Actually I lied.

The truth is, I’m not in Japan. I actually live in the North Pole. Yep, that’s right. The sun sets at 3:30pm and it gets earlier by 15 minutes every advancing day. The only time to get some good sunlight is in the early hours of the morning, of course that’s only if it’s not raining. By around 4pm it’s twilight and by 5pm it’s pitch black outside. Yes, feel sorry for me my days are short.

So I haven’t posted in a while. It’s because I’ve been lazy and a bit scared of what I might post, it might shock you and make you wonder if it really is Philip who’s typing all this. Anyway, I can assure you all that it is me but I have undergone some transformations – the most significant being that I am now a vampire and live in darkness.
Here’s a rundown on what’s changed apart from my skin colour and the seasons:

-My Japanese is not improving. Well my slang Japanese is almost fluent but my conversational skills are quite poor. In fact I can only talk about myself, so when people try to talk to me I just distract them by talking about things I’ve said a billion times like where I come from and when I leave and how I like Japan and stuff like that. I had to translate for a family friend here who were hosting two university students from Bangladesh. That was interesting, since we spoke three different languages and the Bangladeshis had no idea that if you touch Western people around their waist area too much they might feel uncomfortable. Still I think I did a pretty good job as a translator and I learnt that some men from Bangladesh have no inhibitions.

-School is quite fun now that an exchange student from America has arrived. For some teenage reason or another he refuses to try to learn or speak even the simplest Japanese which makes me look like a prodigious, fluent exchange student when we’re together. I love it, he uses English for everything – including thank you and sorry – and I translate for him and everyone marvels at how good my Japanese is. This was the key to making friends at my high school, I can’t believe I was getting by without an American exchange student by my side! If he’s reading this well congratulations, at least you’re literate in English! So now that I have some Japanese friends who don’t only try talking to me because I’m a gaijin I’m having an overall better school experience. I will admit that class is still very boring and I learn very little but I get to scare them by making up crazy things about Australia, watching their reactions, and then telling them it was a joke and we all fall into laughter. Cheesy isn’t it?

-I’ve had some very cultural experiences recently. Firstly I watched my older host sister’s wedding on video. It was eye-opening. If you think Japan is all slick and class then I’m afraid you couldn’t be more wrong. A Japanese wedding is more tacky than the colour ivory, and that’s saying a lot. The video was edited full with fade-ins and fade-outs, background polyphonic Bette Midler, and many an onscreen beige padded shoulder jackets. Really, I think if I had been there in person I would have suffocated in the smell of hair wax. So after watching the wedding video I got thinking about how similar a Japanese funeral would be. Luckily enough a family relative of my hosts’ died and I got to go. It was tacky, but not to the wedding extent. The funeral ceremony included pink carpets, synthesised Claire de Lune, and a plastic waterfall ornament which had a loud motor that could be heard throughout the ceremony. Anyway, this ceremony was interesting. First of all because they opened her coffin at the end, second of all because we went to the Crematorium and had lunch while her body was incinerated, and lastly because at the end we collected her bones with chopsticks and crushed them up into a little box covered with floral patterns. I managed to take a video of the chopstick part, it was very interesting. The old ladies got really excited about which bones they got to put into the box. What’s strange was that Japanese people strictly do not embrace during grief. I found that sort of oppressive actually and was really put off the whole. People were openly mourning when they opened the poor woman’s coffin and everybody stood separately expressing their grief collectively alone.

-The obsession with food is getting beyond my tolerance. They can stuff their seaweed somewhere…else, for all I care. I don’t want to hear about food any longer. My Japanese teacher who I’m late for a lesson with right now because I’m typing this drove for 10 hours across Hokkaido last weekend just to eat a “delicious meal”. Good Lord woman! Do we need to hear more about the environment to get the point across or what? Anyway, I’ll post later about my thoughts on the horrible food they eat here later on. I’m late. There’s so much more I have to say!

Summer

The holidays have finished now and summer will end soon but it’s not all bad news. My school will be doing exams later on this week so it’s going to be more free time for me!

