all over the place

1. im going home next month. yeah, i know i said january before, but i changed my mind. i want to be home for christmas. christmas is a couples holiday here in japan, and man oh man does that sound depressing. there are christmas parties, of course. and to the japanese, christmas just isnt christmas without a cake.

when i think of christmas, cake is the last thing that comes to mind. ive only eaten cake on christmas once, and that was 2 years ago when i spent winter break with pat in california (i booked my plane ticket without asking my mom first and she was PISSED). his mom wanted a german chocolate cake for christmas dinner, so she had pat and i go to safeway and place an order for one. she made it very clear that she wanted "happy birthday, jesus" written on the cake. pat tried to talk her out of it but she wouldnt budge. the look on pats face when he explained the whole thing to the clerk at safeway was priceless. he was so embarrassed. the clerk didnt care, though. she said people come in every year asking for "happy birthday, jesus" cakes.

anyway... my mom booked my plane ticket. ill be at the minneapolis-st. paul airport on december 22nd at 7:41 p.m. if youre planning on being at the airport, i have a connecting flight in chicago, so dont freak out when there arent any planes coming in from japan on the arrivals screen. ill post flight details next month.

2. i did the math, and if i want to get all caught up with my diary by december 22nd i have to write a weeks worth of entries a day. im trying to stay optimistic but thats so not going to happen.

3. if youre sorry about how the presidential elections turned out, you should check out this site. it wont get president cowboy out of office before 2008, but itll at least make you feel a teensy bit better about the next 4 years. its been said that this site has done more for international relations than the government (not that the bush administration tries very hard). heres what id contribute if i werent really, really lazy:

dear world: im so sorry. if it makes you feel any better, there was probably foul play involved. i mean, i know kerrys not squeaky clean either, but at least he does a better job of covering his tracks. or maybe bush won fair and square and it has to do with the correlation between education and how people voted. whatever the reason, im sorry. we tried. love, kate.

dear bush supporters who voted for bush due to the "threat" of terrorism: i think youre missing the point of terrorism. heres how it works: the terrorists do something big. attack the world trade center and the pentagon. then they disappear. everybodys scared. no one knows where the attack came from, or if another one is coming. they dont know what to do. there hasnt been an attack since then, which scares everyone even more. THATS terrorism. its the suspense. 3 years later its still doing its job. case in point: the day after the election kevin made a post in his livejournal. if you dont feel like reading it, the gist of the entry is that he feels scared, angry, and frustrated. someone left a comment that basically told him to shut up and get over it (kevin is directly affected by the gay marriage ban, by the way). she added, "...if Kerry was president, he would take out the troops, and the retards would bomb your backyard." maybe this would be relevant if kevin lived in new york or washington d.c., but he doesnt. he lives in minnesota. which, as everybody knows, is number one on the terrorists hit list.

i suppose i should thank you guys, though. youre the whole reason terrorism works so well in the first place. thanks to you the chances of terrorists attacking again are slim to none. thanks for being such tools. love, kate.

dear kerry supporters in the 18-24 age group who didnt show up at the polls: assholes. love, kate.

dear america (more specifically, the 49% who voted for kerry): dont move to canada, and dont give up. love, kate.

dear gays, lesbians, bis, and transgenders ("transgendered" is pc now): i am so, so sorry. as a heterosexual, i dont exactly know why my heart broke into a million little pieces when i read that 11 out of 11 states voted to ban gay marriage. maybe if id been born a little earlier i wouldve gotten involved with the civil rights movement. what i do know that it is fucked up that a nation whose constitution preamble says that all men are created equal and have a right to be happy is somehow getting away with passing laws that stop people from marrying who they love. but trust me, everything will be okay. love, kate.

dear homophobes: ill get you for this. love, kate.

this ended up being longer than i thought it would be. on with the show.

sunday, may 16, 2004

on sunday i went to see a noh drama with my host mother. i guess my host father and host sister werent interested in going. anyway, she got tickets from a friend, and of course i jumped at the opportunity to see traditional japanese theater.

theres no way i ever wouldve found the theater if my host mother hadnt been there. on the way in we were greeted by a cheery receptionist who bowed and gave us 2 neatly wrapped boxes of sushi (for later, not during the performance). i think there were various performances going on all day, because there was a constant flow of people in and out of the theater.

