BIG THING, little thing

I laid in bed for a good while this morning. It was only 9:00am, but I did not want to get up. Getting up meant taking a shower and changing into the clothes I had just changed out of. GROSS! Yes, gross indeed. This was not a desirable course of action for me. I continued to lay in bed for awhile until one of my roommates, Will, got up and went for the shower. “Great!” I thought, “The guy with the hangover is out of bed before me. No more being lame.” And lame no more was I not not not. I hopped out of bed and walked down the hall.

There I saw Jesse laying out dress clothes on the table. I asked what fancytype clothes I should wear for meeting the principal today. He said I could wear any of the dress clothes he laid out, and picked out a black dress shirt. It was too big for me, but what are you going to do? My bag was lost so I had no gift to give the principal and no pants. “Sorry Principal-san. I have brought you no gift and am not wearing pants. Please don’t look down.” This would not go over well. And after all the freaking time I spent fretting over gifts and what to buy, I have absolutely nothing to show for it. Typical.

I ate breakfast, showered and waited to leave for 11:00am when our crash course in Japanese would begin. In the meantime, Jesse hooked me up with some clothes. At first he gave me a big black button down shirt, but it was too big for me and made me look like a California beach bum. Eventually, he gave me his super skinny tight pants and I exchanged the baggy shirt for a tighty tight white shirt, and for the first time in three days, I finally looked good. This is nice in a country like Japan where everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, dresses nice.

You may think I’m joking, but at least 85% of the people I see here look like they stepped out of some sort of catalogue. I have no fashion sense myself, so I generally look like a bum in America, where I’d say at least 50% of the people you see dress well. But being here in such a large volume of nicely dressed individuals, and wearing the same bummy clothes for three bummy days makes me feel like a super bum! So needless to say, I was happy to wear nice clothes for once. Sadly, when my luggage arrives, I’ll look like a bum again.

We met upstairs in the computer lab for a crash course in Japanese from Emi Schuester, a Japanese woman who teaches Japanese in America. Schuester-Sensei taught us a lot of basic greetings and phrases, but there were three key phrases we needed to say when we met the principal and faculty of the school. “Hajime mashite,” How do you do? “Watashi wa Mikaeru desu,” I am Michael. “Doozo Yoroshiku, Onegaishimasu,” Nice to meet you. Actually, the word “Yoroshiku” is interesting. There is no English equivalent, but Jesse told me it basically expresses, “I am nice and I plan not to harm you.” Adding “Onegaishimasu” at the end expresses, “please also plan not to harm me either.”

The eight of us studied these phrases on the train to Tokyo with mixed results. It seemed the more we practiced these seemingly simple phrases, the more we mixed around the words and messed them up. We nervously arrived at the school around 1:00pm and awaited our fate.

We stood in the lobby for a while until Chiaki Tanaka came to meet us. Tanaka-san took us up to the third floor where we waited in a room. Then we inexplicably left and met some nice Canadians who told us that this was their twenty-first trip to Japan since coming to teach thirty years ago. Nice.

We were led back to the room we had left to find it had filled with solemn and patient Japanese faces. This took us by surprise, because no one told us the room would be filled with this, and if they did tell us it was in Japanese. Jesse motioned for us to line up in front of the desks and present ourselves. We spoke our lines pretty well, I think, and then bowed at the end and the teachers all clapped for our efforts. The teachers presented themselves in English, which I must say, was better than our Japanese. After that, we huddled around a table with the pictures we had sent in when applying to the program. As they went around and pointed at the pictures, they came to mine and looked up. “Where is…where is Mikaeru?” I raised my hand. “What is…what are you holding?” I answered that it was an owl, and they all nodded saying, “Ah, owl. Owl.” I was glad that a picture of me holding an owl next to face was acceptable to them once they knew what it was. I mean, it is an owl. They’re awesome!

We left and Jesse told us we did a great job. We had a free afternoon and going back right away was out of the question. We decided to go off on our own and go into Tokyo again. This time we went to Asakusa. We never would have made it without Cyn, who has been to Japan at least seven times and speaks fluent Japanese. We got on the train and traveled a while. In Asakusa, we stopped at a Japanese burger place calle “Mos Burger.” It’s actually getting pretty fun ordering food for myself. You just have to know a few key phrases and when they repeat what you say to confirm, you just nod vigorously and say, “Hai, hai, hai, hai.” “Hai” means “yes” or “right.” I think when I get back to the U.S. I’ll start saying, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” instead of just “yeah.” It’s more fun.

We traveled to a marketplace near a temple and took some photos. It was raining pretty steadily, so a lot of the shops in the marketplace seemed to close early. One of the shops had a giant Gundam statue and Alex, Ryan, and I got our picture taken with it holding up our Gundam Pilot cards from the arcade. After visiting the temple for a while, we got back on the train and headed for the dorms.

That night, we had a meeting about meeting the principals of another school in the country the next day. We’d wear our nice clothes again and eat lunch with the students. We set off some fireworks that Cyn, Chelsey, and Lauren bought to celebrate the Fourth of July. Then Alex and I stayed a while to discuss an intro movie we could shoot to show the kids who we are on the first day. Right now, the plan is to model it after the intro from the Venture Brothers. I think it will be fun, but I’m afraid it may be more work than we can do in four days, especially if we have curriculum to plan. I guess we’ll see what happens. Tomorrow is another day, and I must prepare with sleep. I have pictures uploaded on my facebook for all to see. There will be more to come. Goodnight to all, except to you, it’s the morning. Bye!