Language Courses, Lotus Flowers and Anger Management

Thursday 18^th August ~ Sunday 21st August

The drag continues.

Up bright and bloody early to be picked up by S-san at 8am and Back to Akita city for a four day intensive Japanese course.

The bright side about all the orientations that we have to go through is that when we walked into the classroom there were very few faces that we didn’t recognise.  Everyone sat a placement test (which left me questioning my grammar skills) to see what level we were at, followed by a brief “interview” to gage our speaking skills.

By the time we’d sat through all that it was lunch break, The mini mob of gaijin strolled down to Gusto (a sort of Western Japanese fusion place of the casual variety) for lunch. The issue with lunching as a group of 9 is that nowhere has room to seat us together so Alan and Bart had a cute man date at their own table. A cheeky trip to the combini (convenience store) to satisfy our icecream cravings (walking for 10 minutes in 100% humidity can be quite taxing) before we were split into our three classes.

The level III course turned out to be more of a conversation class with vague topics/grammar that were covered. This was a huge relief as after being out of uni for nearly 10 months I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle 9-5 studying. As is the constant risk with putting a bunch of gaijin together – when our vocab or grammar shat itself, we slipped into English, which turned into tangents in English. After a couple of rather lengthy tangents our teacher learnt that she needed to steer the conversation back to what we were paying to (or what our BOE was paying to) be there for.

Bright purple sweet potato...thing...

A group of us hit up an Izakaya for dinner that night – discussions were had as to the definition of “kiwi” which apparently everyone except New Zealanders are convinced refers to a kiwifruit, rather than the correct definition which is a kiwi (bird) or New Zealander and kiwifruit obviously refers to the fruit. Even with Alan (Auckland) the Americans and Canadian weren’t having a bar of it.

Day II involved a roundabout trip to an Italian pizzeria for lunch – as it turns out pins on google maps aren’t always that accurate. The set lunch came with an intriguing little dessert that consisted of cream and some sort of bright purple sweet potato….thing…

photo from: https://nz.pinterest.
com/pin/398216792023692570/

A few of our evening strolls took us past the old castle moat with the lotus blossoms. Japan seems to have this tendency for having beautiful things that turn to shit real quick. Rice paddies are a beatiful green in summer and then turn gold in autumn. During Winter - barren dirty fields. Sakura trees blossom for a few weeks in spring and are lush and green through summer - Winter? twiggy bare things that ring lakes and streets. The lotus flowers have a similar deal. The flowers drop their petals and the pods open up to drop the seeds, and it looks like something out of a sci-fi horror. Trypophobia is an "irrational" fear of clusters of holes. I would advise against googling this if you get creeped out easily. However when you do google it - the majority of the pictures that come up are of lotus flowers. The fear associates the holes with danger, relating to insects burrowing into wounds and the fact that there might be something living in there (suddenly my comment of "I feel like an aliens going to jump out and eat my face" doesn't seem so stupid after all). As it turns out - Alan is trypophobic so we didn;t linger too long. I feel that, like being buried or burned alive, this is one of those phobias that everyone is susceptible to on varying levels.

Moving right along....

Anger management at its finest

Friday night after class we descended on Round One - a multi storey arcade and sports complex. It had everything from Mario cart, to the Taiko drumming game, to bubble soccer. I decided that there were probably a few salary men that graced the table tossing game - where the object is to smash your hands on a table in front of you - with the intention of causing as much carnage as possible before flinging the table across the room. I got a high score (may have had something to do with my impeccable timing that caused the table to fly out of a multi storey office window - taking an employee with it....).

 I think I learnt more about bizarre Japanese quirks and traditions as opposed to actual Japanese in the lessons – thanks to some rather intriguing tangents.

Akita is renowned for having beautiful women – known as “Akita Bijin” with particularly pale skin (I have also been told that where Akita has “Bijin” Sendai has “Bosu”, I was also told not to repeat that word to anyone in Sendai…..). Our teacher explained that one of the theories as to why there is such a thing as Akita Bijin is that many years ago Russian ships came to Akita. The Russians “married” Akitan women and the rest is history. This is also potentially the inspiration for the Namahage festival – where people dress as demon monsters and burst into houses to terrorise small children, the only way to calm the demons is by giving them sake….

View from the hotel

This conversation of course led onto the topic of Akita-ben, the incomprehensible dialect of old people that everyone loves to ask foreigners if they’ve had a run in with. In normal, tidy Japanese yes is hai as I’m sure most people know. In Akita-ben however, it is nnda nnda….. Add to the fact that old men tend to mumble a lot and barely move their mouths when they talk and you’re left wondering where the hell 4 years of Japanese study at university has buggered off to. Our teacher seemed to think that the reason people refuse to open their mouths properly when conversing is because of how cold it gets in Akita, and they don’t want their mouths to fill with cold air….aw petal.

