what being hit by a car has taught me about japanese culture

Hello again everyone!

Let me just start by saying sorry for the huge gap between postings this time!! I sincerely hope I haven't frustrated anyone too bad with my lack of correspondence. I have something of an excuse, though, that I think might relieve me of some of the guilt of being such a bad blogger, just a little, maybe...

So, this is going to sound unbelievable, but I was kind of hit by a car two weeks ago.

Don't worry, though- I am okay!!

Think boo boo bunny and tylenol serious...

...not full-body cast, surgery serious.

Seriously. :)

Nothing's broken and I'm almost "hyaku paasento" (100%) by now! I just thought I'd look at the whole debacle as in interesting experience and I figured it was worth mentioning. Because, you know, a lot of people can say they've been to Japan before but how many people can say they've been to Japan and got hit by a car?

I don't suppose I could get by using the, admittedly dramatized, words "HIT BY A CAR" without divulging more details about what actually happened, so here is a quick run down of the incident in convenient list format:

1. I was riding my bike home from school at around 2:30 pm (sorry Japan, I can't think in military time yet) on Thursday, October 27th.
2. The last stretch of my way home, I was headed straight on the street that my host family lives on. I could see my host family's house up the street on my left.
3. Two intersections before my house (about one minute away from being home) I collided with a vehicle coming from my right. I do not remember the actual collision, but found myself on the ground with a gaggle of alarmed Japanese people all around me, including the old woman driving the car, who might have been her daughter, and a young mother that was walking by, I guess, who was on the phone with the police.  
4. What happened during this time was a real adrenaline-induced blur of disbelief and shock. My host mother happened to stumble upon the incident while driving in her car and joined the group of panicked Japanese bystanders right before the ambulance came. All I could think about was finding some way to press the "REDO" button and, in an effort to believe that I did not just get hit by a car during study abroad, wanted to just go home, clean myself up, and pretend that nothing happened . 
5. I was really preoccupied with the damages involved- the money I might have to pay and the commotion that was being raised around me- rather than my physical condition so I denied the ambulance ride to the hospital and convinced everyone to let me go home. My glasses broke and I do not remember the details of the following moments very well, but I remember that the police were there and they carried my warped bicycle the remaining block to my host family's house. I got home with my host mother under the condition that she would take me to the hospital later. 
6. About an hour later, my host mom drove me to the hospital after I cleaned my face and laid down for a bit while she made some important phone calls, and there I got both a CT scan of my head and an X-Ray of my knee. By this time, the adrenaline was wearing off and I was starting to feel everything. It turns out I had a concussion, which explained why I was sick, but that there was no internal bleeding or any damage to my brain, which was awesome. They prescribed me some pain medicine and told me to come back the following Monday when the brain doctor was in. 
7. Fortunately, the following Tuesday was the start of fall break here, so I missed only a little bit of school and had plenty of time to rest and recover. (Good timing, right? :))

Since then I have been in an out of the hospital 4 times, and, through working out the aftermath with insurance people, my school, the police and the hospital, have been able to see sides of Japanese society that many foreigners never have access to. I mean, I know it might seem like I'm trying to put a childishly positive spin on a silly and pathetic situation, but I really do feel like I learned a lot in the past two weeks.
Here are just a few of those things:

