Japanese Numbers

I think Japanese ad people are geniuses at least for one thing: phone number memorableness.  In America, we’ve got jingles and things that we can include phone numbers in—I still remember singing, “Think Ancira!  Think Ancira!  689-4100 (or whatever the number was)” over and over as a child in San Antonio—and we also have the thing where your phone number can spell out a word on a number keypad (e.g. the last four digits of Soka’s IT help desk number spells out H-E-L-P).  

The Japanese do these kinds of things too.  Here’s an example I heard on tv today: 919-919 would normally be read kyuu ichi kyuu kyuu ichi kyuu, but the advertisement shortened the syllables as “kuikku kuikku” or “quick quick” (the ad was for some sort of packing company, I think).  The Japanese also have the advantage of having multiple readings for its numbers (due to things like having both Japanese and Chinese readings for kanji characters).  Take, for example, this billboard:

3 can be read as san or mi (as in 三つ), 8 is read as hachi, and 7 can be read as shichi or nana.  This billboard for an ENT (ear, nose, throat) clinic advertises the last four digits of its phone number as mimi hana or “ear, nose.”  Cute, huh?

One more that my teacher told us about in class today (it’s not a phone number, but it’s the same concept).  There’s a new big-o broadcasting tower being built in Tokyo, and it is going to be 634 meters high.  6 can be read as roku  or mu (as in 六つ), 3 as san or mi, and 4 as yon  or shi.  So 634 can spell out mu sa shi (the san of 3 being shortened to sa), which is apparently an old name for Tokyo.  It would have been better to build the tower to be a couple meters taller, but the people building it couldn’t resist the historical shout-out.

お花見-Ohanami

With the sakura (cherry blossoms) in full bloom, I’ve come to observe what I’ve interpreted to be a sacred Japanese tradition.  When the sakura bloom, it is the Japanese tradition of hanami to go out to look at them.  And that’s it.  Sometimes people plan a picnic or the city plans a festival, but many Japanese people simply go out to look at the sakura and appreciate their beauty. 

I didn’t realize what a big deal it was until this past week.  The newspapers have detailed maps of what percentage of blossoms the sakura trees in various cities have and which areas have lights on for night-time viewings.  The tv news covers stories about “hanami gone wrong” and shows off products that resemble sakura.  Anytime you pass by an area with some cherry trees, you’re bound to see people just standing and looking at them.  My mother loves sakura so much that a couple years ago she had three of them (representing her three daughters) planted in our backyard in Oklahoma (the picture below actually is of our cherry tree, but I pasted my face onto my little sister's so the perverts won't come looking for her or something). 

My host parents went to look at sakura yesterday, and today, they went to separate locations to see more.  I believe my host dad is going again tomorrow.  How many times a year do they go to hanami, and how many years have they done it, and how many photos of sakura have they taken in all that time?  Yet they’re still going and taking pictures.  The fact that these people admire these trees and make a day out of going just to look at them shows the kind of values these people have.  Of course, Japan has its problems, but isn’t it amazing that so many people go out to appreciate trees and that they do it year after year?  I don’t know what kind of historical or cultural symbolism that sakura hold, but I’m deeply touched by the Japanese people’s general reverence of them.  感動しています。

I myself accidentally hanami-ed this past weekend when I happened upon a sakura festival while hanging out in Kobe.  There weren’t very many trees there, but they were beautiful nonetheless, and the general festival atmosphere was pretty fun.  I’m really glad that I was able to experience that, but after having heard today of other people’s hanami experiences from over the weekend, I really want to go again and appreciate it even more.

Wasn’t Me

I was coming home from Kobe, and because it was late, I decided to take the bus home from my train station instead of walking.  It was a completely normal bus ride, and I got off the bus after putting exact change into the coin receiver as I had done many times before.  I was the only one who got off at the stop, and I started walking away from the bus toward home, but the bus didn’t go on after I had gotten off.  I kept checking behind me as 10, 15, 20 seconds went by and the bus hadn’t left yet.  After about 30 seconds, which is an unusually long interval for Japanese public buses, the bus finally left.  I can’t help but feel that I did something wrong.