The topic of how bitch cold the winters are here of course led onto the topic of heating. In Japan they use Kerosene as a cheap alternative to a heat pump. However, in order not to poison yourself – you need to make sure the place is sufficiently ventilated, this can involve leaving your window open for an hour while its snowing outside to make sure you have a supply of fresh air coming in – too bad al that lovely heat is soaring straight out the window…

 Fun with language, cocking your head to one side and saying e- is a sufficient way to express mild confusion – similar to huh? (the cocking of the head is essential of course). However a long eeeeeee is used in times of surprise of disbelief. One syllable, one sound, two meanings. Easy.

Similarly un means yes, but uuuuuun means no (for weeks I was under the impression that my host sister was too lazy to say hai and instead grunted at me. I later realised that, while she was lazy, this was actually a legitimate response).

Next tidbit – there is a myth/legend/theory/folktale that somewhere around Japan there is a sodding great catfish that lives in the mud beneath the Islands of Japan. Every so often the catfish will have a thrash around and that, my friends, is what causes earthquakes.

Round One Arcade

While we’re on the topic of bizarre theories, one of the ALT’s, Brian, has blue eyes, and has in the past been asked if he sees the world in blue because of it (have to admit that one is slightly adorable).

And of course – no Japanese lesson would be complete without going  of the Japanese love of puns and riddles. These two in particular express the importance of kanji – because despite how much of a pain it is to learn, it is somewhat necessary.

Fist up: to be tired/sick of something is akiru – so I’m sick of~: ~mou akita ….sooooo if you’re sick of Akita: akita mou akita *cue canned laughter*.

Exhibit b: niwa niwa niwa niwatori ga iru – many niwa’s, not much sense. The same thing applies if it is written in hiragana: にわ　には　にわ　にわとりが　いる。(Hiragana is a phonetic script so the characters alone carry no meaning and resultantly many homophones arise.
However, whack some kanji in their: 庭には二羽鶏が居る -> In the garden there are 2 chickens:

庭niwa garden, にはniwa in the, 二羽niwa 2(+counter for birds) , 鶏niwatori chickens , が居るga iru there are.

I <3 Kanji…..

(and after scribbling all that down im praying to god that it doesn’t all turn into gibberish when I copy and paste it from Microsoft word….)

And Bilingual puns (if you can’t tell I’m a few days behind so am hastily hashing this out before I go out for tea…)

One of the ALTs (Assistant language teacher  -in case I haven’t already defined that acronym…) from North Block’s name is Michelle, her name in Kanji is 実mi (beautiful) and貝which is the kanji for ‘shell’  (please tell me this made sense..)

And possibly my favourite epiphany of the day which will be of very little interest to anyone that has not bothered to watch Spirited Away yet (do it), the title in Japanese is sen to chihiro no kamikakushi (the spiriting away of Sen and Chihiro. In the Film, Chihiro 千尋has her name stolen from her. The old witch take the kanji for hiro 尋　from her name, leaving 千sen. Hiro 尋　means ‘to search for’, resultantly - Chihiro 千尋 can be interpreted as ‘searching for Sen’ which is exactly what occurs in the movie (much excited arm flapping at this point).

Castle moat from a safe distance

As we were all heading home straight from class on the last day – the booze up was scheduled for the Saturday night. It was decided we’d brave a cheap and easy dinner at subway (is tuna in sub of the day normal? – I don’t know anymore….)

Then hit up a little bar called “Babylon by Bus”, appropriately full of Bob Marley regalia. It didn’t take too long for the pack of cards to come out and the table of 7 rowdy gaijin to embark on a few rounds of circle of death (minus the vessel for obvious reasons…). Game rules included not being allowed to use peoples’ real names (I was hailed as “Kyle” for the night – the most entertaining alteration being Ben’s “Bobert”) and not being allowed to point at people – resultantly there was a lot of elbow waving at people.

Reality check for the night was stumbling into the unisex toilet to be met by two urinals that you had to walk past to get to the squat toilet….

Our chauffeur and saviour Bart (or “Bort” as he was dubbed the previous night) picked up Alyssa and I with our luggage from the hotel to save us trudging for 40 minutes with our bags (I can hear people telling me to harden up from here….)

A combination of 3 days of intense lessons, late night skype catch-ups (ie thrashing the hotel wifi) and the drinks the night before had everyone running at somewhat less than 100% on that last Sunday. Also the knowledge that we had the first proper week of school starting the next day was lingering over our heads like a storm cloud.

Alyssa and I had barely been the car for 10 minutes when we both wilted and spent most of the drive conked out like toddlers.