On to December!
Trip Start
Jul 27, 2006
1
14
19
Trip End
Aug 2007
Miwa,
Japan
Thursday, March 22, 2007
01. My mom, Deb, and Miki at the JET Party!!
Either way, my lip cleared up in a few hours after the doctor gave me some meds to take. Whew! My mom, Deb, and I also did some sightseeing to some castles around my area in Nagoya and Inuyama. And they got to see some Japanese culture from my flower arranging class I took them too. Let me tell you, it was definitely interesting having them here and seeing how they reacted to things. The following weekend after the JET bonenkai I had my welcome party/bonenkai with the English teachers I work with. Now, this night is one of the reasons I started to get a negative image of Japan for a second. Not because of the party, that was wonderful!!! And the karaoke afterwards was hysterical. I opened with Baby Got Back just to see their reaction. Which was Wow!! hahaha! But because of what happened on the way to the party. There was a bike accident in the middle of the street while we were waiting at the corner to cross the street. It was horrible!!! What happened is a man on a bike didnt acknowledge the dont cross signal and drove out into traffic and got smashed by a car. I mean there was no locking up of the brakes or any attempt at slowing on behalf of the driver cause it all happened too quickly. So, this poor bicyclist got smashed. Well, as if this wasnt bad enough, we had to cross the street and walk past this bloodied up smashed bicyclist while the driver removed the bike from under him. Now, had the bicyclist even appeared to be ok this would have been alot less traumatizing. However, the pool of blood emerging from his head and the position his body was in and how motionless he was made me question the likelihood of his survival.
02. Nagoya Castle
I was in shock and on my way to a party. Great! This isnt the best way to start out a night. But what really made me question Japanese society is how the person I was walking with reacted. She said, `the driver is very lucky because the man on the bike did something very wrong by not obeying the signal. Maybe it is too bad if he dies, but he did do something wrong.` I was like what?!?! Now maybe this is just a case of poor communciation because of the language barrier. But, even if the dude did do something wrong, no one deserves that. And the other thing that made me question the Japanese idea system during this time period is the thought that this poor man committed suicide. Ive heard rumors about the suicide rate in Japan and the number of ppl who publicly kill themselves, most often with trains. I was under the impression this happens no where near me and not so often anymore. But, this impression was wrong! Two days before this bike accident, I was talking with some Japanese friends of mine who told me of three, yes three, train `accidents` at 2 stations near me all within the last few weeks. One right before my station and two right after my station. I saw one of my friends when I was on the way into the city and she told me the train was late and I didnt realize it, but then I asked why and she told me some person had jumped infront of a train and they had to clean up and stuff before the train could go again. Afterwards, the next time I saw her with our other friends, they told me of two more instances within two weeks prior where that happened.
03. A view of Nagoya from the Castle
So, needless to say I was a little terrified of taking the train and crossing the street for a bit. And wondered what the heck was going on at the moment to make everyone so unhappy. Clearly the holidays were coming up so thats always an issue, but on top of that the Japanese work all hours of the day, never see their family, and if one little thing goes wrong at work they are really hard on themselves. Apparently December is when all this just gets to be too much to handle. It took quite awhile to process all this, and even still Im not sure Im entirely getting it. But, you gotta carry on right. So, I enjoyed some of the charms of the Nagoya area with my friend Jess a few days later to decompress all this new info and to eat some brazilian chicken while browsing the shops of Osu. It was a good way to deal. Then, my wonderful supervisor invited me to her house for dinner and we had a girls night!! It was so much fun. She even cooked for me and our friend Miki! I like hearing about their lives because they are still in their 20`s so I like to compare their experiences with experiences for women of their age in America. It is very interesting. Ok. 2 more parties to go. The second to the last one was with my flower arranging and tea ceremony club. We did a gift exchange and had a large meal at our school, with drinks of course! It was like a secret santa exchange. Each person bought a 1000 yen gift and brought it wrapped to the party. But, instead of drawing names, we wrote numbers on a piece of paper and assigned them to the presents.
04. Beautiful Leaves in the Gardens
Then on another large piece of paper we drew lines to those same numbers written at the bottom of the paper. Each person chose a line and followed it to the number that corresponded to the present. Like a maze or something. It was pretty cool and not as difficult as it sounds here. We also did a very fun toast with streamers and lots of KAMPAI`S!!! being yelled. My 90 year old sensei can party like none other let me tell you! Then, the next day I had the Bonenkai for all the teachers at my Junior high school. Again we chose our seats by picking numbers, the women chose the pink sheets of paper and the men chose the blue. They need to do things this way or else the men and women segregate themselves. So it was designed to be man-woman-man-woman etc. Its funny how it is so difficult to get the sexes to communicate sometimes. Well until the alcohol gets flowing of course. But, things are definitely much more gender segregated here. Thats for sure. This party was great fun too!! I ended up sitting next to the Principal who is a lovely guy. And after a beer or two and after the food was getting served up the conversations began. He can speak some English and is actually quite good so it was really fun to be able to talk to him in an environment other than the teachers room. Most of the 1st grade teachers were sitting at our same table and I know them quite well so it was a riot. After the main party we kinda broke off into smaller groups. My group went for much needed coffee. It was hilarious because our website guy was WASTED and being a riot, basically trying to hit on me so the other teachers kept trying to distract him. It was so funny. Nothing too offensive. Just drunk. The next day Winter break started, which I went to Thailand for. A break I was looking forward too very very much!! I will write about that next time. Again pics coming soon. I`ll just do a mass picture uploading soon. Till next time. 