A Weird Thing

A weird thing:  When I told my aunt about my getting sick the day of the trip to Tokyo, she, like my host mom, suggested that it was probably because I was too excited.  I thought that reason was insane, but the more I think about it, the more I’m getting convinced that it might not be completely crazy.  I recall that when I originally chose not to enter Soka for college, my mom was extremely stressed and got an awful rash on her arms that didn’t go away until I agreed to go to Soka, as if her body were reacting to the condition of her mind.  Maybe that’s what happened to me.

I’ve read that Japanese philosophy traditionally expounds the inseparability of body and mind, whereas Western philosophy more often tries to separate the mind from the body.  My American rationalization thinks, “Why would I be in pain because I’m excited?  That makes no sense,” but perhaps the Japanese are more aware of the intimate workings of the human mind and body than I am. 

Spring Break

Part I: Morning of

My many 8-hour long road trips in the Midwest had me mentally prepared for a 9-hour long train ride to Tokyo.  But as I woke up with a writhing pain in my stomach and a stitch in my chest at 3 am the night before my trip, I realized that I was no longer physically prepared.  Had I eaten something weird the day before?  Was I having a heart attack?  Would I be able to go to school that day, take my midterm test, and then travel to Tokyo?  I wondered these things the next two times I woke up in pain that night.  When finally it came time to get up, I walked downstairs and, using vocabulary from the illness chapter that I had just studied in my speaking Japanese class, told my host mom that I was feeling funky.  When we ruled out food poisoning, a cold, and needing to poop, my host mom diagnosed me with a case of excitement for my-big-day-to-come and sent me off to school after giving me some indigestion pills just to make me feel better psychologically. 

Part II: Getting There

Using the seishun 18 kippu to ride the JR lines up to Tokyo, you have change trains about 6 times.  The rides ranged from 30 minutes long to 2 ½ hours long.  If you can get a seat on the longer rides, it’s really not that bad of a trip even though it takes so long.  You go through some pretty cool country areas, so about 75% of the time, I was just looking out the window (the other 25% of the time I spent listening to my ipod or snoozing).  Probably the only really annoying thing is that you can’t eat a meal on the train and that you have to either try to inconspicuously eat little snacks or eat when you change trains.  Although I felt like crap and kept getting overheated on the train ride to Tokyo, I was lucky in the fact that I had no appetite:  While the others complained about hunger during some of the longer rides, I was totally cool.  We had left Kyoto around 1 and arrived in Shinjuku (Tokyo) around 10.

Part III: Tokyo

Meeting with my family was incredible.  My aunt was like my second mother, my uncle was kind of intimidating but was nonetheless incredibly nice, and my cousins were so goofy yet so grown-up.  Most of the time, I sat around my cousins’ apartment as everyone took care of me.  I felt like a total mooch, but there wasn’t really anything I could help them with, and even when I offered, they just made me sit and watch tv.  I forgot all sorts of things—nice shoes, tights, pajamas, clothes for my last day with them—but they either lent or bought me whatever I needed. 

My cousin Yoshiko’s graduation ceremony at SUJ apparently bored everyone except her.  But it was fun to see all the girls dressed up in traditional hakama and to meet my uncle’s old professors from his time at SUJ.  My feet hurt from the heels that my aunt bought me, but I looked cute. 

 

After visiting my family, I kind of regretted not choosing to study abroad at SUJ.  But I suppose I had very practical reasons for choosing Kansai, so I hope my decision is worth it.

The rest of the week, I visited various places in Tokyo—Shibuya, Harakuju, Shinjuku—but it rained for a couple days, so I got my hair cut and learned how to make rice during those days.  The rain didn’t spoil anything because I hit up much of Tokyo two years ago, but I think the next time I get a chance to go to Tokyo, I’d like to visit Yokohama, maybe go to Disneyland, and climb Mt. Fuji!

