As I write this, I am back in Adelaide and have been for over a week. It's hard to believe that my exchange year in Japan passed so quickly - it seems like only yesterday when I was excitedly receiving my certificate of acceptance from Waseda in the mail.
At the same time, though, the time I spent in Japan is quite a long period and one that divides the old, pre-Japan me and the me that is writing this blog post now. In my time in Japan, I made a whole new network of friends, both Japanese and international. I grew familiar with the area around my dorm and the university to an extent that I began to think of it as 'home' - something that I felt when returning to Tokyo from time spent in other parts of Japan or in Korea. I also gained increasing confidence in my Japanese abilities, remarking to one (Japanese) friend how our conversations started in English in September last year and were one hundred percent Japanese by the time we said our goodbyes.
All of these things contributed to Japan becoming a large part of me and my life, whether that is immediately obvoious now or not. I know that the things I have learned and the people I have met during my time abroad will continue to have lasting influences on my life - for the better, I hope.
I am sorry that there are no photos to accompany this post but I promise that there will be some photos to look at in the near future. At the moment I have rough plans for two more posts - one regarding the things that I miss and don't miss from Japan, and one regarding a certain adventure I undertook a couple of days before I left Tokyo...
Return to blog homepage.
Somehow, it's July already. Time sure has flown - it really does seem like yesterday when I arrived here in Tokyo, eyes open in wonder at the big city sights and brain in confusion with the millions of things I had to adjust to.
And adjust I have. Tokyo is like a home to me now, and I can honestly say that I'll miss this small, ten-metre-squared room when I head back to Adelaide (what will I do when there's empty space on all sides of my bed?).
I haven't been living a merely adjusted life though - in the meantime, I've been having a lot of fun! Most of that you will have read about in this blog or seen through photos on Facebook already, but I thought it'd be best if I quantify this fun. Put it up to some scrutiny. What better to do this with than my original list of goals I posted almost ten months ago to the day?
Let's see how I stacked up:
- Become ペラペラ in Japanese. (if you don't know what that means, look it up!)
- Well, I may not be fluent, but I can hold a conversation just fine. I understand most of what is said to me too - but when Japanese talk between themselves, I still struggle.
- Attend a Tohoshinki concert, preferably at Tokyo Dome, with Jaejoong Sweat Seats!
- I had a ticket to attend the fan event, but due to certain unfortunate circumstances it was cancelled. This meant that the Tokyo Dome event could not happen either. :(
- HOWEVER I did manage to see a movie of the 2009 Tokyo Dome Concert!
- Visit my friends in Japan, particularly those outside of Tokyo (Yuri in Nagoya and Izumi and Pei in Osaka)
- I ended up in both places over the Spring Break. Saw Yuri in Nagoya and Pei on our ski trip too~
- Visit the super-awesome life-sized Gundam.
- Sadly, I think it was taken down before I got to Tokyo...
- Stumble upon an unassumingly awesome bar behind a non-descript, heavy door.
- Well, I did visit one bar! It was very nice, and I had a drink with a large spherical piece of ice in it.
- Speaking of bars, I intend to visit a particularly nice one to celebrate the end of my trip.
- Attend the Tokyo Game Show.
- Done!
- Attend the Tokyo Motor Show.
- Sadly did not happen due to my feeling unwell. But I got to see a whole lot of interesting historical cars at the Mille Miglia instead!
- Go skiing (perhaps!).
- Yessiree! Here's a photo that I haven't shown you before:
- Have a photo taken with those crazy Harajuku-types.
- Sadly not. But I think two pretty girls in kimono are nice substitutes.
- Stumble upon a street-racing scene or Touge event.
- Does being driven to said event by someone count as 'stumbling upon'?
- Learn to cook and clean for myself.
- I mean, I cooked on average once a week, and cleaned somewhat less, but I wouldn't count that as learning to do either thing. Certainly not enough to do either when I get home. *cough cough*.
- Update this blog once a week (yikes!)
- Sorry about that guys.
- Get some Tohoshinki signatures at a fan-signing event.
- May have been possible if I actually went to said event.
- Somehow appear on Japanese television.
- This one didn't occur, even though there was a chance I could have. Instead, I did something even better, and got immortalised in a magazine!
