Language (No Pictures, I Know, but One of My More Reflective Posts)

There’s a huge difference between learning a new language and relearning a language you’re already supposed to know. With Japanese, I’m amazed at how far I’ve come, but with Korean, I only think of how far I have to go. The little Korean that I do know I mostly taught myself in middle school, after years of being sick and tired of hearing the accusations of my parents for forgetting such an integral part of my identity. Taking the textbook method, I did manage to learn how to read and write and get through some basic grammar, but speaking, the most noticeable element of a language, still remains my weakest point. I always wanted to burn all my Korean books at the end of it all because I knew it would never again be natural for me to speak Korean without thinking of each word beforehand and breaking down each sentence into their grammatical components (and for everyone who knows how convoluted Japanese grammar is, I actually think it’s pretty logical when compared to Korean grammar).

High school was pretty busy and I was tired of studying a language that seemed impossible to master, so my Korean studies stopped (unfortunately resulting in a loss of vocab as well). The summer before Yale though, I think my Korean might have peaked. Learning from my past mistakes when I only relied on the textbook, I instead watched a ton of Korean dramas and in lieu of studying individual words, I wrote down entire PHRASES that I thought would be useful. I think this is especially helpful when you’re a heritage learner, since you probably hear them in the home every now and then and can catch onto the context quickly. Since then, however, my commitment to Korean has slid with the craziness of Yale, and I tell myself I should probably take 이선생님’s class sometime soon since I don’t seem to have the discipline to study on my own. Other times, I cringe when I think about structured learning from a textbook again.

I also sometimes question if I really need Korean to be content with who I am. Obviously, learning the language will not make me any more Korean than my American friends who learn it, enjoy it, but will never be Korean themselves. Even some of my Korean-American friends, who are fairly fluent in Korean, come back after a trip to Korea and admit that they could never truly think like members of Korean society. From my parents’ lectures as a child, I used to think that mastering Korean would be the key to integrating myself into the Korean community, but I don’t quite think it works that way anymore.

Maybe this is part of the reason why I chose to take Japanese instead of Korean my freshman year. Usually, I justify my decision by reassuring myself that it was a good time to start a new language, that I had always wanted to learn Japanese, etc. etc., but maybe in the end, I was tired of feeling the need to learn Korean in order to be accepted by other Koreans. People sometimes raise their eyebrows and ask, “Oh, you’re taking Japanese? Why not Korean? Or even Chinese?” I don’t regret my decision at all, however; I sometimes tell people, “I don’t drink coffee, but who needs coffee when you have Japanese class every morning?” I haven’t settled on a major yet, but I think Japanese will remain a significant part of my experience at Yale, whether I major in something like East Asian Studies or not.

Nevertheless, definitely someday, I plan to learn Korean, but not so much as to complete my identity; rather, to be able to talk with my grandparents and expand the group of people I can communicate with. And I would love to visit Korea sometime in the near future. I talked with Panvoka-san on the bus to the Asahi elementary school visit today, and she told me that being in a foreign country makes you realize how much you’re missing out on your own. Not necessarily that I can call Korea my “own”, but I can’t help but think about the differences between Japanese and Korean culture whenever I observe something new here. So hey, Korea, I guess I’ve moved on from the days when I wanted to completely reject you as a frustrated middle schooler. Yet in the end, I still don’t know how much of my identity I'm willing to give to you. 

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Week 2 Update

(Bland title, I know, but I can't seem to think of anything else that ties together my disorganized thoughts. And I promised a post on religion before, but it is still to come!)

 The view from Hakodate-yama after a climb! And the aforementioned "砂時計/hourglass shape".

I think I’m hitting somewhat of a low in class right now because I’m struggling with the things that I had always thought were my strengths. I’ve already forgotten the new grammar patterns by the next class whereas at Yale, I was able to internalize them through the countless translations we did each night (tedious, but now I admit, effective). Instead, we practice them through workbook exercises, which of course, limit the patterns you do. And since Asaoka-sensei takes off points for mistakes, I always hesitate to experiment with the more complicated grammar patterns. Also, the format of Asaoka-sensei’s tests is a little too open for what I’m used to; there’s always a fill-in-blank section as well as a short answer section where you’re supposed to use some new grammar point, but the problem is, you don’t know WHICH one he wants. (Try figuring out what to put in ________________________________________か？) I know I can’t expect the same teaching style, but it’s still frustrating nevertheless. Not to mention the kanji that kills me every time …

 Okaa-san's friends ask me, "Have you learned pottery yet?" Sadly, the most progress I've made is taking this photo.