1. Japanese health care and insurance is stunning. My experience with Japanese hospitals has been like taking part in a big health care machine. You get this card when you become a patient at the hospital and, the next time you return, you put the card in this reception machine to see a doctor. If you have an appointment, the machine spits out a piece of paper with a bar code and your appointment time, along with your number that will pop up on the screen in that ward's waiting area when its your turn. If you are coming because you are sick, you go through the touchscreen and select the appropriate disease/ type of doctor you want to see and you get a number that will be called based on the order of first-come-first-served. However, this also means that you have to go to the hospital when it opens if you want to be seen without an appointment and you'll probably end up spending several hours waiting, anyways, especially if its a bigger hospital. Doctors are only there in the morning, too, so they joke that you can't get sick in the afternoons. :)  This sounds kind of bad, but I think the system's efficiency and accessibility makes up for any waiting you might have to do. That's one thing I would like to stress about the health care system here- it is incredibly affordable. For the 1400 yen that I pay per month to be enrolled in the national health care program, I have had all of my hospital visits free of charge. Because I was in an accident, whatever small costs I would have had to pay otherwise are completely covered by insurance. As long as I see a doctor or receive medicine for injuries related to my accident, I do not have to worry about paying for anything, which still leaves me speechless. I always leave the hospital with the weirdest feeling that I'm doing something wrong- like its too good to be true and someone is going to run out, rip of my band-aids and tell me to give back the rest of the health care I'm stealing.
2. Saying sorry means you are wrong (but never completely). My host mother told me that you do not say sorry in these sort of situations because that means that you are accepting the blame and saying that it is your own fault. However, it was explained to me that the way Japanese insurance companies usually work is so that, no matter what the situation is, some sort of financial burden is footed by each party. There is no 100% at fault or 100% innocent in any situation, but rather a collaboration. Also, in a normal situation, they take the amount in damages from both parties and split it up so that each person pays for both part of their own damages and part of the other party's. (For example, if they decide that you are 4:6 wrong, you will pay for 40% of the damages on each vehicle.) I was actually lucky that my situation was unique. Instead of paying for any percentage of the car's damages and having the car owner pay for a part of my bike, the driver's car insurance is taking care of her vehicle while the bike is left to me, which, financially, I think works out much better.
3. When in doubt, go to the hospital. For everything, anything, go to the hospital. Have a cold? Go to the hospital. Headache? Go to the hospital. Paper-cut? Hospital. :) I'm exaggerating, but, really, I was super surprised at first by how common it is to go to the hospital in Japan! I think its a part of the American health care system that I've grown up with, but the first time my host mother told me she took her kids to the hospital that day, I immediately thought, "oh my god! broken bones! leukemia!", not  "mild cold! cough medicine!". Whether it is a product of culture or simply to do with the affordability of healthcare, I am not sure, but I get the impression that it's more okay to show your physical pain in Japan. If you say "大丈夫です..." ("I'm okay..."), you must really be okay. Talking about what hurts is not complaining, and there is no virtue in trying to be tough. My host family told me to tell the doctor every itty bitty thing that I was feeling, no matter how small, and let him "fix me"- to keep going and going as many times as it took to get every little boo boo and scratch looked at. But I have to admit, I feel silly consulting a doctor about a bruise when my inner Payton Manning is telling me to just  "rub some dirt on it" and "shake it off". :)
4. Ambulances are free! I think I knew this before hand, but was too confused and afraid of being wrong to accept my free escort to medical attention. I mean, I'd have to be on the verge of death or missing a limb for an ambulance ride to be worth the bill I'd receive in America... It's... just... wow, Japan. I wish I could write you a thank-you card. 

All and all, I have more positive feelings about being so lucky that it was not worse and that I was so well taken care of than I do negative feelings that the accident happened in the first place.

If nothing else, it makes an interesting story, don't you think?

love,
mackenzie

(Also, please feel free to laugh. I mean, after all... I went to Japan and got hit by a car.)

IT'S THE FIRST MONTH WRAP UP, Y'ALL!

 Howdy friends!

It's been a while, huh? Both since I last posted and since I started this whole study abroad what-not. Without really feeling the time go by, 4 weeks have come and gone since I arrived in Japan and, just, wow, I don't even know where to begin, really.

If there is something the past month has taught me, it's that details matter. The little things about Japanese life are the ones that seem to surprise me the most.

You know, they tell you this and that about Japanese culture and what to expect while in Japan, about the taboos and the customs, and all the other good stuff that makes Japan so interesting, and before coming to Japan, I really thought, "Okay, yeah, I got this. That makes sense" and that I understood it- whatever it is- that makes Japan work the way it does. I thought my understanding of Japanese culture was similar to the way I understand how voting or precipitation works- that comfortable spot where I got the overall mechanics without knowing all of the details.