I’ll go through my eventful holidays since I was busy enough to not have time to sit down and write this. The summer holidays in Japan mark the “Festival Season” which is the best time, in my opinion, to be in Japan. They’re interesting and fun for the most part, especially for children and parents.
The Fireworks Festival in Obihiro is apparently the biggest event of it’s type in Hokkaido every year. Obihiro hosts Japan’s fifth biggest fireworks show, over the Tokachi River, which attracts all the surrounding locals from around Hokkaido to come and watch. I have some incredible photos of the lines to the public toilets which my friend told me took a whole hour of waiting to arrive to. The fireworks themselves were like all fireworks. I’m not a big fan of fireworks. However, it was a fun night that I spent with two other exchange students. We walked from my house which is close to the river and watched the fireworks over the Tokachi bridge which is pretty considering it’s in the middle of nowhere. Families were preparing yakiniku (Japanese barbeque) on the mosquito infested long grassy river bank and girls wearing kimonos and their boyfriends wearing tank tops and shorts walked past with arms linked. Teenagers in big groups with large assortments of Disney blankets and miscellaneous Crap that might prevent any discomfort pushed through the incessant throng. I’m sure it must be the biggest night of Obihiro in the year, everybody was there and the traffic afterwards was unbelievable. Both by the severity of it and the efficiency with which it was solved by the hundreds of traffic police who were everywhere in the city. It reminded me a lot of Australia Day in Perth, except here in Obihiro not many people were drunk, nobody got arrested, the cars finally moved and the litter was minimal. The heat was the same, however.

Apart from the fireworks we had the Tanabata Festival which I really have no idea what it was. Giant paper floats were hung from the roof of the outdoor mall in Obi downtown and everybody wore their kimono. The floats were mainly popular cartoon characters. I was on the front page of the newspaper wearing my kimono in front of one. There were also little stalls on the sides of the road which sold fairyfloss, miscellaneous things, turtles, enormous beetles, children’s toys and all sorts of things you would expect from a cheap roadside children’s fair. It was pleasant to pass through.

The Heigen Festival was the most memorable for me. The famous traditional Japanese drums were set up all down the main road in Obihiro and separate teams of drummers performed amazing beats which could be heard from my house.
The Bon Dance night which signified the end of the Heigen festival and the summer festivals altogether, was by far the most fun because I participated in it. All the foreigners in Tokachi were invited to wear their kimono and dance the festive bon odori down the street among the parade of other special groups in Tokachi, such as the old people’s assocation, the farmer’s assocation, the mayor’s office, professional traditionalists, the local girl’s baton team and other specific groups. All these different appreciated societies had to wear masks or provide a special eye opening monument, such as a float or a six-manned dragon or a very energetic dance or traditional drums. The fifty or so gaijin just wore our own faces and we attracted the most attention despite our constant grumbling in the 30 degree heat and the pain we went through having to wear the kimono geta which are wooden sandals (very uncomfortable). I thought it was a lot of fun but I wasn’t shown on TV.

When all the festivals ended all the AFS Exchange Students in Hokkaido had to gather in Sapporo and we attended the summer camp together. That was definitely the highlight of my holidays. Talking to everyone about the experiences up to now was very nice. Knowing that everybody is having the language issues and the same communication issues is reassuring. We didn’t do any extremely exciting things but we did go horseriding. We also split into little groups and visited tiny primary schools all over the mountains surrounding Sapporo. I went to a school with only nine students from ages eight to twelve all in one class. I was the only boy in the group and the children were most excited to talk to me for some reason. We had a question and answer session and all the boys looked at me as if I was going to tell them that I played baseball professionally. Finally one boy gathered the courage to actually ask me something, “Do you know who Ichiro is?”. Of course I had no idea who he was so I said “No”. If I ever saw a boy’s hopes being crushed it was then. His shoulders slumped right over and he looked at the floor in front of him as if he was going to cry. Someone told me later that Ichiro is some baseball superstar that all young boys in Japan idolize. More boys asked me about other baseball players but I had the same answer for each and a struggling sensation in my cheeks that was pulling my cheeks down so I could no longer smile at them! By the end of the question and answer session I was pretty drawn out and stupefied by their expectations of me, but don’t worry – we then played dodgeball! I had never played a dodgeball game with rules and points before so I wasn’t really sure what to do except dodge the ball, but when it came directly at me I had no choice but to try and catch it. I’m not very coordinated and in a spectacular moment of absolute inelegance the ball bounced off my arms three times after which I actually caught the thing. The boys in the gym looked at me in awe as I looked at the ball sitting in my hands in wonder. When the day ended with everyone discussing what they appreciated the most about the day all the boys (six out of the nine students) said that my amazing catch was the highlight of the day with us. I felt a little dead inside after this revelation and the girls in my group laughed at me non-stop on the way back to the camp.

