Cherry Blossoms

Well the cherry blossoms have finally arrived in Hokkaido, a month and a half after the rest of Japan. Obihiro has almost completely transformed, trees are growing leaves, grass is actually green, and I finally saw the sun. The amount of pink everywhere is a bit overwhelming, even when I first arrived I was a bit shocked at how many posters, paintings or billboards of cherry blossoms there were. They are beautiful but sometimes I feel that they’re overrated – just a little bit… They only last for three weeks of the whole year and the Japanese make it sound like they only grow in Japan and all year round. Nonetheless the blossom season, wherever you are in Japan and whatever month it arrives, is definitely something to look forward to. I don’t know if it’s me just being stupid but I swear that a city smells different when there’s green growing on trees. I could almost feel the first day of spring when I woke up; the clouds were sparse and there were birds chirping instead of cawing. The ravens in Japan are positively weird. They sound like a human impersonating a crow, it’s so strange to listen to them. Sometimes when I’m riding home from school I hear a crow and almost fall off my bike, they’re like someone very funny is trying to be funny by scaring me impersonating a crow. It’s hard to explain.

Anyway, the sakura have definitely changed what I thought earlier about Obihiro being the ugliest city in existence but they still don’t hide the cracked road and collapsing houses. After finally finding my bearings in Obihiro I’ve come to realize that the suburb I live in is filled with factories, panel-beaters and hermit women with glad-wrap for windows. I almost yelped when I first saw my neighbour the other day, she looked like garlic, completely wrinkled and hunched like a mangled stick wearing medieval peasant clothes. It seems she was in hibernation over the winter and now only comes out of her shack to tend to her vegetable patch. I had always thought her house was my family’s garden shed, it has newspaper and glad-wrap for windows, a frontdoor that’s almost fallen off it’s hinges and a roof that’s completely curved from the weight of snow. I’m really curious as to what she does all day and what kind of life she has/had.

Apart from her I’ve met a lot of strange people who seem a lot more interesting than the strange people in Australia. The other day I went to an ostrich farm, which is strange in itself. The owner of the ostrich farm wears an ostrich feather in his hat and yellow and red striped suspenders. He has a hobby of collecting enormous dinosaur statues which make the ostrich farm appear even more “unique”. There were colourful turkeys running around the legs of a huge tyranosaurus rex who is as big as the biggest building in Obihiro; goats chained to the ground in the middle of the entrance to the park; and least of all, one of those bull-riding machines that you see in cowboy movies. Me and my friend were confused, first of all at why the heck there was an ostrich farm in Hokkaido and second of all why the ostrich farm was more of a bizarre collector’s display than an ostrich farm.

 Golden Week has just finished here which officially begins Spring (and apparently happiness) in Hokkaido. I’m already starting to miss the snow as I still hadn’t really gotten over it after I arrived. As much as I love the sun and warmth and green, I’m already looking forward to October when it starts snowing again. Golden Week holds a lot of festivities, I think there’s four national public holidays in the same week which makes it very significant for every Japanese family. Yesterday was Children’s Day and I went to see the famous koinobori which are hundreds of carp flags hung up high across a river in a town near Obihiro called Taiki. The same is done all over Japan and I’m hoping that what I saw in Taiki isn’t the best of it. I was given the impression that it’s a marvellous display, instead it was old and faded carp over a pretty ugly river with banks of gravel. I wasn’t really impressed but it seems that the throngs of Japanese families around me were. It must bring back a lot of fond memories for the older people and it must be very exciting for the children whom the day was created for.

That’s all I have to say today. One more thing, even though Japanese adore cute and cuddly things more than any other country in the world – they treat their pets terribly and that’s pretty much my only serious complaint after being here for six weeks.

I saw my first fly

As the title suggests I saw the first fly I’ve seen since I left Australia. This is a big deal for me since I grew up having annoying flies buzzing around everywhere in the heat of Perth. I took a photo of the fly but I haven’t seen it since. Things are changing in Obihiro as the seasons change. The roads are dry now that all the snow has melted and today a very strong wind has picked up which nearly blew me over as I was riding to the electronics store. Yamada Denki sells more electrical appliance than any Harvey Norman in Perth and Obihiro is a tenth of the size. I spent around $300 buying the most popular JPop acts as well as some of my favorites and a discman to listen to all of it which was only $10. DVDs players can be bought for $15 and I’ve never seen a bigger range of iPods in my life. I think I will be visiting that shop quite regularly and I doubt I’ll have much space for clothes in my suitcase when I travel back to Australia next year.

