This place is haunted.

I have been remiss in posting for the last week. I am back in the States, at my parents' house, with a cold and without any particular responsibilities.
The flight back from Japan was in coach and difficult. I did not have the vast array of sleeping pills with me that I had taken on the flight out, so I was awake for most of the 9+ hours, reading Ibuse's Black Rain. After all, the one thing you want to be doing while you're 3000 feet above the Pacific ocean and trying to fall asleep is read about the aftermath of the nuclear holocaust in Hiroshima. I am a smart woman.
Once I arrived at LAX, I had to go through agricultural customs and throw away two grapefruit I hadn't wanted to throw out in Japan (fruit, after all, is expensive). Amanda picked me up, and from there, I spent most of the next two and a half days asleep on a bed I had made out of the cushions of her love-seat. When I was awake, I walked around her neighborhood looking for food, and had the odd experience of being honked at by men in cars. I felt like an observer, taking data as to what "Los Angeles" was like. Apparently in Los Angeles, men will try to hit on me, and the 7-11 will have a gigantic "Coffee Station" with at least 8 different types of coffee available for purchase. That last part really puts the US convenience stores back in the running against the Japanese stores.
In LA, I also saw my advisor, and tried to make him laugh at my stories as I always do. He offered me a bit of extra funding, which I took despite feeling guilty about it. I fled two large debts in Japan, after all, that I'd like to settle before I have to return to the country. If everything works out, I might be out of debt for the first time in years, come September. We shall see.
On the way to my parents' house, I read A Moveable Feast for the first time, and fell back into love with Hemingway, despite the cliche-ness of it. Next came Didion's Play it as it Lays, which is biting and sad and uncomfortable. Both novels made me dislike the verbosity of my writing (and speaking); their words are sharp, and both leave out anything in their stories that is not absolutely essential. I like that; it leaves the stories feeling clean and presses the mind to create the details of each scene on its own.
Anyway, now I'm at "home", spending my time eating, sleeping, and ransacking my stepdad's music collection. I now have a lot of George Harrison and John Lennon solo works added to my music collection, and Beatles rarities, and an anthology of the Yardbirds, just to name some. I finally have a reliable internet connection here, and have been dling a lot of random things as well (to offset the Beatles' slant). Stocking up, I suppose, for the future. Pity my poor computer's hard drive. There are also a lot of cats here, who like to poke around while I'm typing and use the corners of my laptop to scratch their cheeks. Cute, until your laptop is coated in cat fur and your eyes start to itch. My years away from home have made me weak where pet dander is concerned.
I still have over a week of family time, but I've started already to become anxious about returning to Ann Arbor. Won't it be so sad, after all, to see all these places I remember so well, without so many of the people I associate with them? I feel like the nostalgia is going to beat me with a hammer. When I think of the town, I think of drinking outside on someone's steps and feeling lonely. On my own front porch last summer on the phone with George, or on Sara's with B drinking some fruity mess, feeling scared and strange in the back of my mind even in company. Or at the bar, sitting in a mess of peanut shells, laughing and happy but afraid to go home and be alone again.
At this rate, my sentimentalism will be the death of me.

In-betweentimes.

Summer school is over. I passed, it seems, as I was awarded a certificate to that end at the Center's end-of-the-program party. I also have a finished final exam, sporting a higher grade than I have ever received on a test related to the Japanese language, to serve as supporting evidence. At the same time, I wouldn't be very surprised if tomorrow morning found me rushing at 9:25 to the train station yet again, since I don't feel as if I have any purpose being here without classes.

On the last day of school, and half the students' last full day in Japan, I somehow ended up spending around 9 hours "partying" with my classmates. For the first 4 of those hours or so, I mostly felt out of place (and, at times, oily and/or sweaty) but, after the second half, thanks to drinking, I began to have a good time. This still somehow resulted in me and my one-friend-in-Japan whispering to each other, in the middle of one party, that we felt completely out of place, and then using centrifugal force to swirl around on the barstools to show that we could make our own fun without social interaction. And really, it makes me quite sad, when I've seen some of the ridiculously intense friendships that have sprung up between some of the students in the program over just a month and a half, and compare that to my own general hermitly habits. I suppose this is a good experience to keep in mind when the fall program starts -- bond quick, and bond early.

In a way this same experience is mirrored when I find myself bored and wasting time on Facebook. Scanning through other people's enthusiastic wall posts and suchlike often makes me feel envious of people who make more, and stronger, friendly bonds with the people around then than I do. Yet that feeling is rarely accompanied by some big desire to make a renewed effort to become close with whoever's profile it is I'm looking at. . . . This sort of thing makes me really wonder just what magical set of kin-like relationships it is I'm envious of in other people, and hoping to find in the future.