Well, say I do know how the 'overall mechanics' work. Confucian values, samurai legacy, Shintoism, rice, saving 'face', {insert buzz-phrase here}. The confidence I had in my understanding of these mechanics led me to seriously underestimate the impact that 'the little things' would have on my experience in Japan. At least once every day I have this moment where I'm like, "say what now?". "What's going on here?". I mean, I guess you can't possibly know what you don't know, but it just seems like there is so much that I just didn't know. You know?

My days have been full of moments where I discover these little bits of unknown. Here are just a few things that I have found interesting in my experience here:

• Japanese people think hand sanitizer is only for contact with feral animals? One bottle of this stuff is 980 yen (about 13$) so, yeah, I don't think I could afford to use it for more than the occasional scuffle with a wild raccoon.
•  Doors and windows are actually meant to be opened! This sounds stupid, but hear me out. It wasn't until I went to open my bedroom window for the first time and accidentally slammed it into the windowsill with the amount of calculated force I put into it that I realized every experience I had ever had opening and closing windows had been something of a struggle. I thought it just might be that my host family's house is kind of new, but when I started to pay attention to my encounters with doors and windows here I realized that they all seemed to glide open smoothy and without force. Whether this is just personal interpretation or Japanese craftsmanship, I dunno, but I'm really enjoying not having to do the "EE-ERK" jerking movement just to get a cross breeze going. :)
• Concepts of nutrition are cultural. Like, when I caught a little bit of a cold, my host mom bought a bunch of fruit and told me that I should eat it right before I go to bed because she saw on TV that the vitamins will absorb best while I'm sleeping. (She made an octopus-like arm wiggle to illustrate the vitamins absorbing.) Also, all food made in Japan supposedly has magical nutritional properties that makes it inherently better than the same exact food grown anywhere else. (Go to any Japanese grocery store and you will know what I am talking about- 'Japanese-ness' matters!)
• There are things that simply cannot be translated. I mean, yeah, of course, everyone knows this right? Well, it's kind of a bigger deal than I expected. Not just words, but expressions, too! Something I've been struggling with is wanting to ask my host parents "how was your day?" in the evenings. There is no set expression in Japanese for this that I know of, and my translation 「今日、どうだった？」 (lit. 'today, how was it?') is always met with a sort of startled expression, like, "What? What part of today? What do you mean?". My kind host parents have caught on to 'oh, she wants to hear what we did today' when I say this, but I can just tell this is a weird question to ask. When I asked my Japanese professor about it, she said that it wasn't a natural thing to talk about. She said that Japanese people don't ask each other everyday what they did, but instead talk about the weather or, if they ask a question, it will be about a specific thing like "how was your test today?", etc. I'm kind of bending the cultural rules for now I guess, because I just don't see how far a conversation about the weather can go, especially when I'm genuinely curious about what my family did that day.
• Squatty-potties are everywhere! Going to a public restroom, especially in older establishments, is a game of 'Find the Western Toilet". Most places I've been have at least one, usually tucked away in the back corner of the bathroom. 

 Ah! Found it!

• There are a lot of things that I don't understand the purpose of. Like when I bought a pack of gum and found a little packet of sticky notes inside. 

And this weird machine that my host family has me use every week that blows hot air under my comforter for an hour.

I guess 'purpose' and 'sense' are not really inherent to something, but rather a product of culture? Things like this really make me wonder about my own background and all the things that make sense to me, but might just be bizarre to someone else...

Well, needless to say that the past month has got me thinking.

To know something is one thing and to experience it is another.

All of the 'big' concepts I learned about Japan before coming here seem like clouds in the sky right now with me on the ground, experiencing the gritty earth of it all. I mean, they matter, for sure. But no amount of cultural study could have taught me what Japan would actually smell like, feel like, look like. And these are the things that have made my experience here what it is so far. I guess it sounds pretty obvious now that I'm writing it down, but for some reason learning the limits of my conceptual understanding has come as something of a shock. Which leads me to ask, can you really know something without experiencing it? And how much can you know through experiencing something?

What's subjective? Objective?

I dunno, you guys, but I'm starting to confuse myself so I should probably just start wrapping up this wrap-up, don't you think? :)

I guess if I had to sum up my first month living abroad in just a few words they would be:

"Is this real life?".