When the Sapporo camp finished I only had one day back at my house before I went to Kushiro, a city on a par with Obihiro in a measure of ugliness. Kushiro is twenty thousand people more populated than Obihiro, but rather than a central city for all the agriculture in it’s surrounding region Kushiro is an industrial city with enormous factories pumping gassy clouds into the sky 24/7. I suppose that was beautiful in it’s own way, I had never seen actual before I visited Kushiro and I was impressed by their impression on the cityscape and the sea harbor that highlights Kushiro. In Kushiro I stayed with a temporary host family for two nights which was a nice experience. They took me to Lake Akan which was very interesting. This lake is the only lake in the world which is inhabited by green balls of moss called marimo (Cladophora). It’s an amazing plant, moss which grows into a spherical ball which can sometimes gets a little bigger than a tennis ball. What’s more amazing is the industry that marimo has grown into. At Lake Akan everything there is characterized by a green sphere. Every souvenir that you could find in Japan is there, except altered a little to include a green hemisphere. The brick paving, the buildings, the food, the clothing, everything there is green and spherical and has a cute face. It was very weird. It’s not the fact that they’re capitalizing on these phenomenal algea, it’s just that they made a ball of moss cute! I won’t go into it anymore but it just struck me that it’s not the scientific phenomena of a spherical ball of moss that sells the products but the smily face attached  to it.

I’m back at school now and myself and the other exchange students are feeling melancholy after our fun holidays speaking English. Now back in class I find myself unable to strike conversation with any of my classmates. They just seem vacuous and empty to me. Japanese school students are exposed to a lot less than most of the exchanges students who come here, and it is a common perception even among the Japanese adults that the teenagers tend to be immature. This creates difficulty for me because I find it impossible to adapt to their sense of humour and conversations which, to me, seem simple.

Speaking of school something interesting finally happened. I’m still excited that an event occurred at school that continued to linger on my mind afterwards. My Business and Management teacher got angry at me for not doing any of the work in class. He is the only teacher of mine that cares that I do no classwork and only Japanese study. He’s a horrible man, he loves to watch the students suffer and he never raises his voice, but his tone always sounds malicious somehow. He told me that I need to catch up on the whole years notes that take up about ten full pages of the students’ notebooks. Keep in mind that Japanese notetaking and English notetaking is very different. For one thing it’s all in Kanji which is more than complex to someone who has no idea what it means. Most of the kanji I would be copying down would be at least six stroke characters. He told me I have to copy all the notes and this would literally take me about six hours. It was a confrontation which neither of us gained anything from. If I do this work I will not get anything out of it. No marks, no education, no knowledge, no peace of mind, nothing. What would my teacher gain from it? Nothing, except maybe peace of mind. I’m in Japan to learn Japanese and about Japanese culture, I’m not attending school everyday to learn about Business and Management let alone learning about it in a language I cannot understand no matter how much I want to or try to. I know it sounds like a spoilt teenager complaining about his schoolwork, which it is, but I still feel troubled that I will have to spend my free time copying redundant scribbles.
So now I’m faced with this problem. The truth is I’m too lazy to do the work. I would rather get endless afterschool detentions than actually do it, can’t he just fail me? It’s ridiculous and irritating. It was the first time I actually got angry here and the first time I used sarcasm in Japanese. Most of the Japanese don’t understand sarcasm unless it’s obvious and I’m not sure my teacher understood that I was insulting him when I told him he was a very kind and pleasant natured man after he told me that it was due on Monday. It didn’t solve my little problem though. I showed him a sample of my kanji notetaking and he told me he couldn’t read it. I told him I couldn’t read it either - which led to another awkward confrontation where it dawned on him that what he’s trying to get me to do is useless. Now he can’t go back on his word so we’ll see what happens.
Apart from that nothing interesting is happening at all – which is not very nice since I sit at school wondering whether it’d be better spending my time on an aeroplane directed to Perth. I still haven’t felt homesick yet which makes me a lot more comfortable compared to some of the other exchange students but I think six months here is enough.

Or is it? Everyday I learn something new. Like the other day when I was riding around Obihiro with a friend and we stumbled upon the Second Longest Bench in the World. That was an amazing experience. The fact that I had been living here for five or so months already and nobody had mentioned that this bland city is home to the World’s Second Longest Bench. We took photos of the bench, of us sitting on the bench, of the grass underneath the bench and Japanese people sitting on the bench. It stretches for four hundred metres in a park and is made of recycled wood. I’m now inspired to visit the Longest Bench just so I can say that I’ve seen and sat on the world’s longest seats.

