Tag: Japan

A glimpse of Japanese culture

Tonight, I stopped in at an udon restaurant that is a similar style to Luby’s (pick up a tray, grab side dishes as you will, and order the main hot dish fresh when you get to that section, pay at the end of the sliding bar line) for dinner.  I initially hesitate, figuring out what I want to eat. As I decide upon something, I realize that I don’t know how to say what I want, because the first half of the name is written in kanji.  If it had been reversed, with hiragana first and kanji second, I could have faked my way through.  However, how does one start a word/name with only the end of it?

So, I figured I’d just stumble through verbally, and eventually get someone to lean over the counter a bit to see which picture I was indicating.  As I arrive at the ordering section, and attempt to do just as I had planned, explaining that I can’t read Japanese, but I want this one, please, the man in line behind me does me a solid, and reads aloud the name of the dish for me.

Now he totally didn’t need to do this, as the restaurant worker easily leaned forward to see the  picture anyway, but he, for whatever reason – and I word it this way, because this has not often been my experience here, having people be oh-so-willing to help out the foreign girl – decided to help me.  Therefore, despite my terror of getting caught in a language mess of trying to explain and risking not getting my way, I told the lady at the register to put mine and the man’s meals together.  She seemed a bit caught off guard, but accepted my request, likely assuming that I was actually here with the guy after all.

I paid, accepted my change, thanked the cashier, thanked the man once again as he walked up next to me in line once again, and walked off to my seat around the corner.

A minute later, I went to get some tea from the water and hot green tea dispenser, and saw the man there getting water for himself.  When he saw me, he did the Japanese “Oh!”, though a bit subdued, and thanked me in a very fumbly sort of way (I imagine he isn’t quite accustomed to such a scenario, based on his general appearance and fumbliness.), opting to use the version of thank you that literally means “excuse me”, and bowing as best he could holding his tray and water.  I told him that it was nothing, and thanked him again for the help.

Still sitting at my seat a while later, watching a small spider tiddle across the countertop, I notice the man coming over to me, and I look up at him.  He thanks me again (and again in a very fumbly way), looking a bit embarrassed, and bows a couple more times (which I return with a smile and bow) before leaving the restaurant.

It was quite simple, but I found so much culture in the situation, I wanted to share it.  Plus, this older guy was, in a grandpa sort of way, so cute, I wanted the memory to live on somehow in others.

So, thank you, again, old man.  Really, I appreciated your help, and gave you your meal easily and with delight – it was almost an honor for me to have provided you this token of my gratitude.  Thanks.  ðŸ™‚
Post-a-day 2017

The impossible and a new look at time

Last night, as I was thinking on how the impossible had happened for me that day, and then hula classes I’d just asked two friends about helping me do, I got onto wondering about new beginnings and fresh starts.  I started to think about the idea of treating today as the beginning of my time in Japan.  Like how I’ve visited other countries, and then gone there later for several months to study, I can see Japan in that same sort of timeframe.

Yes, I came and did a semester in Japan before.  And, now, I’m back in Japan, but just for a semester.  In six months and a week, I’ll be finished, my semester over.  I only just arrived, and so have to get going with the things I want to do and see, and the relationships I’d like to build.  But, since I’ve been to Japan before (when I studied (read “worked”) here the last time), it should be easy to settle into place, and to start picking up the language again.

Sure, I remember that there were things that were really rough when I was here before, and I suspect things will be hard again.  However, it is only a single semester, and I’ll be so busy doing this and that (to make sure I get it all in, since I definitely didn’t last time), it’ll zoom by me quite quickly.  (So, I’d better get started, eh?)

Huh… I’m actually quite excited about my brief visit to Japan this semester.

Who’d’a thunk?

Who says we have to relate to time as directly sequential?

I thank my most recent audiobook for this beautiful thought idea – The Time Traveler’s Wife.

 

P.S.  I actually wrote this last night, as I just didn’t want to forget it for today’s post.  😛

Post-a-day 2017

Costco

Today, sitting with a friend at Costco (yes, Japan has Costco, oddly enough), I noticed how at home I felt.  I used to go to Costco with my dad, and Sam’s with each of my parents long before that.  Now, being at Costco gives me a sense of everything being alright, and that I am loved and surrounded by those who love me (or at least am in the same town as they, and I will be with them soon enough).  So, naturally, it was odd when we walked out of the store, because the crashing cold extinguished any and all warm feelings of home and home-y-ness, returning me to my current locale…  

I’m okay here, certainly.  I do believe what my mother once commented about me, though: I am European.  She didn’t mean that I actually am European, of course, but that my style and my ways are very much in sync with those of Europe, and not with those of Asia.  I imagine that I one day will be excited by a Japanese shop or this or that, when I am off elsewhere in the world.  However, I am starting to see that the sentiment will not reflect that of when I cross a European cafe or restaurant – the former is likely to be a thought of “Well, that was a neat time,” and the latter occurs as an actual piece of me.

Post-a-day 2017

a Turn in the Road instead

Something I have learned about Japan is that roads that appear to be turning into a dead-end almost never are at their ends.  That is, they are all false dead-ends.  If you keep going on the road, almost as if magic were at play, a continuation of the road appears just past that house or those bushes – things only appear to be ending, when the road merely has turned (and quite sneakily in my opinion).

Some days, I wonder if this is a sort of big picture lesson for me to learn.  We always talk of life as a road or a path.  Perhaps these Japanese roads are a new take on the road of life, the path we are taking, which seems to be coming to a dead-end…  and, perhaps not.  Nonetheless, I find myself wondering often about it, because it is such an odd thing to have discovered, I feel.  🙂

 

Post-a-day 2017

Gumbo is a family affair

Tomorrow, I get to make my first attempt at Gumbo.  I am thrilled, and totally terrified.  😛

I asked my mom for the recipe, so that I could make it for Christmas for Japanese friends, in order to share a bit of my culture with them (Even though it’s definitely not a standard Christmas dinner for Texans, it’s my family’s Christmas dinner pretty much every year.), and also to feel at home a bit for the holiday.

Now, my mom couldn’t just send me the recipe.  Why?  She said that she would have to tell it to me.  “Really?  It’s not written down somewhere?” I thought.  Well, apparently it is possibly written somewhere, however, my mom doesn’t use it.  She uses the recipe her mother has used for the past however many decades, which is probably just about the same as her mother used.  How cool is that?  Family tradition that’s extra-especial.  We have a family recipe.  Well, sort of, anyway.  😛

Now I just have to get it right, and then remember it forever, so that I can continue the tradition of delicious Gumbo in our family.

 

P.S.  “Loser’s Gumbo” is a fabulous song by Shake Russel and Michael Hearne.  Find it.  Listen to it.  Laugh at it.  Enjoy it forever.  🙂

 

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