I came back to the Kansai region for the last weekend of spring break, and the ride down was much more beautiful than the ride up.  The train runs along the ocean for part of the time and also goes through very quaint country areas that look like they’re out of a Miyazaki film.  In Kansai, I went to Shinsaibashi (near Osaka) for the first time, which was a good place for shopping.

Conclusion

The 18 kippu is totally worth it.  Seriously, roundtrip between Kyoto and Tokyo for 4600 yen/~$46?  All the Japanese people who knew I was doing this thought I was crazy, but the train ride is actually pretty comfortable, and if you can entertain yourself without internet, then a 9-hour ride is nothing. 

Confidence Killer

A couple days ago, I had my Japanese breakthrough, and today I had another little significant moment.  You know when someone asks you something, and you answer before you’ve really processed what he or she asked?  I do that a lot with Japanese, and if I end up giving the other person wrong information that is not really important, then I don’t correct myself.  Today, however, my host mom asked if I had to change trains to get to Tokyo.  I answered no, and then I thought to myself, “That’s not true,” and I told her that I had misunderstood her and that, yes, I have to change trains about six times.  I was really proud that I took that step, and I was going to write a very positive blog entry about it.

But tonight, as I brushed my teeth in my pajamas, my host mom’s cousin’s son arrived for his stay here. 

!!!!!!!!!???!!!!!!!!!!

Why didn’t anyone tell me that some dude from Canada is coming to stay over when I’m wearing my pajamas?!?!?

The dude from Canada is actually very nice.

But as he spoke amazing Japanese to my host family and turned to me every now and then to translate, I became more and more negative about studying Japanese.  All this vocab that I’ll have to learn, thousands and thousands of words, not to mention grammar patterns and cultural implications and kanji, all for a society that won’t accept me as its own anyway.  And it doesn’t help my confidence when the only thing I understand in a conversation is when my host dad good-naturedly tells our guests that I don’t understand anything they’re saying. 

Why didn’t my mom just speak more Japanese to me when I was growing up?

But I suppose I have more sympathy now for my Japanese friends who are learning English.  Like the Canadian dude did for me tonight, I do my best to help my friends understand English conversation, but now I want to try to do more for them.

18 Kippu-ing It to Tokyo!

The other Soka kids and I have been looking for the cheapest way to Tokyo for Spring Break... 5,000 yen for night bus?  8,000 for day bus?  12,000 yen for shinkansen?  And then I found the Seishun 18 Kippu.

For 11,500 yen, you get 5 "units" of unlimited travel on JR train lines, one of the larger train lines in Japan.  That makes 2,300 yen for one unit of unlimited travel.  Those units can be used as days or people in any combination: One person can have 5 days of unlimited travel, or two friends can travel together for two days and use four of the "units," etc.  

The three of us split the cost of a ticket (I paid for three units worth), and we'll be traveling all the way to Tokyo on JR local trains tomorrow.  Using this website, we were able to plan out which trains we have to catch (this website is amazing because you can specify in the search field what kind of transportation you want to take--anything from trains to walking--and it'll give you a schedule).

A 9 hour ride.  >< 

But I like to think that my experience with roadtrips between Okiehomer and San Antonio have prepared me for this kind of experience.  I'm kind of afraid we won't get seats, though, and might have to stand for two hours or something.  D:  Another hard thing will probably be finding some secret corner where we can quickly eat our packed dinners (it's tacky to eat in public). 

One of our Japanese friends has been discouraging me for two weeks from taking this trip.  He said we will probably get confused or attacked, and he also worried that we might not be "tactful": enforcing stereotypes of foreigners by talking loudly, eating, getting naked, whatever.  He was even so worried as to send me a text last night at 1 am: "This is my last advice.  Please do not take local trains."  I've been telling him that the best way to make sure that we'll be safe is if he comes with us. 

He just came up to me as I wrote the above paragraph and told me that his own ride to Tokyo didn't work out, and now he'll be riding with us.  Ha! 

I will post an entry reporting how the trip went and whether it is worth it to 18 Kippu to Tokyo.  Yeah!