whole ten days. I will go back there probably twice, so may not be posting or responding to emails at times.

It is a large group of 36 students from all over the USA and some from other countries attending USA colleges. Two were my students at Knox and one is my advisee. She is from China and has taken all my courses. She brought a gift of vegetarian moon cakes (without the egg yolks) for us and we are excited. We haven’t had moon cakes for twenty years or so. The autumn moon festival (which is apparently not celebrated by the Japanese) is next week and I hope we can have a small celebration with our three Chinese students and our Korean student (the festival is apparently celebrated in Korea) and maybe some of the few other students who have been to China and have studied the language and culture.

Karen spent part of yesterday and all of today and perhaps will spend part of tomorrow interviewing students to help determine best matches with home-stay placements. Yesterday evening we went to the official welcome dinner at a traditional Japanese restaurant. They prepared a wonderful feast. Karen and I and two vegetarian students were served all vegetarian food and it was simply the best Japanese food I have ever had.

The orientation is being held at a women’s center that has many hotel rooms, seminar rooms, dining hall, and various sports facilities. The students are in intensive language/culture classes most of the time for these ten days. Karen has and will have sessions with them as well for program related and home-stay related information and cultural sensitivity. The food at the center is not very vegan friendly, but the two vegetarian students seem to be managing ok. I will take some food back from Tokyo to supplement what Karen can eat.

That’s it for now. I will be putting some more pictures up as well.

David

Moving to a city, rather than visiting a city as a tourist, means satisfaction at the end of a day comes from very different directions, especially if a reasonable budge is a concern! (For example, a good day is a day in which we find Bob’s Red Mill oatmeal!) Consequently, much of our time in Tokyo as new residents thus far has been spent scouting out what’s available for purchase. This is a significant change of direction for us as both David and I, over the years, have come to dislike shopping, especially grocery shopping. Our dislike with shopping was most likely strongly influenced by the lack of exciting shopping in Galesburg, Illinois, our home for the past seven years. (In Galesburg, our favorite two stores were Big Lots and the local health food/grocery store, so you can see what I mean.)

One of the draws to grocery stores particularly in Tokyo has been the learning they offer with little intimidation. We can pick up packages to decipher ingredients, stare at shelves taking in as much as we can, or search for a particular item without anyone paying much attention to us. The fact that we can’t communicate in Japanese with fellow customers or clerks is not an issue as we search the shelves and labels. And if we don’t buy much, we don’t spend much!

A second draw is the sharp learning curve (despite our lack of skills in Japanese). There is so much stuff that we do not recognize! Many of the vegetables are ones we are familiar with, but there are also many that are unfamiliar. And even the familiar ones are small! We have seen egg plants that were much smaller than small chicken eggs. There are lots of prepared foods available deli style that we have never seen before, and the prepared foods look more similar than they ever seemed to look in the US. Being able to read the printed words in our native language helps us out even if we aren’t aware of it. For example, I never realized how difficult it was to discriminate in a grocery store between rice wine, rice vinegar, apple cider vinegar and all those other bottles that look like they have the same liquid in them! We spent several minutes just searching for apple cider vinegar. I was about to give up until David saw a bottle with apples on it! Ah satisfaction comes in simple ways.

A third draw to shopping has been our search to find items familiar to us at reasonable prices. In part, we want to find things that our students from the US might want to find, so we’ll have the information to share. However, we also just want to eat things such as peanut butter without salt and sugar in it, oatmeal, and tasty, nutritious bread—all things that are not readily available in Tokyo. After two weeks, we had managed to find (with the help of Google searches!) just about everything we have imagined we might want EXCEPT popcorn. Although David doesn’t eat much popcorn, I love it, and eat it regularly in the US. We searched, and searched, and searched but only found the pre-popped stuff. Then low and behold, a few days ago, David discovered it at a Can-Do 100-yen shop! It comes in a very small package and is yellow (I much prefer white popcorn), but it pops and is readily available since the 100-yen shops are not that hard to find. Now that we have popcorn, I am not sure we will have a focus to our days!

Actually, David found a new grocery store in our neighborhood yesterday. It is the largest one we have been in yet, and it has lots of hard-to-find items (for a price, of course). The most exciting thing about this grocery store is that they make kappa maki and other vegetable shushi rolls! And it is only 10 minutes from our home. It seems like nearly everything can be found within a 10 minute walk from our home in Tokyo! That’s a bit different from Galesburg!