But, as I’ve said before, I’m learning a lot outside of class. Not just extra speaking practice, but the more subtle things. Yesterday night, Okaa-saan invited some of her friends visiting from America for dinner, and I met one of their husbands who was the study abroad director at Wheaton College. Fluent in Japanese, Spanish, and a little bit of Swahili, he was quick to point out some mistakes I made in Japanese. “You should work at a coffeeshop,” he insisted. “The Japanese in the textbook is not what actual Japanese people speak.” Knowing vocabulary was more important than knowing complicated grammar because “normal people don’t talk that way.” Also, he assured me that learning how to write kanji was overhyped; just being able to recognize the most common ones would be enough to get by, since computers convert hiragana into kanji anyway (extremely pleasant news to hear). I also think my host family (especially Okaa-san) speaks a LOT slower than the average Japanese person – ah, my listening skills have a long way to go.

Kyudo Club at Iai Girls HS. Pretty intimidating, yeah?

Yesterday was also when realized I don’t really blend in as well as I thought. On my way home, I always get bombarded with soft serve ice cream coupons, to which I always nod my head and say, “Hai” before stuffing the ten-millionth coupon in my backpack. But today, after the usual “Hai”, one of the coupon ladies asked me, "日本語が分かりますか？" (Do you understand Japanese?). It was probably my shorts and flip-flops or the way I walked, but I realize that even if I have Asian looks and eventually get really good at the language, many other things still separate me from being marked as a Japanese person. This brings me back to the conformity question though – when learning a foreign language, is the ultimate goal to conform to another culture? Speaking in “indirect” Japanese when you avoid accepting something the first time, practicing the standard lines when giving gifts, even learning the meticulous way of exchanging 名刺 (name cards) – isn’t it all for the greater purpose of adapting to Japanese society?  And when does adaptation turn into conformity?

 Starting the kimono class

The obis were a little tight...

Finally, after a million knots, the yukata is complete! And this is the easiest kimono to put on... 

I’ll end with a link to the song that our class is supposed to sing on the Onuma trip today. I really like it, but it’s in that awkward key that no one’s good at singing, so I’m not sure how things will turn out tonight…

風をあつめて：http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUQSJvzCAsc&feature=related

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A Game of Highs and Lows ...

[Written on June 18]

For this post, I’ll hit the lows, then the highs, because I always like to end on a good note. (Again, the pictures were arranged in no particular order – I just like to scatter my photos because I think people are more likely to read what I wrote if there’s one nearby ;) )

Some shots of my room - the desk, chairs, bed, bureau, mirror, and everything else you can think of -- all handmade by Otou-san! It's also slightly bigger than my room at home, so score!

First, even though I’m STARVING everyday, I’m still gaining weight. My metabolism has slowed dramatically since all my meals are spread out between six plus hours, making me so ravenous by the time dinner comes around (the largest meal of the day) that I scarf down all my rice. (And a giant bowl of starchy white rice is not the most filling food in the world.) Even when I try to not eat so much, Okaa-san urges me to scrape off every grain of rice stuck to my bowl. (And as for an Asian-American who’s pretty much white on the inside, I SUCK at eating rice with chopsticks. Actually, I don’t think most Korean-Americans usually eat rice with chopsticks in the first place.) As much as I love Japanese cuisine, I really miss regular snacks like fruit throughout the day since I usually eat five or six smaller meals a day in America. I could buy snacks at the コンビニs nearby, but the $5 a day for lunch that the Light fellowship budgets for us doesn’t really go that far in Japan, even in a smaller city like Hakodate. At the cheapest supermarket, you can get a bento for around 300 yen, but drinks and snacks add on quite a few yen. (A single apple costs 128 yen!) Also, the few muscles that I built at Payne Whitney last year are slowly atrophying into blobs of fat because I’m not lifting weights regularly anymore. (I need to look up some good at-home strengthening exercises later). *Sigh* Nevertheless, Japan’s reputation for being a healthy country is certainly not false; in fried-chicken-loving Kentucky, I probably pass by two overweight people for every three people, but in Japan, maybe two out of … a hundred? (Very rarely, I mean.)

