"Itty-Bitty Living Space"

So, I’m finally in Japan.

            These past three days have been crazy, seriously. I think I’d still be exhausted, even without the jetlag.

            I mean, first of all there was the epic journey here: from my house to the orientation hotel, the Hearton Hotel Kyoto, door-to-door, it took over 27 hours. Holy crap. I feel really bad for the international students at Tufts who have to do that kind of thing just to get home for winter break and such. (Note: if you are slightly larger than the average person, do not fly Asiana Airlines. The seats are a little cramped compared to US airlines, probably because we have more obese people. There were some empty seats on our flight though, so if you want to you can probably stretch out and sleep, but…yeah.)

            So I met Hillary at LAX and we got on our flight together from there. I ended up watching three movies—Source Code (strange but interesting), Date Night (awkward but amusing), and my first Korean film called In Love and War—I was really getting into it, but they cut it off when there were only about fifteen minutes left because we were going to land soon. Major blue balls. Will have to find that one later online….muhahaha.

            We transferred in Seoul and didn’t even have time to explore the airport…oh well, hopefully at some point we can take a mini trip to Korea. Then we got on a smaller plane (much more populated with people who were obviously Japanese) going to Kansai International near Osaka. Can you believe they served a meal on that flight? It was maybe an hour and a half. On my five-hour flight from DC to LA, they did have “snack packs”…but you had to buy them. C’mon, America, get with the program! (Or maybe Alaska Airlines just sucks, I don’t really know).

            We arrived there half-dead, but thankfully all the people working in the airport were eager to help us (putting luggage on carts, et cetera). Japanese service really is impeccable. One downside to the attention to detail, though: sometimes it borders on being anal. For example, I filled out my disembarkation card on the plane in pencil, in case I made a mistake. But when I got to customs, the lady said I had to go over it again in ballpoint pen. Uh, excuse me, where on the sheet did it say that? Nowhere, I’m pretty sure. Maybe it’s common sense, but pencil should have been fine too, right?

            We had reservations for the MK Skygate Shuttle, which took us and a random couple to Kyoto. It took way longer than expected, but that gave us time to peer out the window at what little we could see of the roads between Osaka and Kyoto. Oh, and to process that we were really, finally here.

            We checked in at midnight, happily discovered that we had singles, and collapsed into sleep.

            The next two days were a blur of learning thirty-eight new names and faces (we’re forty-one people altogether, but I’m not counting myself, Hillary, or Ann—another Tufts student) and speaking Japanese pretty much nonstop. It’s really exhausting. From now on we’ll barely be able to speak English except in our English-language courses on Japan…it’s going to be tough. But at least nothing can be as tough as that placement test we took on the morning of the second day… I’ve been calling it a “dai-shippai”—a big fail. I don’t even know if that’s correct or not…clearly I’ve got a long way to go.

            Since I’m here for both semesters, though, I’m fairly sure that I’ll get used to campus, find my way around my neighborhood in western Kyoto, and be able to speak more clearly in Japanese. And understand it, of course—I was having a bit of a hard time keeping up with what my host parents were telling me when they picked me up this morning from the hotel waiting room.

            That brings me to my homestay. My host parents actually seem pretty cool. Although the dad, Keita, is 51, he dresses youthfully, does not act old and stuffy, and plays guitar in a band. (I’m going to see one of his concerts tonight! But Hiroko, the mom, has to do something for work, so I’ll be alone in the audience…) Hiroko is 34, young and pretty, and probably a good foot shorter than I am. She’s actually the “salaryman” in the family: she commutes to and from work each day and works at a company that deals with real estate specifically for students. Keita works mostly from home and does textiles and graphic design for a very small company. At least, I think it’s a company…it might be a studio. They seem like they’re going to give me plenty of freedom to do as I please, but they’ll be there for me when I have a question or problem, so that’s nice to know.

            The apartment is pretty cramped, as is my room, which is even smaller than most singles in Tufts’ dorms. But since I’ve done homestays before in Japan, however briefly, I’m used to the economy of space. It’s also pretty hot, but there’s an air conditioner in the room, which I’m going to use sparingly. I can’t waste energy or water because of setsuden, the energy conservation campaign in the wake of the earthquake/nuclear disaster.

            So I’m a little burnt out from all the changes and having to put up a good front for everyone and pretend to understand what they’re saying. But it’ll be fine.
            Kore kara ganbarimasu! (From here on out, I’ll do my best!)

Note: Credit for this entry’s title goes to Disney—it’s one of Genie’s lines in Aladdin, just in case you didn’t know. ;P

Postscript: I just went out exploring at the start of a typhoon, NBD. (Seriously though, we just had an earthquake and hurricane on the east coast right before I came here, so it’s no big whoop.) Also, when I was walking back to the apartment, some teenage girls passed me on their bikes and said, “Oh, harro!” J It was cute~ Though it’s interesting that when they see a foreigner, they assume she speaks English…