03.09.06
Posted in That which defies categorization at 8:33 am by Ellery
This is the composition I’ve written for reading and writing class. It is about my experiences as an international student in Japan. Enjoy!
マット＊ジャースティン様
マットさん、日本で留学するのにきょうみがあると言っていたので、おほうこくを書いています。ぼくは六が月かんさいがいだい大学で勉強しました。このことを日本に行く前に思えばよかったです。
日本語の授業は毎日あります。先がっきはぼくの全部の朝のさいしょの授業が十時に始まりました。早すぎなかったと思っています。でも、今がっきは全部の朝のさいしょの授業が九時に始まって大へんですよ。たいてい宿題を出さなくてはいけません。でも、先生は親切です。そして、かんさいがいだいの先生に習いやすいです。日本で日本語を勉強するのがかいがあります。
ほかの授業はおもしろくて、やさしいと思います。いま、ぼくはすみえと日本のれきしをとっています。ほかのしゅるいがたくさんあります。英語で教える授業は一種間に二回あります。
りょうの生活はとてもいいです。たいへん自由がありますが、たいへんせきにんもあります。たとえば、自分で料理しなくてはいけません。自分でせんたくしなくてはいけません。でも、りょうのほうがホームステイよりいいだと思います。
三月九日
エルリ＊クレイン
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02.02.06
Posted in Education, Japan at 12:15 am by Ellery
The fun of Japan in the winter is that, while it is definitely cold, it isn’t cold enough for snow. Well, it is in some places. But not in good ol’ Kansai. Nope. So, for the last few days, we’ve been getting rain. A lot of rain. This isn’t usually so bad (aside from the whole drenching of textbooks, flashcards, and cashmere jackets, of course), because the rain tends to last only for about a half hour or so before stopping. Not so today. It was raining when Karen and I left the seminar house at 8:45am, and it was still raining when I returned home after Sumi-e at about 2:00pm. And it was raining hard today.
Compounding matters was the fact that, as I had a 9:00am class (as I do for the first three days of the week; God, kill me now), I was tired as all hell throughout my classes. Tired and wet. Still, they were reasonably good. Well, save for the fact that in my reading and writing class, I discovered much to my horror that I’ve forgotten nearly all of the kanji I once knew. Much studying to do, I guess. Due to scheduling difficulties, my advanced sumi-e class today was pretty lonely; just me and one other student. I expect this will be par for the remainder of this semester’s Wednesdays. Solitude does have it’s own perks, though. After the other girl took off early, and the prof went to lunch, I got to sneak off with no one being the wiser. Huzzah!
I also managed to connect with Nic via Skype, and we were able to sort out some of the last little details on our paper. It will be submitted after I’m done with my morning classes later today. Double huzzah!
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01.29.06
Posted in Japan, Random Fun at 9:30 pm by Ellery
My friend Karen arrived today, back from spending the holidays learning Muay Thai (kickboxing) in Thailand. She’s the roommate of my friend Tiffany, so we’ll doubtless be seeing a lot of each other over the next semester. I’ve in fact already spent several naps in her (at the time unoccupied) futon, due to the poor nap conditions in my own room created by the orientation week-only extra room mate I had. As Tiffany and Karen lucked out and were the “odd room out” (and thus had no extra room mate this past week), it only made sense, really. Well, Karen didn’t get too mad at me, anyways.
Also of interest in Karen’s arrival is the fact that she and I are planning to begin work on a webcomic secret project soon, and now we can finally get our heads together and do it. More updates there when we have some comics made the project is declassified.
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Posted in Education, Japan at 2:35 pm by Ellery
I’ve got my new courses assigned, finally. My lotto number was good enough to get me both of the classes I waned: Advanced Sumi-e, and Introduction to Japanese History. I’m sure I’ll enjoy both of them muchly. I’m more concerned about my Japanese language courses this semester; from Monday through Wednesday, I’ve got class at the earliest time period (9am), and on Thursday and Friday I’ve got class starting at 10. So, I’m a little.. miffed. Having hoped to get into the habit of working out before class each day, I think I can safely say that won’t happen now. I mean, if I get up at 5am, I can be at the gym by 5:45 or 6. An hour there puts me at 7, giving me an hour to shower, dress, and possibly eat breakfast. The problem with this little plan is that if I wake up at 5am, I’ll be needing to go to bed at like, 9pm. Not gonna happen. I’ll be too busy hanging out with friends, going to karaoke, etc. So… yeah. I think I’ll need to figure out something else. Perhaps after my first class. Of course, this means I won’t be able to eat anything until like, noon, since it’s best to exercise before your first meal of the day. Bah.