I should point out, though, that once I did hit some critical stage in my being-around-people + drinking, I did have a good time. I actually sang karaoke (and paid for the privilege), taught someone how to make fried rice, did an assortment of stupid dances while sitting, and got to do a great evening-ender sing along to "Hey Jude" with ten other students (all of whom whose names I actually know). At the end of the night, I ended up letting a drunk fellow student who had missed his last train sleep on the floor of my room (+futon and blanket), which I suppose nominates me for sainthood. He made up for the fact that I couldn't much sleep through his snoring and a fear he might die of alcohol poisoning in his sleep by saying a lot of nice things about how he couldn't believe we hadn't become friends earlier in the program. So, at least +alcohol, there must be a little charm left in me somewhere.

I suppose I will have a lot of time to mediate on my random desires and failings over the next three weeks, though, as I will be spending a hell of a lot of time airborne. And at home, which nearly guarantees that I will have to spend hours after everyone else has gone to sleep scanning through late-night television and feeling out of place. Even if the trip home goes well, which I am not expecting of this one, the feelings of boredom and lost freedom while I stay there are enough to kill me dead (at least mentally). This results in a lot of insomnia, or at least a lot of falling asleep at 4am to a terrible infomercial, and generally doesn't do much to make life seem more worth living.

Oh, and, since it wouldn't be my life if this weren't true, I also somehow once again owe a lot of people money that I may very well not be able to deliver on. At least this time it's UCLA's fault instead of mine.

Now I should probably be about the business of putting everything that isn't coming back to the States with me in a series of boxes, I suppose?

Coffee at 10pm.

Today, for the first time in probably more than a week, I didn't fall asleep within half an hour of getting home from school. I didn't do anything productive with the time, of course, but maybe I have a fighting chance of beating the nap curse for the last week and a half of the summer course. It's gotten to where Akizawa-先生 asks me how I've slept nearly every day (especially since "nearly every day" is when I am late for his class). Embarrassing.

Instead of sleeping, I read the entirety of Ryu Murakami's Coin Locker Babies. Does the idea of a book that combines fashion from the Eighties, real Tokyo, dystopian Tokyo, secret government drug testing, and children abandoned a day after their birth in rental lockers at a train station appeal to you? Then I guess I know what you'll be reading shortly. Bonus: the babies in question are abandoned in Yokohama station. I go there every day!

This book was okay if you accept a few things:

• The author has a terrible idea of what clothes go on a person. His fashion-model heroine lady is seen more than once wearing a lame top -- where did you learn that word, Ryu Murakami? I don't think it can mean what you think it means.
• The novel contains what I have decided must be the modern Japanese novel's de rigeur sex scene, in which a male protagonist suddenly is overwhelmed with the need to have the secks with some lady he barely knows, struggles with her mightily so you feel gross and awful because you have been tricked into reading about a rape, and then comes immediately after "penetration". Afterwards, the lady is always cool with this. Bonus points if the male character in question is less than 16 years old.
  
• The gay character is at one point a hustler. Also, after he is "outed", his character becomes an annoying douche. I really want to read more novels with gay protagonists who are totally kickass.

Besides these caveats, the book is pretty good, and I recommend it if you like the weird piled on with a shovel and have a lot of hours where you should be sleeping, but can't (or shouldn't be sleeping, but desperately want to). Also, a movie is going to be made of it, so read it now and be able to make annoying "the book was better" comments later.*

I also found an apartment. Which I was going to focus this entry on, but it will have to wait, because I have to write a speech (about what, I still have not decided) and I somehow wasted almost two hours of my life searching the internet to find the name of the temple that's five minutes from my new digs. It might, might be Kandaiji (神大寺). Then again...maybe not. You would think with all the people who <3 Japan, it would be a lot easier to get this kind of information.

*This movie will reportedly feature both Tadanobu Asano and Sean Lennon in the lead roles, which basically means that for me, even if it is the worst movie ever, it is still the best movie ever.

"Good news, everyone!"

Man, I have been watching a fucking lot of Futurama lately. S., thank you for that magical link to all the American television. Current runner-up in my media absorption is The Office, which is still sort of hard for me to get into, as every five minutes or so the next thing about to happen on the show seems so embarassing that I have to pause the episode and decide whether to continue onward.
Example, for my dear Office-loving friend: in the Michael's birthday episode, when Kevin is waiting back to hear whether he has skin cancer and you see Michael in his office taping a strip of yellow paper around his wrist. I was so sure that Michael was making a fake hospital intake bracelet that I stopped watching the show for a day before I finished the episode off. (I was wrong.)

