2002-01-12 - 3:19 p.m.
Sorry it's been so long since I've written -- this has been a busy week.
Monday was the first day of the new semester, and it was marked by a very ceremonial affair in the school gym with pep talks from the principal and vice-principal, the handing out of awards, and the singing of the school song. A couple of hours later we had a fire drill, wherein the vice principal came over the PA system to announce the beginning of the drill -- no deafening bell here. Then we all had to scurry into the gym where the teachers made sure that everyone was accounted for. Then the vice principal made a speech about fire safety. I understood one part of it: 79% of fires are caused by gas stoves in the kitchen, for example when you're making tempura and you leave it to answer the telephone. It's strange the things that I understand.
On Wednesday I got off school early and went to Tokyo to hang out with my dad, who was on a business trip. We went to Sensoji, a huge temple, and Akihabara, Tokyo's "Electronics Town." We had dinner in Shinjuku, the insanely crowded and always lively neighborhood where you can see traditional Kabuki theatre, eat at McDonald's, go to a strip show, and buy a $40 cantaloupe within the same block. It was good to have my dad here because FINALLY someone can see what I'm dealing with over here! The total insanity of ME actually LIVING in this totally foreign environment.
Biking home from school on Thursday, I looked down a side street and noticed a small temple on top of a hill. I made the turn and parked my bike at the bottom of the steep stone steps. It was a long way up, and when I got to the top I saw that the temple itself was kind of fitting with my town's rural-industrial design. While all of the stones and carvings looked really old, the wooden walls of the temple itself were fortified with sheets of corrugated steel, painted blue, much like many of the houses and factories around here. Looking out over my city from the hill I could see the blinking pachinko parlors and the smokestacks from the steel factory near the bay.
The next day, I had dinner with a Japanese woman from my karate class. We totally clicked and I'm sure that we'll become friends now. She's a lot like me, and she only lives five minutes away.
When I first got back here I was pretty bummed. I even contemplated the pros and cons of quitting. But I think that I was seeing myself stalled in the Japan that I left behind when I went home to America. There are still new temples to find, new friends to make, and when I ride my bike home from work, the elementary school kids wave to me and say hello to me by name. So there are reasons for me to stay here, or at least reasons for me to be happy while I stay here.