Half-Way

So I’ve reached the half-way point without any threatening issues or dilemmas, which is a relief. I’m actually finding this whole experience to be too easy. Before I arrived the fact that going on exchange for a year is “such a challenge” was hammered into me, so that now in the middle of the experience it’s all quite surprising at how easy it is. All you have to do is sit back and go with the flow, say yes to every opportunity no matter how much you think you’ll hate it (ie. Pro-league Baseball games), and say sorry and bend to bow when something goes wrong. If you can do that without provoking anybody* or offending your own belief system** then you should have no problem, though I consider myself fairly lucky since not everyone in the world can do that. In some ways I think the fact that this is too easy for me could have consequences. For example it’s unlikely I’ll be remembered (whatever that means, apparently I should impress my personality on  people so much that they never forget me), which I suppose is a bit sad compared to the South American in my city who does many things wrong but will be laughed about fondly after he’s left. Still, I suppose it’s a good thing that I can adapt so well as to not draw any extra attention?

*(South Americans)
*(Very Religious People)

I’ll also write about my current feelings about Japan up to now, I’d like to compare it with what I think at the end in five months. I’ve been thinking of how to say this without coming off as conceited but I’ve concluded that the biggest reason I dislike (and I use the word sparingly) this country is because it’s a society based on aesthetics. The appearance of everything is what matters the most in almost every aspect. The fact that everyone is obsessed with food proves my point and that’s not an overstatement. I know that many people comment on Japan’s love of food and it seriously irritates me. The first question people ask me is if I eat Japanese food and what my favourite dish is.
To be honest I find traditional Japanese food repulsive. Uncooked fish or meat sided with beetroot pickles and seaweed wrapped daicon deep fried (tempura sushi) in oil and sitting in soy sauce, and a dab of wasabi mixed with uncooked slimy squid is inedible to me. Actually, it’s more than inedible. Paper is inedble, traditional Japanese obento is as good as poison. Anyway that’s by far not the only food in Japan, nor is it the only Japanese dish that exists and I cannot eat. Food is what consumes the most money, time and pleasure of my host family and I’m sure that it’s the same for millions of other people around Japan. It’s almost pretty much the only thing that causes any discomfort between me and my host family and I refuse to believe that I’m to blame. I’ve spoken to several gaijin in Obihiro who find the culture’s obsession with food unbearable. If you love food, this is the country for you – but for me food isn’t something that you can “love” or “hate”, it’s just something that is necessary to live. For Japanese people, food is loved by one and all and they spend literally hours a day eating (without putting on ANY weight) or talking about it. I should add that I have actually put on five kilograms since arriving in Japan so don’t think that I consider all Japanese food inedible.

That’s besides what I was discussing. Food doesn’t have anything to do with Japan’s thirst for order and beauty. It’s the display of foods and the amount of food shops and restaurants that amazes me. There is an industry in Japan that deals with the plastic modelling of menu dishes, and outside every single restaurant there is a large window which displays these rubber food items. They usually look more real than the actual dish I order but I think it’s interesting that they place such high importance on the appearance of the top layer of the bowl than the ingredients actually put mixed into it. Sure, it helps to know what your food looks like before you eat it and it makes my life a lot easier since I can’t read the menus but everyone crowds outside the shop looking at how the food is displayed before even recognizing what the dish is or what sort of food goes into it.

The sheer amount of restaurants in my city astounds me every night if I travel around enough. Perth is ten times the size of Obihiro, but Obihiro has ten times the amount of restaurants or food stores. Most are Ramen stands (noodle bars, I suppose) which usually have only two or three tables and a bench in front of the kitchen with stools for individual customers. Every one of these is packed on Friday nights and weekends and during the day they’re usually empty, but there’s one around every corner no matter what part of the city you’re in.
I think most people who are reading this from Perth have no idea just how large consumerism is in Japan and from what I understand, just as big in China, Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan. I don’t usually endorse everything Wikipedia articles state as fact but it has a knack of saying exactly what I want to. This article
 says everything I could about what I think of “consumerism” in Japan. For example consumerism is the equating of personal happiness with the purchasing material possessions and consumption Convenience Stores will probably be the one thing I miss most when I return to Australia and they’re about as common as vending machines. According to the Japan Vending Machine Manufactures Assosiation website, there are 5,582,200 vending machines in Japan, or one machine for every 23 people (I also found that on Wikipedia). Vending machines are where I spend most of my money actually. I don’t drink water anymore, I’ve acquired a strange obsession in the form of refrigerated, bottled, green tea called Occha. It is the most delicious drink I have ever had and I buy about three or four bottles a day from one of the four vending machines located in a fifty metre radius from my house.
I should mention that almost every food item sold in convenience stores are each wrapped so intricately that there would be street protests about the waste of it in Australia. When I buy biscuits or something sweet each individual biscuit or lolly is also wrapped in it’s own wrapper. It’s quite amazing at how unnecesary it is, I can’t understand the point of wasting so much time and plastic but I suppose it makes Japanese people feel safer and happier knowing that their chocolate koala is double protected from the outside world. One thing I do like about Japanese food products is that they’re all easy to open. In Australia I always struggle to open a packet of chips or something that is plastic and vacuum packed and it usually ends in the contents being spilled all over the floor. In Japan everything works like it should, so where there is a red arrow on the corner of plastic wrapped products, it actually rips properly in a smooth straight line and there is no harm done to the contents inside. It’s a stupid observation to write about, I know, but you have no idea how many times I’ve marvelled at the ease of opening something. That will be something I’ll have a hard time getting un-used to.