All the Japanese cars are so tiny!! This is the standard size of a VAN.

Second low: For only an eight-minute walk to HIF, I don’t get to sleep in that much more – actually, I get to wake up bright and early at 5:15 a.m. everyday because my host family eats breakfast at six. (I could sleep in until six, but I prefer running right before meals.) All the high schools in Hakodate start pretty early, so having a host sister, as much as I adore Riko for her Japanese schoolgirl “かわいい！”s and “すごい！”s, poses a bit of a challenge. I even have to get up at six tomorrow (Saturday) because Riko’s school still meets on every other Saturday. As such, I’ve not been getting much shuteye lately, but it’s about as much as I get at Yale, so I guess it’s nothing new to me. Plus it gets me up in the morning to review (*cough cough* learn) yesterday’s homework and kanji.

Ugh, the mention of kanji makes me scrunch my nose in pain. I used to think speaking was the hardest part of Japanese, but after spending almost a week with my host family, it’s not as bad as I thought. Kanji, however, is a different beast; I tried to memorize almost 40 kanji in one night for a test on ones we had supposedly learned before, only to find that my hand was still sore the next morning and that I would do horribly on the test anyway. I remember shopping both Chinese and Japanese last fall (which, by the way, I do NOT recommend), and thinking to myself, “Well, I really don’t feel like memorizing characters all day, so Japanese for me.” Ha, how naïve I had been. Traveling around in Japan, you realize how essential a solid knowledge of kanji is in everyday life. You can’t figure out where you with either the signs or a map, much less order a recognizable dish at a restaurant. Though according to Asoka-sensei (my sensei at HIF), you only need to memorize around 1000 kanji to be able to read 90% of the kanji that’s actually used. Yeah, ONLY 1000.

Photos of the Jomon archaeology site that HIF organized a trip to. One of the first groups of people in Japan, they lived in pits dug in the ground and eventually added roofs too. Not sure if it was worth the one-hour bus ride, but I got to practice Japanese with Hakodate University students on the way!

But since the massive kanji test, class is settling into more of a reasonable pace (now I only have to memorize 20 kanji a night...). I placed into Intermediate IB by some miracle; perhaps the oral interviewer was a fan of 꽃보다 남자 too :) ? I don’t know if HIF is as intense as PII (Princeton in Ishikawa), but in the end, I chose HIF over PII after getting accepted to both because, as cliché as it sounds, I realized that a lot of the learning would take place outside the classroom. After putting academics aside, I wanted to see a different side of Japan beside the hustle and bustle of Tokyo or even the cities that aren't as big. And when would I ever get to travel to Hokkaido, even if I visited Japan again in the future? I also talked to previous HIF students from Yale who said that I would be fine if I placed into L5 next fall (although I can only wait and see). Oh and yeah, the awesome running weather is also a plus. After enduring hot and humid Kentucky summers for eleven years, I deserve a break, eh?

Goryokaku at night. To me, Hakodate's not as small as everyone makes it out to be, although I guess I do come from a pretty podunk town in Kentucky.

But finally it’s the weekend! And since it was Pankova-san’s birthday, we went for karaoke and dinner in Goryokaku, a busier part of Hakodate that’s more inland. This was actually my first time in an actual karaoke place since there’s definitely not one near Radcliff, Kentucky, the town with a four-screen movie theater. とてもおもしろかったです！Although riding back home on the tram ride alone was a huge contrast to the one to Goryogaku – without the huge flock of HIF students, I realized just how much I could blend in as a Japanese person. On the same tram, there were two American tourists who were chatting pretty loudly (at least for a Japanese tram), which made a lot of heads toward their way (including me). “We’re so American,” they had chuckled to themselves. I remember thinking to myself, maybe I’m a little grateful for being able to blend in? But then, am I also starting to adopt a Japanese way of thinking, to strive to conformity and become lost in the sea of black heads and white-collared work uniforms? Of course, it could just be a universal tendency, but I think especially in Japan, conformity is widely accepted, whereas in America, individualism is at least a goal. Just a thought …

I'll end with some advice for future Light fellows -- most people have a problem with overpacking, but I seem to always regret UNDERPACKING. (Though I did pass the luggage allowance with flying colors.) Some things you should bring if you're studying at Hakodate for the summer:

1. School supplies - You're going to class, so it would make sense to bring pencils, erasers, paper, etc. I, unfortunately, have no common sense and spent over 600 yen on four pencils, a pencil sharpener, a pack of 70 Japanese-size (always mini-size) loose leaf paper, and the tiniest eraser I had ever seen.  