I seriously feel like one of the luckiest people in the world to be living this life, being right here, right now, seeing what I see and feeling what I feel. I know that must sound really saccharine and fake, but I really believe it. I'd be under appreciating what I have to deny it.

I mean, just look at the view from my bathroom window and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Life is pretty special, huh? :)

-Mackenzie



P.S: If you liked the pictures from this post, you can see more here in my new Picasa album. I posted 222 of them! Ch-check it out here:

October 4, 2011

Also, here's a link to a cool website called 'Japan Trends'. It features a bunch of posts about, you guessed it, Japan trends! It's really interesting and details some of the crazy things that makes Japan so... well, Japan.>>> http://www.japantrends.com/

kyoto is bathed in white light

Nihon in Pink: Kyoto with Mackenzie and Sarah ~: I went to Kyoto Saturday and met up with some of my Beloit buddies for a wacky Japanese adventure full of plot twists and explosions!

Mita, a much better person than I, posted lots of pictures on her blog. Ch-check out some snapshots from our delightful rendezvous!

And while I'm at it, here are some new pictures from my Picasa album!!

Breakfast, Pachinko, Rain, and more

Apologetically yours,

Mackenzie
 

would you like some cream soup with your donuts?

Ever heard of Mister Donut? Apparently founded in the US, this donut chain is all over the place in Japan. Like any other foreign chain to take root here, it has been thoroughly digested and reprocessed as a Japanese creation. The localized menu is comprised of, of course, donuts, but with a distinctly Japanese twinge.

some noodles and nikuman courtesy of Mister Donut

My little host sister got a toy set of Mister Donuts donuts, complete with a little cup of something a yellowish beige color. When I asked my host father what it was, he said that Japanese people like to eat cream soup with their donuts. Now, call me a crazy person, but I've been looking all over the place to find this mysterious Mister Donuts cream soup and have found nothing online about it. Maybe it was some sort of language-related mishap? I dunno. I'll have to do some investigating at my local Mister Donuts some time soon... ;)
 
Either way, just the fact that donuts, something so very American, have been transformed into this Japanese thing threw me off a bit. I mean, it's not even a huge change, but all of the little itty bitty differences, the indescribable quality of 'Japanese-ness' that seems to be a part of everything here, really seems to add up into something big. For me at least.

What do you think? Can you tell the difference?

Dunkin Donuts

Mister Donuts

 

promises promises...

Hey everyone! So you remember how I told you I would figure out a way to post all of those pictures I promised??

TDAAA!

They're all there! All 130 something of them!

And, no, this picture has nothing to do with anything really. It's an adult sized costume of a popular Japanese character called Rilakkuma (a lazy bear who's name is an amalgamation of the Japanese words for relax (ri-ra-k-ku-su) and bear (kuma)). I'm just enjoying the fact that this costume exists and I thought that you might, too.

Mackenzie

space....

I've been thinking a lot about space and distance lately. How do you know the difference between 10 miles away and 1,000? Physically, you are still 'away'. You cannot experience or see that something that you are away from in either scenario, right? So how do you discriminate between the different states of 'away-ness'? I mean, there is definitely a literal distance, but I am starting to think that the feeling of distance is what matters the most. Its a complicated feeling that I don't think we really contemplate too often, but I've been trying to understand it better these past few days. 

I have this feeling of being really, really far away, almost like I moved to another planet. But it's not just a sense of distance between me and the place I came from, but a distance between me and the version of myself that lived there. I just feel... weird. Really weird. Like I cannot even imagine what my life was like before a came to Japan, even though it was only a little over a week ago.

This past week has just been one of those expanses of time that seem both incredibly short and long at the same time.

Do you know what I mean, jelly bean?

ketchup time!

A lot of people have been worried about me and curious about how my first few days have been, so I say It's about time I catch up on all of the things that have happened in the past few days.:)  It's really impossible to detail it all, but I can at least give some highlights of everything. Also, on a side note, this is a picture* of Japanese ketchup. I think it's pretty much the same, but Japanese put theirs on spaghetti. It sounds weird, but is actually super clever if you ask me. I mean, ketchup is just sweet tomato sauce, right? And you know what always goes good with vegetables? Sugar.