Japanese consumerism and the phenomenal product display is not limited to food. The second most prevalent displayed items are Disney merchandise or kawaii items. Hairclips, phone chains, phone ornaments, teddy bairs, fluffy things, just general “things” that are miscellaneous to the point of being incongruous. People buy the stuff and decorate themselves advertising the fact that they are infatuated with kawaii miscellany (what I would call Crap). Girls at school have a trail of large fluffy toys and pink bells with tassles connected to cute Disney characters hanging down their school uniforms which is all connected by a simple ring to their mobile phones. If you walk into the shops that sell this sort of Crap you could get dizzy from all the smiling faces staring at you from the hundreds of Disney characters on the shelves. The shops also have an assortment of confectionary which you can pick and choose and then shovel into a multi-colored cup. One time, just to see the reaction of the shopkeepers, I got one tiny little jellybean and asked how much it was by itself. The shop assistant took it gently from my palm and carried it with both hands to the front counter where she weighed the jellybean. When the weight did not react she went to ask her superior how much one jellybean should cost. They had a little discussion on what to do and apologized profusely when they told me I would have to buy two or more jellybeans. What shocked me the most was that they then put the jellybean into a little plastic lock bag and placed it into the trash can! I could have eaten it, or they could have, or they could have just put the jellybean into the bin without a plastic bag and without snap locking the bag.

Okay, onto the next thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot. What is “popular” in Japan is as far from “challenging” as you can get, if that makes sense. I’ve been wondering how to describe this and it is difficult but it’s just such an obvious phenomenon (and problem, in my opinion) that I have to mention it. It’s no surprise that people idolize the beautiful people and celebrities from Japan and America but it’s why they idolize them that I find strange. The most obvious example I can think of is the boy band Kat-tun. They’re six boys who look about 15 but are actually around 20 or something who wear makeup and flamboyant clothes who sing and dance to millions of Japanese teenage girls. Their songs are about love and friendship, of course, and their dances are….”sensational”. They promote being cool, fit and beautiful in the most predictable way and seem like more of a children’s band to me than High-5 which is the only Australian equivalent I can think of. They have their own TV show as well, where they perform all sorts of different acts that are meant to enlighten the audience of the band member’s personality. They do quizzes and little games where they compete with each other and the winner performs a well rehearsed song and dance with flashing lights and costumes which I think are very “unique”.

 

People love this sort of stuff. I’m not saying that Australians idolize politicians or authors or people associated with a bit more intelligence, but at least there’s challenging trends out there which make you appreciate it more than how baby-like that guy’s face is or the way he is standing on the stage with lights shadowing his face and smoke erupting out from behind him. Japanese metal and rock bands do exist but I’ve discovered that the “fans” of these sort of genres also like American pop (I recall writing about the guy in my class who thought Kelly Clarkson would impress me).