2. Some light jackets/sweaters - It's usually in the 60s and 70s during the day in Hakodate right now but at night, it gets a little chilly. For the time being, I'm reusing my SF49ers jacket that I fortunately decided to pack at the last minute (thank goodness Okaa-san also does laundry everyday).

3. A three to two-prong converter if you have a laptop plug that's three prongs - My struggles with this already described in a previous post. (Oh, and I did manage to find out that Yamada Denki sold them, but it took another round of mutually confused looks with the store attendants...)

4. A denshi-jisho (electronic Japanese-English dictionary) - SO CONVENIENT. (Or it would be, if I had bought one before I flew to Japan.) I have a paperback one as well as the ever helpful online Denshi Jisho, but when it comes to class time, I'm lost whenever Asaoka-sensei uses a word I haven't learned yet (which is something like every five seconds). It would be cool if I could find a good Japanese-Korean-English one so I could practice Korean too...

So I still have yet to talk about my search for a church here and religion in Japan, but expect a post about that soon. 

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Why Online Translators Don't Work

I was emailing my grandpa in Korean this morning and put it through Yahoo Babelfish to see what it would come up with.


The original email:


할아버지,

안녕하세요. 일본에 잘도착했어요. 좋은 날씨가 있었어, 하꼬다태도시를 좋아요. 

할아버지가 잘지내요?

홍선

Yahoo's translation:

Grandfather, 
Goodbye is. To arrive to Japan well. There is a good weather, under is good the attitude city which twists. The grandfather puts out is not small? 
Red line

Of course, it could be that my mistakes in Korean are the cause of this nonsensical translation... corrections, anyone?

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The Atypical Homestay Family (and Some Long-Awaited Photos)

[Written on June 12]

(The pictures are from the last few days and were arranged in no particular logic.)

View of Shinagawa Eki from my hotel window ...

... and Hakodate.

I am simply floored by my homestay family; they are super nice, but they couldn’t have been any more different than the traditional Japanese family I was expecting. First of all, Otou-san is a potter while both he and Okaa-san run a variety store where they sell Otou-san’s work in addition to things like postcards, soaps, bowls, etc. As a result, their house is brimming with ART – everywhere you go, sculptures and pottery displayed on the shelves, the wooden floors and walls painted in bright turquoise, yellow, green, and pink – even the toilet roll is perched on an attractive holder shaped like a tree branch. Otou-san has his pottery workshop downstairs (next to my room) as well as a separate woodshop that used to be a garage. Yet the house still manages to have a really cozy feel to it.

Hakodate is definitely かわいい!

Otou-san is also really different from the stereotypical “salaryman”. Some of the other HIF students had read on their homestay sheets that the father worked late or only came home on the weekends, but it was Otou-san and Riko-san who picked me up from the opening ceremony and drove us up Hakodateyama to eat a scenic lunch at the top. Since he and Okaa-san split shifts at the shop, he has dinner ready for the entire family whenever it’s Okaa-san’s turn to work. He also took me along on his daily trip to the supermarket (daily because they only buy food for the next few meals), and tried to explain the various foods there, although he kept reverting to English because my Japanese was so poor. (I guess I’ll need to start using more advanced patterns than “~ がありますか？”before he feels comfortable speaking only in Japanese to me.) With his soft voice, small build, and the fact that he was probably the only male in the supermarket (although I admit it was a bit small), I guess Otou-san isn’t your average Japanese man. (He learned English, by the way, from studying pottery for a year in New Zealand when he was twenty-three.)

A little taste of home?