Today I got my first haircut in Japan, and re-realized for the millionth time that if I feel at all nervous, my Japanese immediately goes to shit. Luckily, the vague ability to say "motto mijikai" (more short) stuck with me, and the hair stylist seemed to be a good sport about things. He would occasionally tell me that he spoke English; I am nearly 100% sure that he actually did not.
The hairstylist also thinned the crap out of my hair, so I feel a little like I'm going bald, but overall it is a happy improvement. I will take a picture, one day when I have my camera and not sweaty. Promise.

I got this haircut because doing such things is my remedy for bad days, going back since high school. It's a little more effective when I make some sort of large change, but it still always is successful in making me feel a little more "together", if you will.
Today was a bad day because, after class, I was taken into the Center's director's office by two of the staff, along with my prospective future roommate, to be told that it was highly unlikely a Japanese realtor would rent to us, as we are an unmarried girl and boy. This despite the fact that we are Americans, with our weird American ways, and are also requesting a two-bedroom apartment. The proposed solution: we both pay more money for tinier, single apartments. This took about half an hour to be told, as well, and there was a lot of "Hmm, that is difficult, but..." being said by the office staff to us. This made me sort of severely grumpy, because paying over a thousand buckaroos a month for a shitty apartment is not something I want to be doing again. Also, living alone is not good times. The last time I lived in a small apartment by myself, aka "one year ago", things were severely bad times. Often, I was basically just sad and worn out, and a little basic friendly human interaction at home would have been extremely helpful. I am worried about being in a similar situation again.

To end this post on a non-complaining note, some other things:

• Some giggly high school girls who were waiting for the same elevator as me started talking to me, making my elevator ride a little awkward, but also making me feel momentarily cool.

• The best thing I have ever learned from a cartoon: "A little club soda will get out most anything." Proof this is true: the lack of red wine stains on my carpet.

• In my daily diary entry for school, I believe I have written a coherent political/ideological position regarding military memorials (after yesterday's visit to Yasukuni shrine, which was both depressing and depressing). This is a marked improvement over my last diary entry, in which I complained about not having any friends and how I don't really like the girl I am constantly hanging out with.

• I am going to a play (or maybe it is a movie?) tomorrow in Tokyo. That's right, look who has plans for a Friday night!

And now, to (possibly) start studying for the important midterm I have tomorrow. Hooray!

True stories of the unemployed (and of future dead people).

One thing that I do love about being in Japan now, which will probably be surprising, is that in some greater-scheme-of-things way, I am actually saving money. For a long, long time, I have heard about how incredibly expensive it is to live in Japan, yet somehow things are really working out in my favor despite that ostensible fact.
The biggest reason for this is the currency conversion rate right now, which is totally and completely in my favor. It works out so that about 100 bucks here costs me 80 bucks in American dollars, and leads to a sort of amazing mentality where everything seems to be on sale. Even better, sometimes I use my magical american-dollar-having powers to buy things that are already on sale anyway! Thus, I get to have the magic feeling of buying something for 1000 yen that's marked down to 500, with the knowledge that that 500 yen is actually costing me only $4. So sweet, this feeling is.
Also I am no longer living in a goddamned ant-infested grad student craphole (though I suppose this place is nothing special), and the advantage of that is that my rent has been cut nearly in half. So completely worth sharing a shower room with 7 other people for that, I kid you not. If only the wireless signal would boost enough that I wasn't constantly running on a Very Low connection, I would be so self-satisfied right now I'd be whistling.

Also some things not related to me saving money happened, such as me being led to the local city library and checking out many fantastic books, and me spilling red wine on my carpet only to have it all magically come out hours later after I poured a bunch of club soda onto the stains. On my windowsill now there are two little fat avocados ripening, and I am drinking some tea and have a fat belly full of rice and veggies and tofu digesting. Good things, all.

It is a lovely change of mood, because while walking home from school today, I was nearly convinced that I might be dying. I had a strange headache and felt very dizzy, enough that I was worried about falling over. It took me awhile to figure out that I probably hadn't taken my meds in the last two days (I have been constantly running late for class) and that was the likely culprit of my sickness. So, to pass the time as I wobbled home, I thought of a few things I would like to happen if I were to die in Japan, or young, or really ever.

#1 Someone should tell my mom I am sorry I died on her, and also that she should be nicer and listen to my sisters more often hereafter.
#2 I'd rather my advisor was contacted first, before my mom & family, so someone with a nice voice who knew me could break the news to them instead of some official person.
#3 There can be a funeral, but no burying me in a cemetery. Also, no letting my mom pick out my last outfit without advice from someone who knows how I like to dress. For instance, the black jersey dress I have now and the blue-purpley short-sleeved sweater thing would work fine. Also, don't let whoever does my embalming and shit make me look like a clown.
#4 After the funeral, I'd like to be cremated, except I don't know where I'd want the ashes dumped. I am probably going to spend the next few days deciding this.
#5 Someone has to immediately delete all my internet profiles. I'll be damned if my shitty-ass myspace profile survives me in death.
#6 Friends and family can have whatever of my shit they want. Please don't throw away any books or music; giving it away to a library or something is cool if no one wants it. But I'd kind of rather the clothes were burned than end up at Goodwill.