- Convince someone to let me drive a GT-R (this is definitely in the 'impossible' category!)
- Sadly not. However, my friend had an R33-GTS-T which he drove me around in (and not just normal driving, let me tell you). Said friend has also just sold the car and bought another one with a GTR bodykit and extra power... I wonder if he will let me drive?
I won't bother giving myself a score, actually. A qualitative analysis was more fun. And I qualitatively conclude that I've had an awesome trip so far!
As for those remaining goals, well, I don't think I'll be achieving any more than I have already in the short time that I have left here. That doesn't mean I won't be doing anything interesting though - next week is certainly shaping up to be interesting...
Return to blog homepage.
Some of you may remember, if you cast your minds back, to the video I uploaded showing my room here in Tokyo. Well, I thought that since it's been the better part of a year since then, it might be a good idea to show you what my room looks like now!
I've obviously personalised it a lot and made it feel much more like a home. Indeed, I feel that I'll come to miss it when I leave - sleeping in the middle of a big room with space all around me may be rather unsettling!
And, as before, a video tour!
Return to blog homepage.
Every Monday evening, right before we start our club activities (but after the compulsory gathering), we undertake something known as 「ラジオ体操」or, in English, Radio Gymnastics.
This tradition, which I have no idea when it originated but strongly suspect it was sometime in the post-war 50s, begins with removing the tiny, battery-powered mono cassette (!) player from the storage room. This task is, of course, relegated to a first year student. After the device has been removed and placed in a suitable position, we spread out in a large circe in the garage or, if as in the above photo we are outside, in rows according to year-level. The play button is pushed, and the gymnastics begin.
What follows is something that conjures up in my mind a mix of Play School, 1984 and 50s socialism (which, believe you me, Japan was). The piano starts playing and a man with a kind and all-too-happy voice begins counting sets of eight while briefly explaining the exercises. Of course, right away I am reminded of the piano man in Play School, who I remember being excited at seeing whenever they rarely showed him ("So that's where the music came from!"). This Play School connection is futher enhanced by the fact that some of the things we do strongly resemble a piano-accompanied activity that I often partook in whilst watching the show - 'Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes', anyone?
Needless to say, I was struggling to contain a grin the first time I partook in this activity. The Korean student to my right, however, was not so successful, and burst out with laughter. None of this fazed the Japanese students though. They have apparently been doing this exact same exercise since they were little children in primary school and as such all knew the moves by heart. Not one of them batted an eyelid when they found out that we had to continue those same activities as university students!
The longer I stay in Japan, the more I realise just how fundamentally different our cultures are. It goes all the way down to our ways of thinking - distilled down to a very basic level, it's individualism vs. what's best for the group. But I won't go into such a discussion in this post, as it only has one photo, and I'll probably kill people with boredom.
(PS: The above photo was taken at the recent trip out to the University's practice grounds in Niigata Prefecture. I snuck in this photo while no-one was looking - it turned out pretty well, I think!)
Return to blog homepage.
I find it a little weird to be writing a blog about something that happened half a month ago. I really should have written this post earlier, but it seems a combination of busyness and laziness has meant that I kept putting it off. If I were to make my contribution to the social problem of blaming someone else for everything, I would say that it's just a lot easier for me to quickly upload photos on Facebook and tell people about my experiences that way. But I won't say that...
...anyway, back on topic: two or so weeks ago I flew over to Korea with three friends of mine. I needn't mention that it was the South that we went to - although I'm just dying (hah) for a visit to Pyongyang. We spent the entirety of the four days that we were there in Seoul, which was only a two-hour plane trip from Tokyo. To put that in perspective, travelling to another country took about the same time as flying from Adelaide to Sydney - and cost about the same too!
Japanese Countryside
In fact, I'll begin my description of how Korea and Japan are different by talking about the differences in appearance of the people (of course all of the following is just my own somewhat exaggerated opinion and shouldn't be taken too seriously).
Let's start with the guys. Korean guys are in general taller and more well-built than Japanese guys. This latter fact is in no doubt helped by the two years of compulsory military service that they have to undergo. As a result, the fashion is also more 'manly', with less of the crazy fashions that you'll see in Japan (not that that's a bad thing!).