This leads me to my next point which is just speculative thought and no more. I think all the problems I have with Japan (which I admit I love studying and talking about) comes down to the fact that Critical Thinking is not taught at schools. The part of their brain where the capacity to look at their own society and comment on it critically is safely Glad-wrapped and vacuum packed - and labelled with a cute character saying “This is confiscated since 1946!” - into the farthest corner of their minds where only a long-term stay in a foreign country could unwrap it. Apart from the cruel cases of ijime (bullying) in Japanese primary schools, most people here are colorful jelly and peace on the outside, even the young men and teenage boys who have piercings everywhere and drop out of school early. What I find most strange is that they’re all very intelligent, my class is by far smarter than me even though they’re a year younger. I don’t know how fair the word shallow is, since it’s not like it’s a conscious attempt to suppress any questioning thoughts on Japanese culture and social order. I just get the feeling that there’s something empty or lacking in them, it’s very small but it’s connected to the desire to complain. Complaining about mundane events or things is so rare in my class that I’m more shocked than anything else. There is one girl who complains about her homework and she is the most annoying girl I’ve ever met and her classmates feel the same about her but I think she’s an exception. If people ask me if I’m cold and I say “Yes, very”, they seem surprised at first and then try to find something to warm me up or ask me if I’m okay and warn me not to catch a cold. It’s so odd, especially since I complain about almost everything. This entire blog would be antithetical to what everyone here thinks I’m writing about. Everybody does what they’re supposed to do without questioning, complaining and I’m sure even thinking about doing otherwise. This is all just speculative though and my own thoughts which I know most people would disagree with.

Now I think it’s time to finally describe what I love most about Obihiro. It’s wet. Very, very, wet. It’s currently Summer, the rainy season, and it rains every single night while the sun usually shines during the day making it the best possible location for plants to grow. Of course I don’t take back that this is the ugliest city in the world but there are a few parks around the place which I find so amazing and exciting that I spend a lot of my time reading, writing, or studying Japanese there. Japanese greenery is thick, there are forests everywhere outside of cities and when you look at them you cannot see past the first tree. Thousands of brilliant greens leaves, usually small too, cover enormous trees which look like living symbols of wild, natural beauty. The grass beneath them is covered by green moss and moist earth giving each step a feel of damaging the nature of things, which is helped by the thousands of insects, big and small which inhabit the area. Insects are something I was not prepared for when I came to Japan, I always thought Australia had it bad. Not that I hate insects, in fact I love them, and going to a park which has been allowed to develop naturally really takes me away from the ugly, treeless city. It seems like a separate world, only linked to civilization by the moss-covered and half rotten wooden planks that wiggle through dense green. Often there is also a man-made stream, or fountain which seem to show off how abundant fresh water is. There are hundreds of natural streams and rivers that run through Obihiro, my house is in fact directly opposite one which has plants on the banks which seem to grow at twice the rate the council chops them down. The main river through Obihiro, Tokachi River, is unfortunately banked by golf courses which seem to be the social forums for every married man living here. Even in the streets of Obihiro, there are green weeds or flowerings vines which grow through the cracks in the roads and pathways remade every year by hundreds of earthquakes. There is one tree, though, which has the most revolting smell I have ever known. I don’t know what it’s called but it has small white flowers arranged in cylinders on branches with big, flat leaves. The flowers expel this stink which smells of something too ripe, it’s not a rotten or decaying smell, it’s just so malodorous and fetid to the extent that after the first time of nearly having to stop my bike to retch I have to whizz past holding my breath. Apart from that tree there are no others which seem ugly in any way. For those of you who don’t come from Perth and are wondering why I find lush greenery so amazing, my home city seems to be the centre of the hole in the ozone layer where in Summer everything “naturally kept” is crispy, yellow and sandy. Even in Winter, what we call the “bush” or “scrub” is thin with leaves on the eucalyptus trees hanging flaccidly and only the slowly aging leaves on the ground which makes natural “forests” not very interesting. I’m sure the mountains around Tokachi from one year could provide Perth with enough water to last a hundred years. Unfortunately in Obihiro, there is not a great many animals. A few birds, mainly crows. I’ve seen three squirrels in the parks I’ve visited and apparently there are a few bears in the mountains and a great many foxes which are very cute, I saw one eating Onigiri discarded on the road. That’s about it, not that Australia is much more exciting but I thought that with this amount of lush vegetation there’d be a few more furry animals to inhabit it. I suppose it’s the snow which will arrive in November and will look as if it obliterates every green plant living at the moment.

Well I think after the long break I took from posting here that should suffice. I’m currently on Summer holidays so I finally had time to write this and get rid of all the thoughts about everything that’s been bothering me these past couple of months.

“Gaijin”

I’ve mentioned it before but now it’s only starting to sink in that people really are curious about foreigners, “gaijin”. At first I wasn’t sure whether to call it awe, surprise, fear, respect, even racism at times, but now I’m positive that people in Japan are just very curious about foreigners. In fact, I think the difficulty I’ve had with it is because I get so many different reactions. Some examples could be called racism I suppose - not that I was really worried about it -, other times it really is fear or excitement.