Anyhow I’m sure you’re more interested in my school. New things happen everyday and I discover more about the Japanese with every minute I spend here. The biggest thing that’s surprised me is the “Marching” lessons my class does instead of PE. Everybody stands in a straight line (as you do in Japan) and we march like the most disciplined army parading after a victory. The first time I was shocked, if a little frightened but quickly told myself that I was being stupid. Now everyday when we practice I can hardly keep a straight face. I don’t understand any of the instructions and pretty much ruin the flow of the rehearsal, it’s a lot of fun but I try not to think about what we’re practicing for. Nobody pays much attention to me making mistakes left and right, but the rehearsals have been interrupted a couple of times with everybody breaking out in fits of laughter. It’s very tense for them (I think) so I think I’m more of a relief than a nuisance.

 Apart from that school hasn’t changed a lot. I still receive a lot of attention from everyone, it varies though. There’s one girl who stares at me all day long, she turns around in her seat just to see what I’m doing but she has never spoken to me and probably never will. She’s popular among her friends who spend a great deal talking to me but she literally hides behind them and just peers at me from behind someone else’s shoulder. I asked if there was something wrong with her or if I had done anything to offend her but someone said that she just thinks my eyes are beautiful. It’s confusing but I’ve made it a mission to communicate with her in words one day. Other people bow at me as we pass through the corridors as if I’m a teacher, that annoys me a lot but it seems that they’re too nervous to do anything else. There’s only a couple of people who treat me normally, as if I’m their little brother, and those people are my friends. It’s difficult though because I still don’t understand a lot of what they say and I think they’ll give up trying soon but I learn so much without realizing it and usually I can bring up a topic that I know I’ll be able to respond to.

I have the same class for every subject except Business, which teaches us how to type. Everybody is amazed at how fast I type and they seem to think that it’s a skill I’ve trained hard for. This is probably the only subject where I can do the “work”. I can’t understand any of the others, except for the four different english classes. Some days we have three english classes in one day, one for writing, one for speaking, one for vocabulary and another one for what seems like learning morals in English. Most of the time I’m the worst in the class at the subjects because I can’t read the Japanese instructions to answer the question in English but they’re still fun for me. When Japanese people speak English all emotion in their face and voice goes away and they concentrate completely on reading the letters instead of saying what is written. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, it’s as hard for me to learn Japanese, but sometimes I can’t help myself from laughing. It looks so funny. There’s one girl who’s fluent in English but has obviously never spoken with a foreigner before, when she says something in English she sounds like the Telephone lady who tells you “Your call cannot be connected, please check the number and try again”.

Speaking of monotonous, there’s a lady who works in the elevator at the biggest and upper-class shopping centre which I go to regularly (because my host mum’s restaurant is across the road). I’ve been in the elevator about six times and each time I feel angry. This lady’s job is to wear an immaculate uniform with a sailor’s hat and white chauffeur gloves and operate the elevator which is tiny. She stands facing the buttons all day long, 1centimetre away from them, never turning around or walking out of the door, she just stands there and repeats the same words at every floor the elevator passes. I don’t think I’d feel so angry if she didn’t use the most polite words as she’s talking to absolutely nobody. She apologises to people who couldn’t care less that they had to go one floor down before going up, and thanks people when they walk out as if they had given her tip. She must be slightly insane by now, even if she has a normal life outside the elevator her mind must have flipped at some stage while being in the elevator.

That’s one reason I couldn’t live in Japan for more than a year, people are too polite. They do everything possible to make their lives more tedious. Currently there are council elections in Obihiro and to gain support the parties go around the city in cars with their heads out the windows waving and bowing to people as they drive past. A loudspeaker with a high pitched lady’s voice thanking everybody as they go past is also a feature of these campaigners as they drive around all day long. I’ve seen more than once the people with half their bodies out the car waving to a blank wall on the most desolate street, as the lady with the loudspeaker shrieks her thanks to the electricity polls. It’s strange, but funny. If any political campaigners did that in Australia they’d be reported to the police for making too much noise and would be pulled over for not wearing their seatbelts. Now that I think about I’m not sure if one is more weird than the other. I often think how sterile Japanese society is but then I see things which would never happen in Australia and that makes me reconsider. I think the best way to describe almost everything here, no matter what it is, is that it’s tedious. It’s not painful or annoying to me yet, I find it interesting and most of the time I laugh it off easily but I know that if I ever lived here as a real resident I wouldn’t be able to tolerate the repetition where repetition seems impossible.

There are many other funny things I could tell you but I think if I did I would be offending many people here in Japan, not because of what they do but because the way I see it.
Actually I think this is too funny to not tell anyone. My host mother thanked an automatic parking toll booth. I think that says everything about Japan anyone should know. Not only did she thank it, but she used the word “sumimasen” which is as much ‘excuse me’ as it is ‘thank you’. Sort of like “excuse me for making you do that favour for me” to an automatic toll booth. One of the only automatic parking lot toll booths I’ve seen actually, usually they have an old man there who does it all manually keeping unemployment low.