On to the women. Where a Japanese woman could be described as petit and cute, a Korean woman could be generalised as... well, more 'well-bult' shall we say. They also have a reputation for being more sassy.
The atmosphere of Seoul is also very different from that of Tokyo. Tokyo is what all modern cities should aspire to be. It has an amazing, punctual transportation system of trains, subways, buses and highways that covers pretty much everywhere you need to go. If you don't live in the centre of Tokyo (few people do), you live near a train that will get you there within an hour. As a result, the streets are surprisingly empty and calm at any time of the day. Calm, that is, except for the maniacal cyclists, who seem to have no regard at all for road laws, riding all over the footpaths and roads in any manner they please. I've had many near misses, and I don't think it will be long before there's an accidental (or otherwise) collision.
Seoul, on the other hand, is what most other major cities in the world actually are. That is, the streets are packed with cars, each competing with each other for right of way and resulting in no-one really getting anywhere. Cars aren't afraid to use their horns, and the cyclists stay well away for fear of their lives.
Korean food is also very different to Japanese. For starters, there are two stereotypes about Korean food - once is that it's spicy, and the second is that it comprises entirely of meat grilled on a hotplate on the table in front of you. Often it's both.
In reality, those stereotypes aren't too far off. Compared to Japan, whose cuisine can best be described as 'rice with condiments', Korean food has an abundance of both meat and vegetables. And it's cheap! On one night, we stuffed ourselves with delicious grilled beef at a local eatery that our Korean contact had taken us to, eating easily a three-person portion each. That, combined with drinks, amounted to less than $20 - something that would be impossible in Japan, especially considering how much meat we ate.
But perhaps the most interesting and unique food we ate in Korea was of chicken, not beef. In a large traditional style Korean house which had been converted into a restaurant and was a favourite of the old President, we savoured on the delicacy of chicken soup. But not just any chicken soup - this one had a whole chicken in it (each), stuffed with rice and cure-all ginseng. Oh, and did I mention that the chicken was black?
Very fiddly to eat with nothing but chopsticks, but oh so satisfying. My mouth is still salivating at the thought...
The final difference that I'd like to mention about Korea reflects not the country itself but my personal abilities. Whereas in my time in Japan I've come to be able to read and understand and even speak enough to live a daily life, going to Korea was my first experience in going to a country where I could understand nothing. Even the writing system was foreign to me. (Korea used to use Chinese characters (漢字) like China and Japan, but changed after WWII to distance themselves from their old-time rulers. Instead, they have hangul (한글), which is a phonetic alphabet invented by a Korean king some hundreds of years ago and supposedly mimics the way the mouth moves when words are pronounced.)
Still, we were luckily enough to have a guide who showed us around to all of the best eateries and tourist attractions. And since all Koreans spend seven years learning English in high school, there were not really any problems with speaking to the, uh, local population either... ;)
In any case, I think you'd all like to see some more photos. Here they are!
Return to blog homepage.
It all started in late September last year. My friend Dave and I travelled out to a random train station to check out the 'Sexy Football Club' (I'll leave that to your imaginations). As we were leaving, we came across what appeared to be a traffic safety promotion, featuring a giant cat:
They were also handing out little pots of flowers for free that day. If you look closely at my hand, you can see that I'm holding a bag with the pot of flowers in it. Somehow, those flowers made it back to my dorm room and were placed on my balcony.
It's a miracle that they're still alive. They have lived through a freezing winter and intermittent periods of dehydration (oops), coming to the verge of death more than once. Throughout all of this, all they have had to survive on is water, which slowly but steadily washes away their life-soil.
But today, when I went out to pull in my washing, I was greeted by a surprise. LIFE! (a.k.a. some flowers). I am not hesitating to call this the greatest achievement of my trip so far.
And finally, as a little treat, here's a photo of Mt. Fuji I snapped whilst on the way back from the SuperGT race at Fuji Speedway on Sunday:
Clubs are a big thing in Japanese universities, and especially at Waseda. To sum things up very briefly, and to avoid a huge rant, Japan is very much about belonging to a group. You are judged by what Uni you attend, what faculty you're in or what company you're working for. When introducing yourself, you say, for example: "早稲田大学の国際教養学部の三年のグリーリダニエルです" - "I'm Daniel Grilli, a third-year at the School of International Liberal Studies at Waseda University". Crucially, though, the word order in Japanese is in reverse, and your name always comes last.