I met Okaa-san shortly before dinner – once again, extremely nice and always smiling. Dinner was a lot of laughing at the pronunciation of Japanese borrowed words written in katakana. (I got a lot of confused stares from describing my dad’s church as “Protestant” before they burst out laughing when they realized I meant “プロテスタント”.) Then we sat down to watch the Korea vs. Greece game in the World Cup, and I presented my omiyage with the appropriate JSL line: “つまらないものですくが…” and likewise, they all oohed and aahed appropriately at each gift: a Kentucky Derby mug, a jar of Kentucky-made chocolate fudge, and a box of Cracker Jack since I had heard that popcorn was scarce in Japan. (Otou-san and Riko-san had some fun seeing who could read the cheesy slogans on the Cracker Jack box with the best English pronunciation.)

Hakodateyama, often shrouded in mist

I also tried out the Japanese-style bath that night. (Another discrepancy from the traditional Japanese family – I asked Otou-san if he always went first, but he shook his head no and said it was whoever had the time to take a bath at that moment.) For those who aren’t familiar with a Japanese bath, you wash your body and hair while sitting on a stool in a separate area first and rinse everything off before you relax in a tub filled with hot water. You don't drain the bath water when you're done, however, because everyone else in the family uses the same water (probably the reason why the head of the family usually goes first). I had also gotten a lot of warnings from other students that the bath water would be hot, but actually, it wasn’t too bad – as hot as a Jacuzzi I guess, which felt pretty awesome to me. To be honest, I think I prefer the Japanese style – relaxing in a hot tub at night versus jumping into a quick shower in the morning. (It also helps that I take night showers anyway.)

In the end, I’m getting over a lot of the jitters I had about my host family. I’m still being super polite and using the neutral forms for even Riko-san but maybe by the end of HIF, I’ll learn to be a little less uptight.

Word of the day: すなどけい. I tried pointing out the shape of Hakodate to Otou-san and Riko-san from Hakodateyama, but they had never heard the word “hourglass”. The Japanese word literally translates into “sand watch”, so I guess it was a little confusing. Though apparently, I was the first person to say that it looked like an hourglass, and they found it really amusing when Okaa-san tried to figure out how to say it in English.　

"The Very Very ... Beast?" (Is that what they call Japanese English?)

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A Day of Failures ... and Relief

Written on June 11 at 10:00 PM (日本の時間)

Okay. I admit it. I am in another country. Aside from the obvious things (driving on the left side of the road) to the more exotic (polka-dotted cranes, anyone?), I guess I’m not in Kansas anymore. A list of first observations (because everything is so much simpler in lists):

·      For all the talk about the women always dressing up, what about the men? In Tokyo, I think I saw maybe two guys total wearing jeans, while the rest were in staunch suit and tie.

·      … although I still felt really awkward in running shorts when I went out for a run the first morning in Tokyo. I passed by a lot of middle-aged to elderly women exercising, but they were all conservatively wearing exercise pants or capris.

·      Cuteness factor: Max everywhere I go. I thought it was just a stereotype that everything in Japan was かわいい because of all the imported media that comes to America, but it’s actually pretty true that Japanese stores make a special effort to present themselves as cute.

·      “The Land of the Rising Sun” is certainly an appropriate name for 日本. I fell asleep pretty early because I couldn’t sleep on the plane, but woke up to the sun shining through the hotel windows at 5 a.m. Vice versa, it sets a lot earlier too.

·      I NEED TO LEARN KANJI. ‘Nuff said.

Today was kind of a fail though. I bombed my oral test after trying to explain the plot of 꽃보다 남자 (“There’s this girl who doesn’t have a lot of money … she goes to a school with … people who do have a lot of money … um … it’s a love story.”) and skipped the entire last passage in the reading section because every other word was kanji I didn’t know. I was talking with some other first-year students about the last passage and they were like, “Yeah … I had to resort to my Chinese for that one.” Oh, Dad, why didn’t you teach me 한자 when I was little? Ah well, if I place in the lowest level, I guess that’s what’s expected of someone who’s only taken one year of Japanese.

Another fail – I thought I would be able to find a three-prong to two-prong converter in Hakodate after leaving Tokyo yesterday. (For future fellows, Japan operates on almost the same frequency as America, so you don’t need an adapter, but you do need the aforementioned converter if you have a three-pronged plug appliance like your laptop charger.) After a yummy dinner at a ramen shop (I will never look at Maruchan Ramen the same again), I went searching for a converter with Sam, another student in HIF who didn’t have a converter either. We walked through downtown Hakodate, looking unsuccessfully for an electronics store and trying to describe a コンバータ to the local shopkeepers in mangled Japanese. Finally, with the recommendation of my trusted Light Fellowship SAC guide, we took a taxi to Yamada Denki, a huge electronics store in Hakodate that had everything BUT a converter. End of story – 3,000 yen blown and no converter for my laptop. Thankfully, Ning is letting me borrow her charger for the time being so I’m able to type up this entry.