the theater was tiny. smaller than my high schools auditorium. smaller than my middle schools auditorium (the cafeteria), for that matter. but there was a good turn-out. i was the youngest person there hands down. senior citizens made up 95% of the audience.

heres some info on noh drama from encyclopedia.com:

"The Japanese No (or Noh) drama stands in stark contrast to both the Sanskrit and the Chinese. No plays are very short, virtually plotless, and tragic in mood. Performances of No plays are highly stylized, and they move at an extremely slow pace, often stretching a text of two or three hundred lines into an hour-long stage play. Such performances integrate singing, speech, instrumental music (three drums and a flute), dancing, and mime into a unity in which no single element dominates. Wooden masks are used by the principal character, women characters, and old people."

before the drama itself there was singing and dancing. as a westerner i know that the first thing that comes to mind when i say "singing and dancing" is broadway, but thats not what im talking about. not even close.

the dancing was absolutely gorgeous. a woman dressed up in a kimono and hakama performed a traditional fan dance.

fyi, hakama are usually part of a mans kimono, but during the meiji era (roughly 120 years ago) women wore hakama to school. when you wear a kimono, sitting in a chair (as opposed to on the floor japanese-style) is tiring, because you have to keep your knees together or else your kimono will fall open. thats the problem women in the meiji era ran into, so they wore hakama over their kimono so they could relax a little without embarrassing themselves. now women wear hakama to graduation. heres a picture of a cutesy womens hakama.

anyway, the fan dancer did a beautiful job. i hated the singing, though. i just couldnt get into it. i dont remember exactly what it was that rubbed me the wrong way. i think it was more like chanting than it was singing, there was no melody or pattern. it was like someone pounding on a keyboard for 40 minutes. and i know it was 40 minutes because i looked at my watch every 30 seconds. towards the end i was getting panicky. i was kind of afraid id flip out and lose it. i actually tried the cave exercise from fight club.

i didnt understand a word of the actual noh drama (neither did my host mother), so it was basically eye candy. it really was beautiful to look at. the actors hadnt just memorized lines, they had memorized precise movements. the costumes were elaborate and breathtaking. at one point there was actually a costume change on stage (behind a curtain, of course). it took like 30 minutes.

i sat in the first row solely for the purpose of taking pictures. unfortunately at the time i didnt have my moms SLR yet, so i used my point-and-click camera. none of the pictures i took turned out. they were all underexposed. i was so disappointed. youll just have to trust me on the costumes.

afterwards my host mother and i went out for lunch. i ordered a plate of sandwich wedges (a common item in japanese restaurants) and a scoop of ice cream for dessert.

on the subway there were like 30 kids in scout uniforms and 3 or 4 adults with them. one little japanese boy had a temper tantrum right there on the subway. one of the adults tried reasoning with him in a stern voice but he just wasnt having it. another adult came to the rescue and the kid kicked her in the leg. they didnt do anything about it, either. i thought they were being too soft on him.

for the most part the japanese are really hands-off when it comes to parenting. my own parents were 10 times more liberal than most of my friends parents, so thats saying a lot. tantrums are just a phase that kids go through, so they dont really take big steps to discipline. whenever i see some kid hit or kick their parents (its happened more than once) i get kind of angry. you shouldnt treat your parents like that. if id pulled that kind of shit with my mom she wouldve grounded me for a month (ive never been grounded) and not spoken to me for longer than that.

the japanese also let their children make big decisions regarding their future, like where they want to go to school. and im not just talking college, either. middle school, high school, cram school. i find that kind of interesting since american parents are the complete opposite.

anyway. i hate the subway.

monday, may 17, 2004

resa called monday morning and told me all about prom. i cant remember if it was her schools prom or mine, though (she went to both).

di wants me to go to prom with her next year. im still thinking about it. i know prom isnt all its hyped up to be, but it just seems like one of those things that you should do while youre still in high school.

i almost went to pats senior prom when i was a freshman. his mom offered to pay for the flight out there and everything. i was going to go for it, too. but in the end pat and i both agreed that if we actually went to prom all wed do is get dressed up, have our pictures taken, go to prom for maybe 10 minutes, and then leave. there was no way i was going to pay $200 for a dress that was going to get an hour of use and end up crumpled up in the back seat of pats car. so i didnt go.