Further complicating things is that I’ve drawn Koyama sensei, whom my friend Dillon had for his language course last year. I actually was in his class for the first week, having tested into level 3. My impression of Koyama sensei was that she seemed very nice, though I was unsure of how good a teacher she would end up being. Dillon shared this impression.. for a while. He would later tell me that I had absolutely made the right decision in switching to a different class, as Koyama sensei was, and I quote, “a heartless bitch.” Dillon doesn’t tend to use colorful metaphors like that frequently, so I am therefore justafiably scared of what this next semester will be like.
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01.25.06
Posted in That which defies categorization at 11:02 am by Ellery
I just finished the registration lottery. Did I mention how easy everything is, knowing how the system works? After attending the “general” meeting in the morning (a waste of time), I headed straight to the computer lab in the CIE(Center for International Education) and made a photocopy of my health insurance card, recalling from last semester that it was needed to register. About thirty seconds after I began to make my copies, large line of disgruntled students formed behind me, obviously having been unaware of the necessity of the photo copy. In fact, as I write this, there is still a line stretching into the hallway. I then headed up to the lottery room, gave them the copies of my insurance card, filled out a short form, and drew. I got 200 (out of about 420), which is a far cry better than last semester (I could read my blog archives to see what I drew, but I think it was in the upper 300s). Also, one of the courses I plan to take (Advanced Sumi-e) is only available to people who have taken the basic course, which means I’m a shoe in. The other, An Introduction to Japanese History, is pretty popular, so my lowish number should serve me well.
I’m off to pick up my laptop from the computing services people (why they need the physical computer to grant it access to the campus internet, especially when they already did that last semester, I’ll never know), and then it’s off to the grocery store. I feel like some vegetable scrambled eggs. Mmmm.
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Posted in Arts and Crafts, Food, International Relations, Japan at 10:42 am by Ellery
I swear: the more you travel, the easier it gets. I arrived in KIX International Airport at about 4:45pm (local time) yesterday night. Boy, it was a breeze this time around. Let me recap the experience for you.
I arrived at the Minneapolis airport at about 8:00 in the morning on Monday, the 23rd. Aside from an unreasonably long line to get through security, there were no problems boarding my flight. In fact, once I got through the line, it was the easiest airport security pass through I’ve had in recent memory. I, knowing the procedure, got all of my crap in the various bins, showed my boarding pass and passport to the nice people in front of the metal detector, and was through.
As my flight was set to leave at about 9:30, I had some time to kill, so I decided to partake in some breakfast. This was a mixed experience; the food was fine (and the strawberry-bananna smoothie I got from the Caribou Coffee stand near my gate? Excellent! I never knew they made such good smoothies.), but my surroundings left something to be desired. The little restaurant “hub” I was at was clearly in need of repair, as many of the stuffed vinyl seats had tears in them which did little to create a positive ambiance. Capping off this lovely breakfast was a comment from a cranky middle aged woman to her friend, “Look! There’s a dead rat on the floor! Oh, that’s just lovely.” And, sure enough, there was. Now that my attention was drawn to it, it was all I could look at. I wish I had finished my sandwich before I saw the dead vermin.
The flight to Chicago was remarkably easy. I fell asleep before the flight took off (having had maybe an hour or two of sleep thanks to my lack of packing the night before) and woke up after it landed. Yay! Oh, I should mention: from my admittedly limited experience with it, the Chicago airport is really nice. All I really saw was the bathrooms, and the concourse from the gate where I arrived to the gate where I departed, but it was all good. The bathrooms rocked (as much as it’s possible for American bathrooms to rock. The Japanese definitely have the advantage in this department [most of the time; the "old style" toilets are retarded], what with their expensive toilet seats that have heating, music, and bidets all built into one), which was a pleasant experience given my decidedly unpleasant encounters with the bathrooms at the Detroit airport on previous voyages.
I had no problem getting on the plane, once I found my gate. I have, based on this one experience, come to the decision that I vastly prefer United Airlines to Northwest Airlines. The plane was way nicer. We got video screens built into the back of each seat, with 8 different movies running at any given time (repeating something like, 4 times during the flight, so you can watch the ones you want in whatever order you like). And the selection of movies was fantastic. I believe the options were, Corpse Bride(I hadn’t seen it when it came out in Japan, opting instead to, you know, study for the exam I had the next day. Unfortunately, it was a) not all that great, and b) suffering from some weird tracking problems during the early portion of the film. Oh well), Cinderella Man(as good as Dad said it was), The Brothers Grimm(as bad as I had heard; I fell asleep about a half hour into it), I, Robot(I enjoyed it a lot, perhaps because I wasn’t burdened by having read the original Asimov), and a few others I didn’t watch. I think there was also K-Pax, The Dukes of Hazard, and some other less interesting options.
