First of all, I'd like to apologise for failing to write a blog for so long. My neglect has partly to do with the fact that I haven't done anything especially interesting of late, and a lot to do with the fact that I've been on-and-off unwell - curse you glandular fever!
However, it does me no good to dwell on negatives like this, so, at the behest of my friends back in Adelaide, I will once again write a blog! But what to write about?
In the first few weeks that I was here, it was always easy to find a subject to write on, for everything was new and exciting. As I have become more accustomed to life in Japan, though, things that were once new and wacky are now simply part of my every-day life; but that's not to say that things aren't exciting. Far from it - I'm having a great time here!
One of the things I am enjoying the most is gradually being able to understand (and to a lesser extent speak) Japanese. The multitude of Kanji (Chinese characters), of which were once all but incomprehensible to me, are now revealing their secrets, and I can gradually grasp the meaning of Tohoshinki's ballads. Indeed, it seems that sometimes there are things that can be better expressed in Japanese than English - or at least they come to my mind in Japanese first. I am taking that as a good sign that I am learning!
Japanese is particularly interesting because of the great subtlety of meaning that it can convey. Often, tone is conveyed not through the tone of a speaker's voice, but by their choice of words. There is polite speech and there is casual speech, there is masculine speech and feminine speech, and so on. In contrast to English, where one's type of speech (formal vs casual) is largely dictated by choice of words, Japanese uses the same words but with different conjugations - for example, 'to go' is ikimasu in polite/semi-polite form, but merely iku when speaking casually. Not only that, but because the Japanese love to shorten EVERYTHING (to give a familiar example, 'Pocket Monsters' becomes 'PokeMon' ), listening to casual speech is like listening to another language entirely! And I haven't even mentioned keigo, the super-polite way of speaking, because I get annoyed when all of the shopkeepers etc speak it to me and I cannot understand them. Oh well, it's quite the challenge, but I guess as I've always found understanding things to be satisfying, I am enjoying it.
Another part of the language that doesn't really translate into English is that many words have the same pronunciation but different meanings. This can be interesting in two ways - firstly to create such confusing sentences as:
橋の端で箸で食べた。
Hashi no hashi de hashi de tabeta.
I ate with chopsticks on the edge of the bridge.
Of course, there are subtle pronunciational differences between all of the above hashi, but I can't pick them up in everyday speech. That's why I found Chinese so hard ~_~".
The other is in creating multiple meanings in things like poems. As my Japanese is nowhere near good enough to create a poem (or to find a suitable example), I'll just give you one example of where it's similar to English:
松 ＝ matsu = pine (tree)
待つ = matsu = to wait
It's not hard to see how you could do a similar play on words in English with the word 'pine'. This is just the tip of the iceberg, however, and you can see why it'd be hard to translate a poem from Japanese into English if it contained things like this.
Well, it seems like I have run out of steam for writing this blog post - I hope I didn't bore you to death with my ranting on language! To make up for it somewhat, I suppose I'll post up some pictures of food to torment, er, show you what my life is like in Japan!
Great, now I've made myself hungry...
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As many of you may know, I'm not the world's biggest sports fan. I usually leave the room when the AFL comes onto the TV, pay no attention to the latest tennis celebrity and only watch the football (you know which type!) every four years. And baseball? Does such a sport even exist outside of faint rumours from American soaps and movies?
How, then, did I find myself waking up at 6:30 am on a Saturday morning to attend a baseball game in the middle of Tokyo?
The reason behind this apparent lunacy of mine is that this was no ordinary game of baseball - it was the 早慶戦 Sou-Kei Sen, or the bi-annual Waseda University vs. Keio University baseball game. To put it simply, Waseda University (for the forgetful among you, that's where I am studying now) and Keio are long-time rivals. How long? Try over a hundred years - the first game was apparently played in 1903. How could I miss out on such a historic event as this?
The game was due to start at 1pm, but in order to secure ourselves some decent seats and to properly enjoy the pre-match celebrations, we all met up at a station near the Jingu Stadium at the wonderful time of 8am. There, we were met by members of WIC (Waseda International Circle), basically a group of friendly Japanese students who organise events and things for us international students. After hanging around for a while, we moved slowly to the stadium, eventually getting in at 10am or so.
Why we were required to get in so early became apparent shortly after we had sat down - there were to be many pre-match events to keep us occupied. You know, cheerleaders, singing university songs, giving respect to the other university, raising the flag, raising our fists, cheering for the other university....wait, what?
To begin with, let me explain a little about the cheerleaders. Of course there were the obligatory short-skirted and pom-pommed female kind, but they were only secondary to the male cheerleaders, who seemed to be running the show. These guys were dressed in a traditional Japanese black school uniform (just think of what you've seen in manga or anime) with a Waseda armband. Their 'cheerleading' seemed to consist of leading the singing, shouting at the tops of their voices and performing strange arm-movements and dances. Rather odd, but you get used to it after a while.
Of course, I should have expected this, being in Japan where tradition and respect is still, well, respected. Instead of shouting rabidly at the other side of the stadium, we each took our turns at singing our university anthems (all three verses, which made me realise just how laid back us Aussies are - when was the last time you sang the second verse of Advance Australia Fair?), removing our hats/Waseda flags/etc as Keio did so. We each gave a cheer for each other before the game. We even exchanged cheerleaders! That's right, a detachment of Keio University cheerleaders was sent over to our stage before the game, at the same time as we sent ours to them, to perform a small routine - and no-one thought anything of it! Amazing.(N.B. I thought Waseda's cheerleaders had the better routine in the end, but those of Keio were somewhat prettier overall. ;) )
Another aspect of the proceedings that interested me was how, as one of my American friends put it, they were so reminiscent of 1930s Germany. We had the military-style brass band, we had the numerous patriotic songs, we had the cheerleaders in Prussian-style uniform - we even had the fist raising! It was an amazing experience, and something that was so different to what I ever could have imagined.
The game itself was quite interesting as well, as far as sports go. If I have the chance, I would like to go to see a game in the U.S. sometime, just to compare things. I'm sure that would be another enlightening experience!
The result, though, was not something to be too happy about:
Oh, yes, I should mention one other thing: October 31st was also significant for another reason: it was Halloween! Having never celebrated this custom before, my Australian friend Dave and I decided we may as well make the most of having two important events on the one day:
We wore those costumes for the whole day. I don't know if it was because we were foreigners, because we were Pikachu, or because we were two Pikachu's together, but we attracted attention wherever we went. Quite unusually for Japanese, people were outright staring at us, and there were constant cries of 'Pikachu da!' (It's Pikachu!) as we travelled between our dorm and the stadium. All of this was very entertaining to Dave and I, who had worn sunglasses to a) disguise ourselves and b) hide our tired eyes (had been out to a birthday party the night before). Perhaps the most memorable thing that happened was when a group of high-school girls, who I had overheard talking about us for quite a while, coming up to us, giggling, and asking if they could pull our Pika-tails (don't take that out of context, please :P).
All in all, it was a day memories are made out of - so much fun!
P.S. To those of you who are interested, I have also secured myself tickets to the Tohoshinki concert movie (this weekend) and 4th Official Fanclub Event (end of January) - the latter of which will have the guys themselves there. My goals are being achieved! ^_____^