So I guess I should start with my entry into Japan. That's when the magic is supposed to happen- those valuable first impressions and moments of deeply felt wonder that you can never recapture. At first, it really was that way for me. Looking out the window of the plane and looking through the billowing, somehow perfectly-shaped clouds, watching Japan become real and tangible as it's lush landscapes revealed themselves beneath the plane- rivers and forests rolling into rice paddies and towns- was truly amazing. But, to be completely honest, the following first few hours in Japan were some of the absolute worst of my life.
 
Do you remember that stuff I wrote on the plane about "worrying is forbidden" blah-blah-blah? I can tell you right now that did not last for long. After gathering my two suitcases from the baggage claim, I cleared them through customs and pushed them on into the lobby of Narita Airport where I stood awkwardly for sometime thinking about where I needed to go next. As I started to push my cart towards the domestic terminal, I caught the word "Nagoya" in a tidy Japanese voice over the intercom. I stopped to listen more carefully. "It couldn't be..." I thought. Sure enough, loud and clear and in English I heard, "due to typhoon in the area, flight number 3087 to Nagoya has been cancelled" followed by what was probably some sort of apology. I don't remember because after the word cancelled, my heart seized up and my ears started ringing. I felt a lot like this:

It felt like all of the blood in my body was rushing in between my ears. The heat from my face must have pulled the thick fog of humidity from the air to my skin like a magnet, because within seconds I started to sweat through my carefully chosen and decidedly cute "meet-my-host-family" outfit. (gross, I know) All of the Japanese in the room became incomprehensible as I focused all my energy on keeping my panic discreet. "What about my host family?" "How will I get to Nagoya?""Why is there no air conditioning!?" "How do I let them know?" "Where can I get some money?" "How much will it cost?" "Seriously, why is there no air conditioning!?" were just some of the thoughts that were flooding my mind.

After asking someone just to make sure that this was really happening, I was pointed in the general direction of the Japan Airlines desk. Most importantly, I thought, I need to call my host family. I was so worried about how I would greet them at the airport  and now I was afraid there would be no one there for them to have that awkward first encounter with.

Here is a list of the almost comically awful things that happened next:

1.  I arrived that the desk with my cart full of luggage and hair full of sweat only to find that the sales people only spoke Japanese. Despite my many hours of Japanese study, the buzzing in my head seemed to turn the beautifully uniformed saleslady's words into a blurr of incomprehension and mine into a barely audible jumble. The gist of what she said was that there were not going to be any more flights going to Nagoya and that I needed to take the bus or the Shinkansen (super fast bullet train) to get there. I knew I had to call my host family, so I showed her my housing information paper and she directed me to the public pay phone.

2.   I went to use the public payphone, on the verge of tears, but not only did I not have any yen (MASSIVE MISTAKE # 1), I didn't have a telephone card or any idea how to use it to make a domestic call. I tried to use the "enter your card number" information to charge from my debit card, but it seemed to work only for international calls. Fortunately, a really nice guy using the one next to me helped show me how to get it to work domestically, which required either yen or a telephone card, neither of which I had. I must have looked pretty pathetic, because he gave me one of his telephone cards to have. (REALLY NICE JAPANESE HELPER #1) Needless to say the phone call that followed was so completely not how I wanted to talk to my family for the first time. I told my host mother in broken apologetic Japanese that my flight was cancelled. I told her I didn't know what I was going to do yet, but that I would call her again when I decided. She asked if I was staying in Tokyo and I realized I might not have anywhere to sleep that night if I could not get to Nagoya. At this point I looked something like this:  