The best part of the flight was definitely that it wasn’t terribly full, resulting in a lot more room that I would have had otherwise. Some people in the middle aisles even put up the arm rests (another nice perk of flying United; the arm rests actually fold up) and laid down across 4-5 seats to sleep. I didn’t actually sleep a whole lot on the plane, what with the movies, but what little I did was made more comfortable by the fact that there was no one sitting next to me.
The food service was perhaps a bit lacking; we got two meals and a “snack” consisting of a small cup ramen that did little to ease the hunger I was experiencing. Still, the meals were fine. Just too few of them.
Boy, getting through customs in Japan was a breeze. I mean, this was partly because I remembered everything I needed to do, but still. It took maybe.. 20 minutes? Compared to the… two hours it took me to get through customs when re-entering the states back in December. My baggage was some of the first off the conveyor belt (and, as I was one of the first people through customs [again, oweing to the fact I knew where to go], there was very little crowding of the baggage claims area), and I was on my way.
Tiffany was waiting for me at the Kansai Gaidai pickup area, new hair coloring and all. Once again, knowing the procedure, I quickly paid my 2,000 bus fee, and got my luggage loaded. A short two hour bus ride and I was back in Seminar House IV.
I’ve only met one of my two room mates (the one I’ll have permanently; the orientation-only roomie remains unintroduced to me), and he seems like a dapper chap. Hopefully he doesn’t turn out to be an asshole. I hung out with Tiffany and Tom for a few hours, before falling asleep on the futon that will be occupied (eventually) by our mutual friend (and roommate of Tiffany) Karen. I woke up at around 10, relocated to my own room, and went to bed. Ah, it’s good to be back.
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11.14.05
Posted in Arts and Crafts, Consumerism, International Relations at 3:38 pm by Ellery
Though I’m dubious as to its available this side of the pond, I must say I highly recommend the sketch comedy show Little Britain. The premise is simply a bunch of sketches about characters who are.. well, British. Almost every one of these characters is played by one of the two actors who write and star in the show. There are a few exceptions, however. Most notably, in a running sketch they do, Anthony Steward Head (of Buffy fame) plays the Prime Minister. And c’mon, Anthony Steward Head!
I must warn you, however; the show does, at times, delve into extremely crude humor. The censors are not nearly so vigilant on the tiny island the Brits inhabit (I blame the presence of the monarchy), so things that would never see the light of day on American tv appear frequently. I’m really, really not kidding, so beware. Still, it remains quite funny throughout, even if you don’t have a British person handy to explain the more obscure British references.
Good bile!
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11.13.05
Posted in Food, Japan at 10:37 pm by Ellery
Through circumstances not quite interesting enough to relate, a pot luck was held in Seminar House IV recently. Well, a pot luck between me, my room mate, and my friend Karen. Originally my friend Molly was going to participate as well, but she was delayed due to circumstances beyond her control and was unable to attend. My room mate, being Dutch, prepared his nation’s most delicious culinary masterpiece: Pannekoeken. He has assured me that they are easy to make, and will teach me how to do so before the semester is over. Karen prepared chicken marinated in the fruit sauce and cinnamon that was left over from the delicious meal I had made the previous day. As for myself? Curried fruit.
The meal I had made the previous day (priorly mentioned) was, essentially, curried fruit without the curry. And it was tasty. I had just thrown a bunch of fruit in a frying pan, added some butter and sugar (and apple juice) and simmered to perfection. This is what led me to thinking that making curried fruit was, indeed, a possibility. So, I nabbed the recipe from my sister (conviently online at the time), ran to the supermarket, and bought a ton of fruit. And some brown sugar. And some butter. And some curry powder.
Now, for those not in the know, making curried fruit requires baking in the traditional recipe. The fruit, contained wholly within a cooking pan, is doused in a mix of brown sugar, melted butter (the sugar should be as much dissolved as possible, really), and curry. It is then baked for about an hour. Well, this particular part of the curried fruit process proved to be a bit.. difficult. See, we don’t have ovens here. Well, we do, but they are really, really small. Smaller than your standard plate, actually. This is true across Japan, from what I hear- the reason they don’t consider the turkey something you eat is because they don’t have ovens big enough to cook it. (My reading/writing teacher remarked that “Turkeys are something you see in zoos, not something you eat”) This will prove to be a challenge come Thanksgiving, but I’m sure we’ll make due. If turkey is no where to be found, we’ll settle for a pie. But I digress.