Although it might look as if I’m not enjoying Japan I can assure you all that I am having the best time. Sometimes it’s not “thrilling” or even very fun, but that doesn’t mean it’s not enjoyable or worth it. I’m glad that at the orientation camp we were warned that there will be times when we feel very bored. I’ve been bored and I learned to be unbored. I feel lucky that I got this family in this city and I’m glad that I learn more everyday than I probably could in a whole week at school or university. I learn about myself, about other people and about this different culture and I look forward to going to bed and waking up and going to school and returning home which is, I think, an enviable way to experience day to day life.

First day at school!

Even though I’ve gone to three days of school, today was my first full length day with classes. It’s a lot of fun and I really like the way the classes are timed and how everything is orientated. Everyone is so easy-going and the teachers are really laid-back which surprised me since I had the impression that Japanese schools were very strict. People sleep in class all day long, they eat, drink and talk to each other while the teacher is speaking. There are a few things that shocked me at first. The most obvious thing was that everybody’s eyebrows are shaved. I can’t figure it out, is it the fashion to have no eyebrows or was there an epidemic eyebrow disease that erased them all. Even some of the most vein girls have ravaged stubbles for eyebrows. I don’t think I’ll ever find out why they’re shaved but I thought it was something that everyone who is reading this should know.
Also, make-up, hair gel, contact lenses, ear-phones and mobile phones are owned by every single student and are given a lot of attention all day long, in every single class. Girls do their make-up in full view of everyone every 10 minutes or so. Everyone gathers around the mirror in the morning and perfects their hair to make it look as messy as possible, most of the guys spend a lot of their time on their hair to make it punky. Some people have dyed hair but I think today they had to chop it off and they were all very upset. The girl who sits next to me is the popular girl of the entire second year and spends all day long looking at herself in her hand-mirror, she didn’t do any work. Today she had a big novelty – contact lenses, and they were rubbed between her fingers so much that I think she’s going to get an eye infection soon. She’s hilarious though, she made me laugh so much and she helped me a lot with the work, which by the way is impossible for me to do since it’s all in kanji.
The girls in my class are so funny, they’re laughing all day and are so laid-back. Most of them seem to have a phobia of foreigners since they refuse to come within 10metres of me, but there’s some who are very outgoing and made friends with me instantly. The boys made me laugh a lot as well but in a different way. They’ve spent so much time trying to act cool in front of me but it seems like they’re too scared to actually try to become friends with me or talk to me. It’s so funny. Some guys from other classes run up to me and say HERRO and everyone around them starts laughing because they think it’s so funny that they talked to me. It gets really annoying though because I wish that they’d at least try to talk to me instead of trying to impress me! Today I struck up a conversation with the popular guys of the class. The main one was listening to his iPod and I asked him what he was listening to and he showed me. It was Kelly Clarkson. It was so hard to not laugh. It would be so funny if every jock at school in Australia listened to White Trash!
Anyway they’re all very nice and I have no problem with them. I still can’t get used to being stared at all the time. People treat me so differently and even when I’m walking down the street people get a shock when they see me and just keep staring at me or look away immediately and straighten their backs to look good. Everyday at school so far at break times pretty much every girl in the school crowds around my classroom to get a look at me, while the guys walk back and forth past the door and look in at me each time. It’s so funny, but nobody else finds it strange that everyone looks at me (obviously) so I don’t have anyone to laugh with.

It’s still difficult to communicate but my Japanese is getting better, I also found a really good method of saying what I want to say. If I just say a response in normal english instead of stuttering and stumbling with Japanese, the person I’m talking to can pretty much understand what I’m saying just from the tone I say the sentence. It’s hard to explain but it works most of the time!
One thing that has really made me laugh more than anything else is the names my family calls me. Everyone else remembers my name, but not my host family. I’ll list the names they’ve called me. Tulip, Whistle, Steve, Daniel, Squijil, Syrup, Patrick, Harup and now they’ve resigned to Furoop. It’s very hard to not laugh when they call me the wrong name and I think they feel the same way but their politeness keeps them from admitting their mistake. Before I came to Japan I always thought “well at least my name is easy to pronounce so that won’t be a problem”, but I’ve been proven very wrong.

I also went to my first after school club, Kyudo, which looks like a lot of fun. I’ll be doing it four days a week which will tire me out, but that’s probably a good thing. Tomorrow will be my first day riding to school and to be honest I’m positive that I’ll get lost, but I’ve got a map (in Japanese) so I should be able to find my way. Apparently it’s a 30minutes ride from my house to school, and then I have to ride to Kyudo which will take another half an hour (I had to walk there today) and when that finishes it will be dark outside and I have to ride all the way home which could be around a 45minutes ride. Feel sorry for me! I might faint along the way but at least I’ll sleep well tomorrow night.