3.  I went back through the line and received a voucher for the Shinkansen. I set off to find the place where I could exchange the voucher for tickets, but found it surprisingly difficult to figure out. I mean, it wasn't like there was a big sign that said "SHINKANSEN RIGHT OVER HERE" and all the Japanese in the building might has well been written in Arabic for how little I was able to decipher. I finally got my cart down an elevator into the right basement area, but found a ton of counters, all which seemed possible places to change my voucher in to a ticket. I don't know if you know this, and it could just be the fact that it's a foreign language, but Japanese signs and advertisements are incredibly crowded, bright, and difficult to understand. They are also everywhere. I didn't know where to look seriously and how to get information out of them, but I managed to get to the right desk and exchanged my voucher for three little blue tickets that looked like this (minus the English explanations):

 

I guess I must not have been the first foreigner to look at one of these and be like, "what the heck is this?" because JR rail has this website that explains everything. (I only wish I had access to it then!) I still needed to call my host mother to tell her what I was doing, but I realized my train was leaving soon. I still had three things of luggage and a backpack to carry around the station, one stand up-pushy kind on which I put my duffle bag on top of and a pull-behind kind. I got them down the escalators towards the subway, only to find that the pay phones were on the other side of the tracks. Blef! There was no way I could get my luggage up the escalators and then down again and then up again and down again in time! Running across the tracks wasn't feasible either.... Okay, I decided, I'll just have to ride the shinkansen and call them when I get to Tokyo. Or wherever I was going? I had 3 tickets, one said "Narita to Nagoya", one said "Narita to Tokyo-Shinagawa" and the other said "Tokyo to Nagoya". Did that mean I had to choose one? What? What do I do!? I thought. At this point I just wanted to turn around and go home. I was tired and sick and sweaty and lonely and scared and basically a bunch of other awful feelings all at once.

I ended up finding my reserved seat and heading towards Tokyo, where I would transfer to another Shinkansen towards Nagoya. One more problem, though; my ticket said "Tokyo-Shinagawa" The screen showed one stop in Tokyo, followed by another stop in Shinagawa. What the heck!?? I had no clue. I did not trust my instinct on either, and I did my best to enjoy the incredibly stunning view of Japan from my seat before I had to roll the dice and choose.

4.  I arrived at Tokyo Station (東京駅）where I had had literally the worst time of my life trying to a. call my host family, and b. get to the Nagoya Shinkansen. This is a picture of Tokyo Station:

Looks quaint and modest, right? BUUU. Wrong. This is what Tokyo Station looks like inside:

No air-conditioning, thousands of people, 4 things of luggage, and a bunch of these raised bumps in the floor meant to both guide blind people and make it painfully impossible to move luggage over:

The next hour or so was full of asking around, tipping over my luggage, loosing my sandals, sweating through my clothes, and bruising my knees. I cannot stress how serious I am when I say that this was THE worst experience of my entire life. (Good thing I got that over with, now, huh?:)) I finally managed to get to the place I needed to be, walking out on to the humid platform with a sigh of relief that it was almost over. All I needed to do was find a pay phone and call my host family, get on the train and get to whatever bed was awaiting me.

However, like a late-night infomercial, my bad luck was returning to say "but, wait, there's more!". My phone card was missing. I had no yen to use the phone. How would my family know to come get me? What if they think I'm staying in Tokyo? What if I've waited too late to call them and they don't want me any more? They were surely concerned and confused. Where could I get a phone card? Where was there an ATM?

It turns out, the closest ATM was outside of a starbucks outside of the ticketing area for the platform I was in. I would have to retrace my steps out of the platform and carry my luggage down and out to find this ATM, get money, and return to make a phone call. By itself it sounds kind of annoying but not too bad, but at this point I was so frustrated and upset that all I wanted was someone to go to who could help me. Instead, I was that person that obviously has problems but everyone just ignores because they are too embarrassed to step up and help. I'd never felt so lonely, vulnerable and pathetic before as I did in that moment and I don't think I ever will again.

Haha I bet you are tired of my whining by now! Well, I only have one more bad thing to share and then I'm done! The icing on my cake of misfortune. What happened is, to make a long story short, I got my money and made my phone call. When I got on the train, I entered at car number 8. The door shut and the train starts to move as the kind uniformed woman checks my ticket. "Oh!" she says, "You are in the non-reserved section! Those are cars 1, 2 and 3". I ended up pushing my luggage through the narrow isles of 6 cars, knocking into the arms of Japanese business men and school kids, until I finally found an available seat in car 2 that I could maneuver my bags next to.