Today we picked up our Alien Registration Cards at the local Shinjuku-ku ward office where we live. This may not seem like much, but in Japan in means a lot. Primarily for us it means we can open bank accounts (joint accounts don’t seem to be possible) and we no longer have to carry our passports. We did go to the post office today to open a bank account. We got the form to open an account and will work on it later. Yes, you can bank at the post offices here as a resident.

We also found a couple of Japanese paste/sauces that are vegan and tasty. One is called “ゆずこしょう–yuzokoshyo” and is made from this citrus fruit called yuzo (柚子), hot peppers and salt. The other is a miso dip called 金暫時みそ–きんざんじみそ–kinsanzo miso. We only tasted them but they should go very well with vegetables and rice.

That’s it for now.

David

On Friday, August 19, 2005, our second full day in Tokyo, we went to Ikebukuro to a couple of department stores. They were ridiculously expensive! For example, we found a small, plastic measuring cup for more than 2,000 yen. (That is about $20.00). We found a good bread store, but it was a very crowded area and seemed quite expensive. We were exhausted when we got home!

On Friday afternoon, we went to the Tourist Center in Yurakucho to get maps in English even though we were very tired of walking and being out from the day before. We were worried about the office not being open on Saturday and did not want to go all weekend without English language maps, so we forced ourselves to go out again. We were up early again, so I got the unpacking finished before we went out. We got the maps quite easily, and decided to go to Roppongi and Azabujuban, the area where we lived when we were in Tokyo two years ago. It was like going home, but everything seemed more expensive! We bought very little, but got to experience a summer festival on the street. Women and men were in kimonos and many artists were selling wares on the street. The prices were high, but I did make a great deal for a couple of table cloths. There were lots of food stalls, but we didn’t dare eat at any of them. Actually, we weren’t interested in eating at them—the food looked greasy and not enticing at all! It was so crowded and hot! We finally found a 100 yen store and prices we could afford. It turned out to be a great store, and we got some things for the apartment (e.g. glasses, coasters, place mats, flower pots). It was quite late when we went home. Clearly, David can get us anywhere we want to go by using the maps!

On Saturday, we went to the Meiji Shrine in Harajuku. It was very, very hot and the shopping area was aimed at teenagers. We thought there was going to be a flea market, but there wasn’t. David found out after we were home that the flea market is only on some Sundays.

On Sunday, we went to Ikebukuro searching for a Chinese grocery store. I searched the Internet for one in Tokyo. Unfortunately, we didn’t take the name and address with us, so once we got there we had to walk quite some time before we found one. It was much smaller than we had expected, but they spoke Chinese! What a relief to be able to ask what was in things and be able to chat! As we were leaving the area, David noticed a sign in Kanji and asked me what it said. As usual, I read the Kanji in Chinese, not Japanese, but this time it made sense! It said Chinese Qigong. We decided to check it out. It was a place where they treat people, not teach them, but they put us in contact with a teacher. Again, it was great to be able to communicate because they spoke Chinese! The nice people called the teacher and made an appointment for us for Monday at 2:00. It was a good trip, and we came home with vegetable bau dz and sesame candy!

We arrived in Japan in the late afternoon of August 17, 2005 (Wednesday). It took at least two hours to get through immigration, 2 minutes at customs, an hour or so by airport bus to the Tokyo station, where we were met by a Waseda University student and got a taxi, then another 20 to 30 minutes to our apartment. Everything went well (except for the exceptionally long wait in line for immigration). Also an earthquake apparently happened in Japan while we were in route to Japan. We have heard little about it. It didn’t seem to have much effect on life in Tokyo, but was a bit disconcerting to hear about an earthquake just as we were moving here.

Leaving from Seattle was a good decision because it was a 9.5 hour flight—the shortest either David or I have ever had to Asia. David slept for an hour or so, but I didn’t actually sleep on the flight.

The Waseda student, Suzie, was very helpful at showing us how to use things in our apartment as all directions are in Japanese. We went out to do a bit of shopping because the apartment was nearly empty except for furniture and some dishes. We had some toilet paper, soap, and light bulbs, but no food or drinks. We went to bed around 9:30 Tokyo time, which was morning is Seattle. We were tired, but woke up at 4:30 am on Friday. Since then we have woken up between 5:30 and 7:00 every morning and gone to bed at a reasonable time. It never really felt like we had any jet lag.