Anyway it’s time for me to go to bed.

First Impressions!

This is my first post but it’s the eighth day I’ve been in Obihiro with my host family and the eleventh day I’ve been in Japan. I arrived at Narita International Airport on the 22nd of March and stayed at a hotel near the airport for one night. All the exchange students coming to Japan (all 240 of them) stayed in the same hotel so it was quite hectic, especially for the volunteer AFS staff who were so well organised that it would be impossible for something like that to run like clockwork in Australia without some blunder. After one night we were split into three groups for our official orientation. I went to Tokyo, as did most of the students, where we stayed at the Youth Olympic Centre (or something like that) for two nights. We were all split into separate groups and I was placed in Group 4, which comprised of all the awesome people attending the orientation. It was a lot of fun and in just two days we all became very good friends. From there myself and five other students caught the domestic flight to Obihiro. We were welcomed by our host families, the Obihiro Chapter AFS staff and our Liason Persons (LPs). From there we were finally off on our journeys and went separate ways to our family’s homes. Coming out of the airport was the first time I had ever seen snow and I was very excited. It was all so overwhelming, I got off the plane and was instantly struck by a language barrier. My host parents and I started to realize just how challenging the rest of the year would be.

Obihiro is a small city of 170,000 people and has no unique attractions. I’ve arrived at the end of winter and all the snow is melting and there’s not a single leaf on any of the trees (which are very spaced apart). So far it seems pretty dismal but I’ve started to get used to it and I’m looking forward to summer which I’ve heard is very nice. I start school in six days and I’m really excited about that too, even though I know that will be more challenging than anything I’ve experienced so far. The other day I went to the Kyudo Dojo where I had my first lesson in Japanes Archery, it looks extremely difficult and requires a lot of discipline but I’m keen to continue it as my school club for the whole year.

Everyday my host mother usually organises something for me to do. Some days I go to anothe exchange student’s house or spend the day with family friends. Today and yesterday I haven’t done anything during the day but it’s been alright because I’ve had time to relax and get over my minor cold, it also means I can spend time making this blog so I don’t have to individually email people all the time!

 I’ve watched a bit of Japanese TV and am surprised at how much baseball there is. On my TV there’s only twelve channels and on three of those channels there is baseball almost 24/7, or whenever I switch the TV on. There’s also a home shopping channel and cooking channel which my host mum loves. Apart from that there’s nothing that really interests me on TV especially since I can’t understand any of it. The News is the most interesting because I can usually understand what’s going on.

I’ve also been confronted by more cuteness more than I ever have been in my whole life. Everything here is cute, company logos, TV Channel symbols, even at the swimming championships in Melbourne the screen always has a cute little animated creature looking at me from the corner. The microphone which the Sports reporters interview the swimmers with has a little cute frog attached to it. Billboards, advertisements on the sides of buses, newspapers, magazines, shop logos… they all have something cute about them, it could be a puppy or a kitten or a really creepy rabbit thing with giant ears.

 Apart from that everything else here seems quite normal. The city is adapted for cold weather and lots of snow so the houses aren’t very attractive. Most of them seem damaged because the snow has almost crushed them. Also on clear days I can see the huge mountains the surround the farming plain that Obihiro is on. I visited them the other day and they are amazing, the snow was squeaky and really soft and the scenery was breathtaking. In the middle of the mountains is a huge lake which was completely frozen over. It was pretty scary walking on it because we could see water soaking up through our footsteps. There were also small house made entirely of ice. There was a bar in one and a chapel in the other one, where people actually get married, but they’ve probably melted by now because I went on the last day they were open. It was an amazing experience, I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.

One night I also went to a Salsa concert. It was strange seeing a Japanese woman singing Spanish, but it was a lot of fun. I was surprised at how well the Japanese audience danced because they have such a conservative manner most of the time but then suddenly they broke out in Spanish dancing. My host mother organised the event and it was very succesful. Apparently Obihiro has a lot of cultural events and I’m looking forward to attending them all.

There are 500 foreigners living in Obihiro which is quite a lot since the city is in the middle of nowhere. People still stare at me when I walk around in shops or down the street but they’re not hostile at all, they’re very interested and amused especially when I try to speak Japanese. Most of them are also very helpful and correct me when I make mistakes. I still can’t have a complete conversation with someone in Japanese but I can communicate what I want well. People just have to talk very slowly with me and use lots of hand gestures.

Anyway I think that’s it for today. Windows 98 won’t lets me upload photos so you’ll have to wait a while to see an pictures.