さんぷる 1
Saturday was a quiet day for me. Our wireless internet, which we share with my coworker/neighbor downstairs, was not working. I should be grateful for being lucky enough to live in a town with broadband. . . many JETs do not. But a lack of internet usually just leaves me cranky. I made okonomiyaki おこのみやき, cleaned, and read. The snow is melting (finally!) and crashes off the roof with incredible force.
At the train station at six, in the dark, I met Nick who was returning from work in Asahikawa. We rushed to meet my JTE/friend Inugami-sensei and his wife Yuko. The four of us planned a "double-date" for the evening. We met at a culture event coordinated for Furano ski tourists. It was an incredible spread of traditional music and dancing. Unfortunately the food served was some of the worst I`ve eaten in Japan, perhaps made for the tastes of Western tourists. But never mind; the music and beer were a great combo! The four of us had a nice time meeting Furano`s (mostly Australian) tourists and catching up with local friends involved in the tourism industry. Apparently Inugami-sensei and I share some local notoriety for our music performances together in the past months.
After the culture event rolled to a close, the four of us walked to a blues bar serving Miller Light. The owner of the bar is the oldest of three brothers with businesses in town; his next brother owns a lovely coffee shop; the youngest owns a popular bar welcoming many locals and foreigners with classic rock riffs spilling out of the stereo. It`s been funny to meet the whole family, in stages, over the months we`ve lived here.
さんぷる 2
Sunday morning was an early one, as we`d been out late and Nick needed to catch the SIX am train to work. His students (adorable: aged 2-5) were performing in a speech `contest` in front of beaming parents. After the contest, I took the train and met him in Asahikawa for some shopping. We caught a free bus, packed with teenagers, to the biggest mall in the region. For a country that constantly waxes over their uniquely "polite" culture, not a single person offered their bus seat to the elderly woman standing. Grr. First stop at the mall was a ridiculous Western-food buffet lunch, quite a deal at 1300￥ (about $12) each. I wonder if the other guests had ever seen a man put down quite the amount of food that Nick managed to consume. Men, women and children stared slack-jawed. After months of living as circus performers, I don`t even mind the googling eyes.
The highlight of our day, though, was a return to the mall`s foreign foods store which we`d visited back in October. Back story: In our last visit the store had held our purchases for a few hours while we continued mall shopping, and we picked up the bags on our way out of the mall. Upon returning to Furano I received a frantic call from the food store, apologizing profusely for omitting to return our precious bag of tortillas back into our grocery bag; they had refrigerated the tortillas and forgotten. . . oh shame! Well, this time, upon checkout, I mentioned my name and that I had not received a bag of tortillas about five months ago. . . The looks on the cashiers` faces were priceless. My cashier ran into the back and immediately brought out THE ORIGINAL BAG OF TORTILLAS, frozen, with my name and phone number still taped to the bag. Profound bowing and apologies all around. You know that store employees have been staring at those tortillas for five months during weekly inventory, willing me to hurry up and get the blessed bag. But I thought it was so funny and sweet that they saved the original bag (rather than a store credit or something). Japanese society is so HONEST.
さんぷる 3
Today was a brilliantly blue day of snowmelt and striking mountain vistas. I taught at a school nearly an hour away from town, and on the drive back managed some nice pictures.
I couldn`t tarry, however; I needed to make it to the bank before 3pm to send some money, in a frustratingly complicated system, internationally to my bank at home. Usually this is not a problem. Today I thought I would try to do the currency exchange on my own with the limited help of a bank teller, but, sadly, this did not occur. It is so difficult to be helplessly illiterate and inarticulate. I couldn`t understand the bankteller`s directions and failed miserably at my task. Within an hour my emotions dropped from generous appreciation of Japan`s natural grandeur to defeat. In this culture, to inconvenience someone (the bankteller) as I did (with 5 minutes of language misunderstandings) means that I must feel and show extreme apologetic humility. How can I retain confidence when I am constantly bowing and scraping?! And I will live with these linguistic limitations for another five months! Arg!
Upon returning to the office I had the fortune to run into Mr. Shima, the composer of the song which I sang for the G8 Summit. The CD`s have been burned (5000 of them!) with an unfortunate misspelling of my name, Nick`s English lyrics, my smiling mug, and what I hope to be a good editing job of the music. Who knows where this will go?!
2 comments:
Oh no! How'd they misspell your name on the G8 CD?
(Is it an English "unfortunate" misspelling, like accidentally making your name mean something unpleasant in English, or is it unfortunate because it's misspelled?)
regarding the old lady on the bus and not getting a seat: very similar here in the netherlands, too. it is such an egalitarian society that men rarely hold the door open for a woman (unless he is a lovely and gracious turkish immigrant -- i looove turkish men they are so polite and wonderful!). and on the bus and train it is a veritable free-for-all, men pushing women aside to get on the train first to get a seat before anyone else. (ps women do this to each other and to the men as well.) it really surprised me because i thought that europeans were so much more chivalrous than americans. but when i was in ireland this summer, we were on a really really crowded bus. and though my experience with irish culture is quite limited, i was not surprised one bit that the first person to offer his seat to me was an american man. granted i was 6 1/2 months pregnant at the time, but if i was in the netherlands i would have had to stand as there were no seats. who knows, maybe because i was in ireland an irish gentleman would have offered his seat to me as well, but the AMERICAN did it first.
oh yeah, and the other day on the bus i got on with the baby buggy and the place where i was supposed to park the stroller and have a seat was occupied by three teenage boys. i gave them a look of desperation, and when they saw me they just looked the other way and kept talking. but not to worry: after adam paid our fare and found me on the bus, he said quite sternly and in english, "hey guys! you mind moving?!" yay! my husband set them straight! i KNEW he would, too!
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