From that point on, I cleaned myself up in the bathroom, enjoyed the air conditioning and relaxed comfortably on the hour-or-so ride to Nagoya Station where I met my host dad and went HOME. TO BED. AND SLEPT.

The End!

Okay folks, that's all for now. I still have more ketchup to do, but I'll have to get to that later. I can assure you that my experience in Japan has not been all bad things! I'm at an awesome school in an awesome city living with an awesome family in their awesome house! It can only go up from the whole Shinkansen debacle, right? Haha, well, actually, I still have some fun "bad-luck" stories to share from the past few days, but I'll share all that stuff in time.

LOVE,

Mackenzie

P.S. My camera cable is still not working! sorry guys :( I'm going to find a way to move my files directly from my memory card to another computer. In the meanwhile, please enjoy my carefully selected internet photos.

my host family's house!

Seriously, though, I would post a real picture of my host family's house (which is completely amazing, by the way) if I could but my camera's cable isn't working with my computer so I cannot transfer any of my pictures. But that's okay, I'll keep working on it until I figure out a way to post some pictures! (They're really good so get excited!)

thoughts from the plane

Hello everyone!

I know this is a little late seeing as I am in Japan right now, but I did not have internet on the plane so I could not post anything that I wrote during that time. (Don't worry, I will post more recent stuff after this!) However, before I go any further, I would like to put in a couple of disclaimers:

1. The things that I have written for my blog so far are incredibly self-indulgent and a little embarrassing, but for the sake of documenting my complete experience, I will post them. My pre-Japan experience has involved a lot of inwardly-focused thoughts and reflections, but from here on out I will have something other than my own thoughts to share with you  so please bear with me! 
2. I have resigned myself to having imperfect English. My third grade English teacher would have shed a tear at some of my sentences, but it's much more comfortable for me to write as I would talk and not worry too much about punctuation rules. If I really worried about how intelligent my writing sounded and pleasing the grammar marms out there, I would only be able to pop out one post a week, tops. I strive to do more than that, so I sincerely hope that my writing is okay.

Phew. I'm glad we got that out of the way! I feel better knowing that I put that out there, so here goes. This was written early on in my flight to Japan:

I am writing this somewhere over California, I think. The flight is about 3 hours in and my butt is already super numb, so I don’t know what the next 9ish hours are going to be like. (Where is there to go past super numb?) Anyways, I feel like I should write about the things that I meant to post on my blog a long time ago, but was too distracted to sit down and write. Seeing as I will be sitting for a while, there is no reason not to, right? 

I’d say about 80% of my nervousness comes from the fact that I will be staying with a host family. The other 20% is typical ‘going to a foreign country and staying for a year’ anxiety, which would have been totally manageable if I were just staying a dorm and taking care of myself. But that host family bit, that’s the bit that is has pushed me way into messy-mess territory. That’s what I am. A messy-mess. I mean, I’m not tearing out my hair or anything, but I feel like my legs have been wobbly for the past week.  

I know tons of students have stayed with host families before, but for me it’s definitely the biggest challenge I’ve ever taken on. Never was the risk of disappointing someone as high as it is now! Or at least it seems that way. I could whine for pages about my hypothetical ‘what-if-this-happens’ scenarios, but I’d rather save you the pain of reading my nonsense and myself the embarrassment of writing it. (There will be plenty of that to go around when I get to Japan!)

Logic has not been very successful at soothing my fears. Tactics that my nervousness has overpowered include:

1.      Putting their address into Google maps and zooming in as close as I can to their house, trying to imagine what it looks like in person. Google allows me to get a street view of the main street two blocks away from where they live. I use it thinking that having an idea of what the area is ‘like’ will be comforting, but looking up the narrow, hedge-lined road, staring down at the staggered letters of “to-ma-re”(Japanese S-T-O-P) makes it all seem so real that my just heart seizes up all over again! I’m starting to realize that it’s one thing to fantasize about something and something completely different to have it come true.