 The fascination of foreigners extends outside of school. Some mothers hide their children from me, others shout at them for crossing my path. Girls give a yelp if I walk around a corner in front of them or lick their lips and try to look seductive. Boys either scream whatever english phrase they know from “I love you” to “Avril Lavigne”, or they stare at me in silence and then starting talking excitedly with each other about what they saw. Reactions are sometimes so funny that I can’t help but laugh even if I’m alone. Myself and the other exchange students have started to feed their curiosity by surprising them even more. The German girl and myself both have blues eyes and light brown hair which makes us extra special targets most of the time. Together we could change one person’s impression of the world outside of Japan forever, which is frightening to say the least.

So by now you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been able to restrain getting an inflated head. Well, it’s difficult to understand and shocking when you have at how true what I said earlier is! Sometimes it really irritates me, all the staring and noting of every small action I make, but other times I like it. I like it when people show open curiosity and smile welcomingly as opposed to making assumptions about me that I live in LA California next door to Avril Lavigne (I’m not exagerating about this Avril Lavigne craze. I went to the shops with an exchange student friend and the next day at school everyone was whispering to each other about how I went on a date with Avril Lavigne). Most people I meet see me more as a topic of discussion or an item of interest. In conversation lulls their eyes rest back on me and they don’t seem to notice when I shift uncomfortably from the casual staring as if my mind is not there but my body is. If it’s just one person I’m meeting one-on-one they ask me pretty bizarre questions like how many centimetres my feet are and that they have a cousin who went to Belgium implying that Belgium is a part of Australia. Small talk in Japan is very different to small talk in Australia.

Most of the people at school don’t think I can speak any language. They seem to think I don’t have any education but still a person who deserves admiration and a bow. A girl was helping me do some classwork and she started translating english numbers from english to english without realizing until I couldn’t hold back my laughter. When I speak english they show open astonishment as if the language is a skill. They’re shocked when I pick up Japanese or when I show that I’ve learned something. Japanese people seem to think that Japanese is a very difficult language that is close to impossible for gaijin to learn, the truth is that it’s actually, in my opinion, a very easy language to learn but obviously difficult for me to just pick up meanings from hearing conversation all day long. When somebody gapes at me when I’m on my bike I can’t help but wonder if they’re surprised because I’m a gaijin or if they’re surprised that I’m a gaijin riding a bike. Luckily for me the belief that Americans don’t know simple skills in life (such as riding a bike) also applies to things that I don’t want to do. To put it simply I get special attention at school, for example I could skip a class and not get told off or use my phone in class and not get it confiscated – just because I’m assumed ignorant of common sense things.

I think it’s interesting and funny just because I know that nobody in Australia would be so foreign to foreigners. Sometimes I think that I can relate to someone but soon realize that they probably think I’ll be in movies when I return to America.

Despite the fact that everyone thinks I’m American I’ve heard of many more people travelling to Australia than America. In fact more than any other foreign country Australia would be the one that the majority of Japanese people are most culturally educated about. I’ve seen more pictures of koalas in Japan than my whole life in Australia.

Aside from my personal point at blue eyes and yell “GAIJIN!!!!” experiences, Japanese modern culture surprises me in a lot of cases by appearing as an imitation of Western culture. American pop culture for example was incredibly popular in Japan before it became too American to be American and thus became Japanese. Japanized western culture is as common in Japan as traditional Japanese culture and it’s almost pointless me talking about it since it’s so Japanese that it shouldn’t be surprising. Japanese youth fashion for example was probably based on Avril Lavigne video clips but now it’s been so Japanized that it bears no resemblance to what anybody would wear in America or Australia. On the coldest and rainiest days girls walk around the city in massive high heels with thin, black frilly socks that look like they might have originally been inspired by burlesque dancers. Above the socks they wear (or don’t wear) very tiny shorts and sometimes even smaller skirts. When I say tiny I mean that they’re only covering about a centimetre of leg. Above the shorts they wear a tight shirt that has strange english interpretations, for example (my personal favourite) “Shit me! I’m a sexy kitty babe! Mother Earth loves sexy!“. Sometimes this is covered by a fur coat or something else with gothic frills. Hair is just insane. I actually like their natural black hair but on teenagers it’s a rare thing to see. They dye it brown but it turns orange and it looks gross.