anyway, that morning my host mother and i took the train to tarumi to pick up my alien registration card. its pretty nifty. i should take a picture of it sometime, even though its invalid now that im no longer living in tarumi. technically i should register for a new one now that im living with a different host family, but oh well.

my host mother and i ate a light breakfast at mister donut and then went to the train station, where we split up. my host mother headed back to maiko station, and i took the train in the opposite direction to umeda to meet ashley, susan, and hyemi.

there are two major train lines in japan - JR (japan railways) and hankyu. ashley and hyemi lived closer to the hankyu line and susan closer to JR. as for me, i couldve taken either one, but i decided to take JR. susan and i made plans to meet in front of the ikari (an upscale grocery store), and hyemi and ashley agreed to meet somewhere in hankyu station. susan and hyemi both had cellphones, so after both pairs met up we could call each other and figure out where to meet.

i found the ikari with no problem and so did susan, but it took us like 40 minutes for us to find hyemi and ashley. they didnt want to come to the JR station, so susan and i went to hankyu to look for them (it was only about a five-minute walk). once we got there susan told hyemi to meet us in front of docomo (a cellphone store), but they never came. susan called hyemi back and hyemi was like, "where are you guys? were waiting for you in front of the docomo!" susan and i tried asking around to see if we could find where the other docomo was, but everyone we asked gave us directions to the docomo wed just been at. so we gave up and told hyemi and ashley to meet us at a bank instead. susan had to withdraw money anyway. but the exact same thing happened and there ended up being 2 banks. what made the whole thing even more frustrating is that hyemi kept hanging up on susan before shed finished talking (the japanese, and i guess koreans too, dont say "goodbye" before they hang up, they just... hang up). FINALLY we found each other. by that time it was like 2 p.m. so we all went out to eat.

then we hit hep5. hep5 is probably the biggest mall in osaka because of the ferris wheel on the roof. and the mall is 7 floors, i think, so once youre at the top of the ferris wheel you get a great view of osaka. every time i go to hep5 with friends we end up riding the ferris wheel. heres a picture if youre interested.

anyway, we went clothes shopping and i bought a cute outfit for $120. the store clerk rang me up and i heard ashley suck in air and make a little peeping noise when she saw the total. in the 6 months she was here i dont think she ever got over the prices here in japan. i admit it still hurts a little handing over $120 for 2 items of clothing, but thats just the way it is.

when i get back to america im going to go shopping at target. even if i dont end up buying anything, seeing t-shirts marked half off when they were only $10 in the first place will make me feel good.

after we were done looking at clothes the 4 of us rode the ferris wheel. i always take pictures from the top even though it looks the same every time. i got pictures of the girls, too.

there were 4 japanese girls in the next car who were waving and freaking out over us. susan came pretty close to flipping them off. i cant picture susan, a cute, stylish indonesian 14-year-old, giving someone the finger.

theres an arcade called joyopolis that i always get lost in right by the ferris wheels exit, so after we got off we got our pictures taken there. i was almost out of the shot in one picture. i was so bitter about that.

then we got ice cream - huge parfaits with banana slices, mini cookies, wafer sandwiches, whipped cream, strawberries, and hot fudge. while we ate susan showed off her ear cuff that she bought at the disney store. surprisingly, you couldnt really tell it was from the disney store unless you looked really closely at the tiny tinkerbell charm. it was really cute and i totally wanted one. later when hyemi, susan, and ashley were looking at jewelry and hair accessories, i snuck off to the disney store to go buy a ear cuff for myself. the disney store was, as always, PACKED, so i fought my way through the crowd, grabbed an ear cuff off the rack, and paid up. it wasnt until i got home that i realized id actually gotten a necklace. i was going to send it to jackie, but then i actually got a good look at it and decided i wanted to keep it.

by then it was pretty late, so we called it a night and went home. susan and i got on the same train. it took some convincing to get her to take the same train as me because she didnt think itd stop at sumiyoshi station. it did, though, and we talked until she got off at her stop.

at home i told my host mother all about umeda and showed off my new clothes. online, pat had to leave early for whatever reason and ASKED ME TO EMAIL HIM. holy shit. that made my day. i also talked to kazuaki (keikos, the girl that hosted me for a week and a half two years ago, 20-year-old brother), and for the first time we had a normal conversation in japanese without me reaching for my electronic dictionary every five seconds.

all in all, a good day.