2.      Talking to friends and family. It seems like all of the “you’ll do fine!” and “they chose to have you!” in the world only fill a big pool of encouragement that I’m standing next to like, “oh that’s nice”, enjoying the cool breeze that wafts from it, but not really able to jump in. There’s a fence there and I’m on the other side. A fence of irrationality. Or something. (It’s a sloppy metaphor, but you get the point, right? :))

3.      Negating every scary thought I have with a comforting one. For some reason those thoughts are very tidy and wise, a lot like an imaginary Dumbledore were saying them. Inner-Dumbledore’s soothing effect lasts for a little while, but not for long usually. He’s just not as wise or convincing as ‘real’ Dumbledore, I guess.

4.      Chewing gum.

Anyhow, that’s where I am now. Somewhere between “This is a dream come true!” and “Oh jeez, what have I gotten myself into?” All this worrying had done nothing for me but give me a sore jaw and distract me from appreciating how fortunate I really am. I think I will start a list of things I learned from study abroad, and put that at the very top: “I AM THE LUCKIEST PERSON IN THE WORLD” so I never forget how statistically unlikely it is for anyone in the history of human experiences to have a life so full of comforts and opportunities as mine has been. I have so much to be grateful for, and I know if I paid more attention to those things, there would be nothing to be worried about. This adventure is a gift. I should treasure it, right?

I think I just need to force out my worries instead of indulging them. So here is a promise to myself: from here on out, I am resolved not to worry anymore. Worrying is forbidden. It’s about time I started enjoying this experience to its fullest! I will never have another one like it.

Well, my laptop’s battery is dying and I don’t have anywhere to plug it in on this plane, so I better save this for now. I also think they’ve decided it’s bedtime for everyone because they’ve  fed us and turned off all of the lights so I better turn this off before I annoy anyone with the light from my screen.

From somewhere over the Pacific Ocean,

Mackenzie

aw jeez...

Okay, so I only have 30 minutes of complimentary internet access, so I better make this quick.

I am at ABIA in Austin waiting on my flight to Dallas, from where I will take a something-hour* flight to TOKYO, JAPAN. Japan! Aw jeez! From Tokyo I have another flight to Nagoya, where my host family will pick me up.

Just...aw jeez! I'm going to Japan! I don't think I've ever been as nervous about any thing, ever, in the history of things I've ever been nervous about. I've wanted this since I was, like, 8, and now I'm here and I'm scared. Or excited. And excited? I don't know. It's the same nose-tingley, belly-hurty, heart-pumping feeling. I guess something I've wanted longer and more intensely than anything I've ever wanted in the history of things I've ever wanted should warrant equally intense emotions. I'm not used to being this nervous! I have this image of myself as this really calm and collected person, but maybe I'm wrong... Is this normal? I don't know! blef.

So I am not really sure how much time I have left on this internet. It gives me plenty of ads, but no timer. To be safe, I'm going to post this! I might read this later and think it's rambley and lame... but I guess it's honest, so here goes....

Emotionally yours,

Mackenzie!

*I am not really sure, but after 10 hours, does it really matter? It's hard to distinguish between a-really-long-time to-sit-still and a really-really-long-time-to-sit-still. At least I think so... I'll let you know if I still feel this way, later ;)

introductions.

Hello and welcome to my blog!

My name is Mackenzie Kurtz and here is a list of things you should know about me:

1. I am from Austin, Texas.
2. I am currently a junior at Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin. 
3. I am double-majoring in both Japanese and International Relations.
4. This year I am studying abroad at Nanzan University's Center for Japanese Studies (CJS) in Nagoya, Japan.
5. I will be staying with a host family and taking classes in Japanese language and Japanese area-studies.

I think these 5 things should give a  pretty basic foundation as to who I am and what this blog is about.

My goal in creating this blog is to not only share and document my experience abroad, but to as earnestly and precisely as I can express the fascinating things that I encounter in my host-country. My sincerest hope is that I can pass on my excitement for those curious facets of Japanese life and culture to my readers in a way that not only informs, but entertains.


Thank you for reading!

Mackenzie