Sheesh, Hakodate is a smaller city, but being a tourist spot, I didn’t think it would be this much of a hassle to find a converter. Nevertheless, this was the first time that I ventured out to speak with the locals and didn’t find it as awkward as I thought it would be. I’m not sure how much Japanese they understood from me (the taxi driver kept referring me to as Sam’s おくさん even after repeated explanations that we were 学生), but I feel a little better about communicating with my host family, whom I’ll meet tomorrow at the opening ceremony, and interviewing people for HIF’s infamous independent study project.

Heading out now to watching the opening of the World Cup. Updates on host family and horrendous placement test results to come.

EDIT: Did I leave my camera charger and USB cord at home too? Arghh, I might have to buy a camera here too… In the meantime, pictures will have to wait.

EDIT of the EDIT: Thank goodness I dug up the camera charger in my luggage the next morning. Score for Plan "Don't Go Broke in Japan". Pictures to come soon.

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It still hasn't hit me yet...

Strange, but I still feel like tomorrow is just another day - as if I'm going to wake up, go for a run, and chill at home like I've been doing for the past three weeks. Usually I can't even sleep the night before because (wow, this is going to sound geeky) I get so pumped about traveling - skipping the "moving walkway" to see if I can beat the people who take it, sitting in the coveted window seat, even cruising through the security gate and then trying to see how fast I can put back on my shoes. So why, after four months of knowing that I won the Light Fellowship, can I not even imagine myself in Japan tomorrow?

Maybe it won't hit me until I step out of Narita airport and feel the bustle of Tokyo whirling past me. Or maybe I'm denying the reality that I should have studied more for the placement test ("Test? What test?"). Or just maybe ... I'm nervous?

But you're going to Japan! Aren't you excited? I wouldn't say that I'm NOT excited, but guess I am ... a little ... whatever that word is ... nervous. Nervous that I won't be able to navigate a country in which hardly anyone speaks English. Nervous that I won't click with my host family and that I'll end up shutting myself in my room with mounds of homework each night. Nervous about a lot of things ... but in the end, I think I'll be all right. Though my worried subconsciousness isn't letting me face the fact that I'll be in Japan a mere 28 hours from now.

Thus ends my ambivalent self-reflection, although the original plan for this post was to talk about my host family, which HIF (Hokkaido International Foundation, the program I will be attending) emailed me about a couple days ago. Pardon the rough transition, but as it is, I'll be living with the Domae family, a couple in their 50s and their 16-year-old daughter, Riko. (They also have a 19-year-old daughter, but apparently, she's away from home?) According to Google Maps, the family lives just eight minutes away form the HIF building by foot, so I definitely lucked out in terms of daily commute. Though it took me way too long to figure out the kanji about their jobs/schools/interests since I couldn't copy the characters from a pdf file:

Looking up Kanji - THE HARD WAY
1. Zoom into the pdf until you can make out those TINY characters. (For me, this meant 400% - and even then, I had to squint because the high zoom also made things fairly blurry.)
2. Go to http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/mouse.html  and attempt to draw the character with a mouse. Anyone who's done Paint knows how problematic this can be.
3. See if your character matches up with any of the dictionary's suggestions. If you find one, move onto #4. If not, FAIL. The kanji you're looking up is probably a variation from the Chinese character, so the dictionary doesn't recognize it.
4. Copy and paste the character onto Denshi Jisho and look up the definition. If your word has one kanji, you're done. If more than one, repeat steps 1-4 for each character. (The dictionary will most likely have definitions for each character. Putting them together ... not so much.)

Looking up Kanji - THE EASY IER WAY
1. Go to http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1R and check off the radicals that are found in the kanji. (Once again, zoom in if the tiny characters are straining your eyes.)

* * *

On a side note, I finally got a haircut today. Not as short as everyone at Yale seems to want me to go for, but after completely forgetting to get one during spring break, this is an improvement.
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