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Yesterday, I asked my Japanese friend to help me with my national healthcare application form.  I asked in Japanese, using what I thought was a kiddish/babyish voice.  After I did this for a minute, he said to himself in English, "So slutty."  "Slutty?!?"  Apparently, what would be considered a kiddish voice in America is considered slutty in Japan.  Ugh!!

FML and probably TMI [Warning: Graphic Details]

I was in line to use a restroom in a busy bookstore. When my turn finally came, I shut the sliding door behind me and tried to lock it, but when I turned the dealie clockwise, instead of locking, it looked as if a dead bolt popped out and slid open the door a little. If I turned it left, nothing happened. There were the kanji for “open” and “close” written on the lock, but in that “high tension” situation in which I knew people were waiting in line and probably seeing that I had no idea what I was doing, I opted to stop trying to lock the door and just go. The next lady in line knew I was in there, so no one would come up and open the door, right?

To my horror, as I peed quickly and repeated over and over in my head, “Someone is gonna open the door. Someone is gonna open the door,” someone opened the door.

“Sumimasen! Sumimasen!” (“Excuse me! I’m freaking in here!?!?”), as the door opened a couple inches and in peered a sweet Japanese girl toddler’s face. She, innocent, and I, bewildered, stared at each other for a few seconds before she slowly slid the door shut. I quickly finished up, washed my hands, and coolly walked out of the bathroom, and to my even greater surprise, no one let on that anything had happened. No look of embarrassment or sympathy or faked oblivion or any other sort of acknowledgement at all. The next woman in line brushed past me without so much as a look, and when I passed by the apparent mother of the Peeping Tomantha, she looked as if she had no idea what her cute little demon daughter had done to me.

Memorize the kanji for “open” and “close” by heart, and always lock the bathroom door at all costs.

Three nights ago.


I lie in bed, having tried for an hour since 11pm to fall asleep. My futon is between those of my two roommates, a British girl and a Korean girl. I hear the roommate to the left, the Korean one to whom my back is turned, stir in futon. Then I feel a hand grasp my upper arm. I roll over in bed, and my roommate speaks Korean to me. She begins to shake me a little, saying something in Korean over and over. I look over to my other roommate to see if she sees this shet going down, but she is of no help, being dead asleep. I have no idea what to do, so I repeat okayokay while kinda lifting my head. She persists, insisting something in Korean, so I prop myself on my elbow and grab her upper arm. I give her a squeeze, and she lets go of me, lies down, and turns her back on me.


This story would have been much funnier had I posted it the next morning like I had intended. However, I didn't get the chance, so this story does not abruptly end there.


Last night, I returned to the room around 10:30pm after having not been around all day. My Korean roommate was sitting at her computer, and I began organizing some things when she turned to me and asked me hesitantly in Japanese whether she had awoken me the night before. This was the first time she had spoken to me after we had introduced ourselves two nights ago. I embarrassingly answered yes in Japanese, and she began embarrassingly laughing at herself. She proceeded to explain that she had dreamt that she had to wake me up, and the next morning, she wasn't sure if she had just dreamt it or had actually done it. Needless to say, she felt really bad that it had actually happened.


So an unfunny end to a kinda funny story. She explained that she hadn't spoken to me before now because she doesn't speak much English, and she wasn't sure if I spoke Japanese (to be fair, I had barely been in the room the first couple days). I gave her an SUA pen, and she gave me a Shin ramen. We're taking ceramics together. And her Japanese pronunciation (and knowledge, for that matter) is absolutely incredible. Her major in Korea is Japanese, and she came to Kansai Gaidai to study English so that she can do international commerce in Pusan (at least that's what I remembered her saying). And she's like my new best friend, I hope.


Today I visited Kyoto, but I actually don't have much to say about it. I saw shrines and temples, but I've decided I have very little interest in those things. I'm beginning to worry that one of my larger interests in Japan revolves around consumerism...


Actually, this lack of interest made me wonder if I am studying abroad correctly. I've already seen before a lot of what I'm seeing now, and I can very easily adapt to what is new, and I'm not interested in seeing sites so much, so what is the point of my being here? I've come to realize that 1) I'm here to learn Japanese so that I can speak to my family and 2) I am taking a test-drive of Japan, seeing if living here more permanently is something that I might consider for the future. So maybe I should take that more challenging class? But I won't find out my placement until tomorrow, so I'll have to see about that.


My learning experience for the day:
I went to Kyoto with the SUA kids and one of our speaking partners and two of her friends. One of the friends is studying English and will study abroad in Canada in April, so to help each other out with our respective second languages, we switched our conversation throughout the day between Japanese and English. He asked early on how long I had studied Japanese (or so I thought), and I told him two years. Maybe six hours later, he started asking me how he could improve his English within six months in Canada, and I thought that was kind of an odd question to ask me, but I did my best to give him advice anyway. But come to find out, he thought I said that I had studied English for two years, and he was amazed that I spoke so fluently in that time span, so he wanted to know how he could get the same results as I supposedly had. I felt really really really bad about that miscommunication because I may have potentially disappointed him... yabai!!!


I received a letter describing my host family to me. My host parents are in their late 60s, and they have no children living at home, but they have two birds. My host mother's hobby is tea ceremony, and my host father's is mountaineering. I will have to commute by train and bus for 40 minutes to get to school. This family is almost opposite of what I had wanted (kids, close enough to ride a bike because that's fun... I guess that's it), but now I have an image of a really sweet old couple who will take me in as their own child. I will be meeting them tomorrow afternoon, and if we don't initially hate each other, I will be going home with them.


No more other stories really, but here's a list of cool things about here:
Some of the toilets have "small flush" and "large flush" options
Tax is included in prices, and no tips!
In a special type of train, you can flip the seat over so that instead of facing the front, you can face the back, making a perfect little seating arrangement for a group of four
On another train (possibly also special, but I'm not sure), the seats are heated