Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Driving around and stuff
So my host brother is gone. That's kind of sad, because he seemed cool. Hopefully I'll be able to run into him if I'm in Tokyo at some point or whatever. After that, my host mom drover me around to various places so I could kind of get a sense of how Kyoto is laid out. I think I won't get lost and die now...hopefully. Oh, yeah, the title means "you don't use ookini!?!" Ookini is a word for thank you that I'm told is used in the Kansai region (where Kyoto is), but apparently, according to my host brother, isn't actually used in most contexts. So there goes 1/3 of the things I knew about Kansai-ben. Also, while I was out, I got a prepaid card for a phone. Luckily, my host family already had a phone I could use left over from one of their previous homestay kids, so I can use that. The only thing is that I have absolutely no idea how to make it work with the phone. Oh well, hopefully I can figure it out. In fact, that's what I'm gonna do right about now. So yeah. Toodles.
Arrival
So yeah. This thing exists. I think I plan on changing the title if I feel like it some time later on. Anyway, here's what I got up to today.
I had a decent flight out to Japan (as decent as a 11 and a half hour flight can be). I read a lot and I watched a movie and slept. Once I got in, I ended up having a touch of trouble with my visa, but after I explained things, I pretty much just had to wait for 10 minutes or so before they came back and told me everything was fine. While I was waiting, I met an expat named Brent (I think), who was also having visa issues, but he also had a very adorable daughter, who kind of reminded me of Alex. At one point, she was holding her nose saying how badly her dad smelled, and then she started scooting away from him, ending up in the opposite corner of the room. Then, once that was over, I got out, went through customs with no real issues, and changed my money over, also with no issues. Next, however, it seemed like I couldn't find my shuttle, which was very stressful. I walked around for a while, but to no avail. Eventually, I found someone with a sign from the same company, but with a different name on it, so I asked them what to do. They told me to go to the "number one over there" counter and ask them. I walked over, and, true to his word, it was indeed the farthest away (I had gotten kind of nervous after a while). Right as I was walking over, someone came up to me and asked if I was Whitney, and then it all worked out from there. It turned out that Brent and his daughter were on my shuttle, but, also interestingly, someone else from my program was on it sitting next to me. I forgot her name already (oops), but she was very nice. Apparently her dad's side of the family is from Japan, and she goes to Yale. She's in the Advanced Japanese portion of the program, which makes her less cool than me, though. After what seemed like a long shuttle ride (only made longer by the fact that I needed to go to the bathroom), I arrived at my host family's house. My host mother greeted me and showed me around the house. Once I had put my bags up in my room, I went down and had tea with my host mother and father and their youngest son Takuya. Apparently he was visiting because he had to go to a friends wedding, but he's a photographer who lives in Tokyo. After we talked for a while, they let me go up to unpack my things a bit before dinner. On my way down, I gave the parents the crab doilies and Takuya the Ravens playing cards. They seemed interested in what the crab and raven meant, or at least we had a pretty long conversation about each. Apparently Japanese doesn't have a word for raven, or at least it isn't well known. It's something like watarigarasu, which is some variation on the word for crow, which is karasu. I also learned what that crow-like-thing with three feet on the Japanese national soccer team's uniforms is. Apparently it's a yatogarasu, which is another kind of crow in Japanese mythology and a symbol of Japan. So far my Japanese seems to be holding up ok, and I don't feel like there have been any moments when people were talking to me that I really couldn't understand them, so that's good. I think the worst language-related mishap I had was when I confused the words for five and eight when the shuttle driver told me how much to pay him, but that didn't really cause much of an issue.
I had a decent flight out to Japan (as decent as a 11 and a half hour flight can be). I read a lot and I watched a movie and slept. Once I got in, I ended up having a touch of trouble with my visa, but after I explained things, I pretty much just had to wait for 10 minutes or so before they came back and told me everything was fine. While I was waiting, I met an expat named Brent (I think), who was also having visa issues, but he also had a very adorable daughter, who kind of reminded me of Alex. At one point, she was holding her nose saying how badly her dad smelled, and then she started scooting away from him, ending up in the opposite corner of the room. Then, once that was over, I got out, went through customs with no real issues, and changed my money over, also with no issues. Next, however, it seemed like I couldn't find my shuttle, which was very stressful. I walked around for a while, but to no avail. Eventually, I found someone with a sign from the same company, but with a different name on it, so I asked them what to do. They told me to go to the "number one over there" counter and ask them. I walked over, and, true to his word, it was indeed the farthest away (I had gotten kind of nervous after a while). Right as I was walking over, someone came up to me and asked if I was Whitney, and then it all worked out from there. It turned out that Brent and his daughter were on my shuttle, but, also interestingly, someone else from my program was on it sitting next to me. I forgot her name already (oops), but she was very nice. Apparently her dad's side of the family is from Japan, and she goes to Yale. She's in the Advanced Japanese portion of the program, which makes her less cool than me, though. After what seemed like a long shuttle ride (only made longer by the fact that I needed to go to the bathroom), I arrived at my host family's house. My host mother greeted me and showed me around the house. Once I had put my bags up in my room, I went down and had tea with my host mother and father and their youngest son Takuya. Apparently he was visiting because he had to go to a friends wedding, but he's a photographer who lives in Tokyo. After we talked for a while, they let me go up to unpack my things a bit before dinner. On my way down, I gave the parents the crab doilies and Takuya the Ravens playing cards. They seemed interested in what the crab and raven meant, or at least we had a pretty long conversation about each. Apparently Japanese doesn't have a word for raven, or at least it isn't well known. It's something like watarigarasu, which is some variation on the word for crow, which is karasu. I also learned what that crow-like-thing with three feet on the Japanese national soccer team's uniforms is. Apparently it's a yatogarasu, which is another kind of crow in Japanese mythology and a symbol of Japan. So far my Japanese seems to be holding up ok, and I don't feel like there have been any moments when people were talking to me that I really couldn't understand them, so that's good. I think the worst language-related mishap I had was when I confused the words for five and eight when the shuttle driver told me how much to pay him, but that didn't really cause much of an issue.
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