...Is this particularly morbid? Or pretentious? After all, I'm probably not going to die for awhile, and I don't have that much good shit that I can imagine people wanting to take overall. I just don't like to think of someone wearing dead me's favorite hoodie. Or having some lame-o priest from my family's church saying things about the 'afterlife'. Or my mom and stepdad sticking some crystal whatevers into my coffin before they haul me off to get stuck in the ground where all the other dead people get stuck in the ground. At least let me be stuck somewhere pretty.

Update from the House of Oak.

Since last writing, I have seen some things, mostly on weekly class "field trips", and done some other things. Currently, my laundry is drying atop the House of Oak, because it is not supposed to rain here for at least 24 hours. This is a very special respite; I like rain, a lot, especially after Los Angeles, but it is the rare and lucky individual who has access to a dryer in this country. A rare, lucky individual who knows where to find a Laundromat.

I am starting to get more comfortable here as my room has gone from a mostly-bare eyesore, combining brown walls with orange curtains and pink Hawaii-themed bedsheets to something a little more cosy. I couldn't get rid of the orange curtains, unfortunately, but they are somewhat muted by the white and blue sheets and desk I have now. Also, now I can sit up when I use the computer or eat dinner, instead of lying on the futon feeling like a bachelor slob.

Eventually I will clean this room and stick up a few pictures of my domicile. It's on the agenda.

Other things that have happened. I saw a Zen Temple, and went to Kabuki. The temple was sweaty (did I already write about this?), and the Kabuki was not for me. I am not fond of melodrama; also, as we were at a Kabuki performance that was supposed to teach you about how Kabuki works, ergo the first half of the show was led by an Emcee who spent his time repeatedly breaking the fourth wall. It is really hard to rebuild that wall in your mind after someone has made the female-role actors (called onnagata, my dear friends) speak in their natural male voices for a laugh from the audience. I'll have to give the theater here another shot after all these memories have dulled.

The Kabuki performance was also my first time ever in Tokyo, which was rather exciting. However, after the performance, I somehow got convinced to trying to find dinner in Shibuya. Do not be vegetarian in Japan, ladies and gentlemen. Or if you do, bring a lot of snacks and drink a lot of beer to get over the fact that there will almost never be an entree you can order at any restaurant, ever. Even normally simple veggie options (pasta, pizza, indian food) have been pumped up with meat. In Shibuya, I ended up eating at a salad bar (a salad bar where I was only allowed one visit!!), and had the sneaking suspicion that somehow my salad dressing had been made with the assistance of bacon.

Originally I had thought about becoming a fish-eater again, but to be honest that wouldn't do me a ton of good. There is pork in everything here, my friends. There is pork in the salad, the soup, the noodles. There is likely pork in your bread. I am learning to eat much more cautiously here.

However, there are some great little shops in my neighborhood, mostly run by the elderly, where I can buy natural produce and small veggie meals (marinated potatoes, inari-zushi). When I bought my bedsheets from one of these local stores, I ended up in a big goofy conversation in Japanese with the proprietress, because she was so excited by the fact I could talk in Japanese. She repeatedly told me how worried my mother must be that I am all the way in Japan, and gave me two cans of cola as a present (complete with a little bag to carry them home in). It was basically totally adorable, especially as she had an old punk air about her with her smoker's voice, short dyed hair, and many metal teeth.

Also, after that I couldn't not buy the sheets, which is great in the end because even though they were not cheap, they are very pretty and I plan to take them home with me next summer. I will find some use in the States for a futon coverlet.

First impressions.

One fun thing about Japan is that once you connect to the internet, you need to explicitly tell all of your google-affiliated websites to load in English. This wouldn't be a problem really, as it's pretty obvious that "pasuwaado" is "password", except that the US google and the Japanese google give you completely different results for the same query. I have no idea why that should be.

Another fun thing is that if you are in Japan and it is June, as it is now, you will feel sticky from the humidity basically all the time. You will also have to look forward to this sensation getting worse, rather than better, for the proceeding six weeks. You will not know how to do your laundry at this time, because there is no dryer and the clothes lines on the roof of your building are constantly being rained upon.

However, you will find that, even 5000 miles away from home, there is still a Starbucks every three or four blocks, and the interior decoration is exactly the same.

More later, when I feel less disgusting.