So, I couldn’t bake the fruit. Instead, I opted to put it all into a big pot, and simmer on high heat on the stovetop for a while. I also didn’t really pay much attention to measurements of sugar, butter, curry and the like; there are no measuring cups here anyways. Plus, I had way more fruit than the recipe traditionally uses. But you know what? It came out fabulous. The simmering process, rather than baking, made for a curried fruit that was far more soupy than normal, but not to the point of annoyance. And it tasted exactly the same, if not better. I learned some valuable lessons, (such as why we never put mandarin oranges into the curried fruit we made back home- they tend to disintegrate) and ended up with a pot full of mouth watering deliciousness.
It was a big hit with those who tried it. My room mate has insisted I teach him how to make it (in exchange for his divine pannekoeken recipe), and I have assured him I will. Some people were too grossed out at the sight of the dish (admittedly not the most pretty creation on this Earth) and the thought of curry in fruit to try any. It is, I’m sad to say, their great loss.
I took some pictures of the meal with Karen’s camera. Once I blag them off her, I’ll put them up here.
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11.12.05
Posted in Food, Japan, Random Fun at 1:52 pm by Ellery
Last week was my birthday. People were aware of this fact, and were constantly pestering me to decide on something fun to do. I was in a decidedly less than deciding mood, so I didn’t really come up with any plans until the day of the event itself. You see, although my birthday fell on a Thursday, we had a national holiday that day (Culture Day, if I recall correctly) so there were no classes. Nice timing, eh? Because of this, I had considered several courses of action. A trip to some scenic spots, such as Nara, Kobe, or Kyoto, perhaps. Or, heck; a stroll around downtown Osaka could be fun. Still, none of these really leaped out at me as anything really special enough for my birthday.
So, I got to thinking. What do I really want to do? Then it hit me. For all that I’m a nerd in Japan, I haven’t actually done anything really nerdy in months. I’ve been too busy “socializing.” God damned people and their talking. I’m a nerd, and I was told by someone here that they just couldn’t believe that. Clearly, something needed to change. My plan began to materialize: a night of Sci-Fi! A regular nerdstravaganza. It would start by watching the Battlestar Galactica miniseries. The new one, not the old crappy tv show. Following that? Firefly. I’ve been jonesin’ to see Serenity for months, (yeah, it ain’t gonna come out here, methinks, so I’ll never get a chance to see it on the big screen) so watching Firefly is the next best thing.
It was a glorious plan. And it went off without a hitch. I woke up in the early afternoon (ah, sleeping in. How I love it so), and went out to some breakfast/dinner with a bunch of friends at a chinese restaurant. We ate far too much, and returned for a night of nerdity. It was spectacular. I miss my nerdy persuits.
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11.11.05
Posted in Food, Japan, Random Fun at 10:39 pm by Ellery
I’ve been to karaoke many times now. Yesterday was one such time. We’ve found a karaoke studio near our seminar house that has several excellent characteristics: it’s cheap, it has good songs, and it is all you can drink. This last aspect I find somewhat amusing, for a number of reasons. You see, the Japanese, it would seem, are very susceptible to the effects of alcohol. It does not, in general, take many drinks for them to get pissed. For example, my speaking partner got drunk off of a single chuuhai, a weak mixed drink made with shochu. I’ve downed no less than five or six chuuhais without so much as getting tipsy. I should also mention; given that it doesn’t take much for Japanese people to get drunk, the drinks here are often watered down. Many of the foreigners have complained that going to bars in Japan is extremely expensive, since it always takes a tremendous amount of drinks to get drunk.
Now, with this in mind, the “all you can drink” aspect of our karaoke studio makes sense. The Japanese clientele, who can often get drunk off of a single drink, almost assuredly don’t order that many drinks. Thus, the karaoke place makes money, since they get paid more and don’t have to give out that many drinks. This is not the situation when the foreigners show up, however. We drink a lot. For us, it’s a good deal, since two hours of all you can drink karaoke is only 2,000 yen (about $20). 2,000 yen worth of drinks at a Japanese bar is almost certainly not enough to get drunk off of, and you don’t get to sing. We in fact chose to go to the karaoke studio because it was cheaper than going to a bar (which had been the plan). And believe you me, we ordered far more than 2,000 yen worth of drinks per person.
I don’t think they’ll let us back there, honestly. Three glasses were broken (one of them was the fault of the waitress, however), and I do believe I remember someone entering and asking us to make less noise. At a karaoke bar. Yeah. That was a hell of a lot of fun, though.
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