Within the Universities themselves it is almost mandatory to join a club or their more casual equivalent, a circle. As I mentioned before, Waseda is full of them - rumour has it that there are more than 300 tennis circles alone! (Although the number of those that actually play tennis as opposed to having nomikai all the time is pretty low)
It all kicks off with a campus-wide fair at the beginning of the Spring semester where each club vies for your attention by handing out fliers. There's literally a club for anything, from music to sports (cricket!) to mountain climbing to sailing. I was very tempted to join a few, particularly the acapella circle, which counts the famous Gospellers as part of it's alumni, until I spied two guys in racing suits on a chance visit to the campus. Now this was what I was talking about!!
The Waseda University Automobile Club (早稲田大学自動車部 or WUAC) is no normal club. It's been around since the dawn of the Japanese automobile industry in the 30s and is part of the university proper. That means they have a garage on campus (a miracle considering we're in space-constricted Shinjuku) and recieve money every year.
They participate in a variety of events, from Gymkanas to Rally-style time attacks to the incredibly awesome six-hour, off-road, kei-car endurance race. The cars they use are quite varied: an older Civic with an Integra Type-R engine is used for their circuit work, whereas a tiny but potent Toyota Starlet GT Turbo gets called in for off-road duty. And did I mention that they can do almost anything to the car in their garage?
My experience with the club began at a welcome BBQ one Monday night. It was interesting to see the premises and hear from the members as to the activities - I was really excited. But the most exciting part was to come. (Parents please skip to next paragraph).
One guy who had befriended me, a third year named Shinichiro, asked me if I wanted to go for a drive with him after the BBQ was over. "The only thing is though", he said, "we'll be getting back at around 4 - 5 am". I was doubtful at first, but as he had a lovely white Skyline R33 GTS-T parked outside, I wasn't about to let an opportunity like this pass me by. We ended up driving for a couple of hours to a (relatively) quiet bit of road under a highway somewhere south of Haneda Airport, where we met up with members from the Keio University club, our arch-rival. It was all friendly tonight though, and we hung around and chatted while people took turns to practice their drifting/ handbreak-turning skills while there were no trucks moving past. I think that's all I shall mention of that night...
Needless to say I joined the club as soon as possible. I haven't been to another late-night outing since, but that's not because of a lack of opportunities - rather, I need my sleep!
Joining the club itself is, as I said on Facebook, rather similar to joining the military. I need to pass a health check and cardiogram, pass a test to reach the first rank and always be respectful to my superiors (for those of you that don't know, Japanese has various forms depending on whether you are speaking casually to friends or to a superior in a company etc. I really dislike using the polite, honorific form because it's wordy and, I feel, creates divisions between people of different ranks).
We start off each club session with a gathering where everyone stands in file according to rank with the leader at the head. Next is steering practice. Each person picks up a wheel and practices left and right turns whilst holding the wheel up in the air and trying to keep it as centred as possible. It's a good idea as you want that sort of thing to be instinctual when you're trying to do a handbreak-turn at speed!
What follows then largely depends on what events are approaching. There's always car maintenance/ modifications to do, as well as study for the test (car readiness checklist). Things usually wrap up at around 10pm, which is no problem for me as I live only five minutes away.
Anyway, this post is getting rather long, so I'll get to the part with the photos in it!
Last week the club held the 'New-Members' Gymkhana' in a carpark in the mountains four hours or so north of Tokyo. Us newly inducted members were given an old EK Civic (with EK plates in photo) and were either taught to drive if we didn't know how or taught to handbreak turn if we did. A handbreak turn isn't easy, especially when someone's trying to explain the theory of applying centrifugal forces in Japanese! I think I kind of got the hang of it in the end, though.
Other things we could do were to ride alongside the full members in their cars as they practiced on a gymkhana course. Let me tell you that even a 660cc Suzuki Alto feels fast in a small carpark!
But enough talk - here are the photos!
I'm sure there'll be much more fun to come!
Return to blog homepage.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)