It’s not only the fashion that could have been an imitation. Although this isn’t exactly pop culture, the english language has been so Japanized that I cannot translate things that sound and look english because they are in the wrong context and mean something completely different. Food items especially, the most common being ice-cream. “Aisu” is what I call ice-cream in Australia. In fact I call everything frozen and sweet ice-cream in Australia. Here there are all sorts of different names. “Soft-cream” is supposedly a sundae, “Aisu-cream” is apparently flavoured ice (I don’t think there is actually an English word for it), “Sherbet” is what I would call sorbet (I don’t understand how that could confused). I don’t know why I find that interesting but it’s so many small differences like that that have made me wonder how many languages Japanese people are taught in their lives. Japanese for one, obviously, English at school, and then Japanese English which is completely different. A man I was talking to knew all the names of different shades of blue in English but didn’t know what they literally meant, for example Sky blue, pale blue, light blue, electric blue, sea blue, baby blue - he was listing them all for me and I actually learnt new names for light blue in english.

One thing that I never expected to be surprised by before coming here was the amount of injuries Japanese school students have. They spend so much time at club activities so they get a lot of injuries. For example I know the seniors in the tennis club spend five hours a day after school five times a week and more on weekends playing tennis, in the freezing cold, when it’s raining. I’m assuming the baseball club would be even more hardcore than that. So after noticing everyone’s giant bruises and cuts and slings I started thinking whether I’d eventually get hurt and have a big bruise to sport. Well it happened, it happened at my flower arranging club. Yes, I joined the flower arranging club. I was about to cut the stem of one flower and I missed the stem in one moment of complete uncoordination and cut my finger in a really bad way. Now my finger is bruised and cut but it means that I’m one step closer to being a Japanese schoolboy so I’m happy about it.
You’re probably all wondering why I joined the flower arranging club and so am I! Nodding and smiliing only helps so much until you agree to something you really don’t want to do. The next day someone I had never met before came and escorted me to the flower arranging room and there it began, but I won’t quit because at least it gives me a chance to make more friends.

I am slowly reconstructing everybody’s impression of foreigners and I think they’re getting used to me. The fact that I’m not American, blonde, sporty, or Avril Lavigne has pretty much shocked my entire school, let alone me the only male joining the flower arranging club. I never realized how different Australia is to most countries in that I grew up around so many different cultures. Japan is a completely homogenous society so something foreign causes a lot of interest and a lot of hassle. Everybody is so compatible in Japan, nobody breaks the rules or ruins the order of things, everybody does what they’re supposed to do without complaining or fighting. That’s the positive effect of having a society very closed to the outside world even though that’s changing fast. It’s nice to be in a country where everything works out perfectly as planned, but if anything other than the over-politeness could get on my nerves it’ll be the fact that everything is too clockwork.

Anyway I’ll talk a bit about some things I still can’t get over at school.
The girls dominate. A Japanese classroom would be a feminist’s haven. I’ve seen guys crying because their girlfriend’s beat them up. The girls here are so violent, and their boyfriend’s try to fight back but the combined power of the girl’s shrieking and unrestrained punches and kicking could K.O anyone. Even the seemingly most timid girl has released a brutal punch when she sees appropriate. Apart from that the girl’s also have a strange perception of vanity. They put on their fake eyelashes and make-up in the middle of class where everyone can see and it’s obvious they don’t beautify themselves to impress the guys, I think they do it just for fun and just because they can. The girls are the ones who talk to the boys at lunch not the other way around, and it’s the girls who talk back to the teachers and get a smile in return, not the boys. The girls are more free than the guys at school, they can join soccer, baseball or any sport they want as well as all the cultural clubs while there are no guys in the tea ceremony or flower arranging clubs (except me). Between now and twenty years in the future these girls will lose everything interesting about them. Judging from the majority of middle aged women in Japan, girls grow up to be polite, well-behaved and positively feminine, lacking an opinion on anything and only caring about their children going to school and what their husband’s eat. Sure they’re very kind and motherly but that’s all there is to them. Apparently they lose any hope of a fashion sense. Perhaps it’s just a major change in generations but whatever it is it creeps me out. The elderly women seem to be a lot like elderly people in Australia actually and I see them as more familiar than most other people.

The guys in my class are a bit boring but they probably think I’m very boring too. They only talk about sport (from what I can understand), and they only play cards at school or sleep, waiting for baseball to start. Most guys are too scared to even make eye contact with me and most of the guys who I’m friends with only first starting talking to me because they were dared by their friends. That’s not entirely true actually, there are some from the third year who realize that I’m just human and there’s some other guys who don’t know what to think of me after seeing me not performing well in our PE activities. It’s only men in Japan who have work twitches and it seems to be almost every man. I don’t know what in the world could make them want to overwork to the point that they their eyes are constantly twitching.