tiiiiired

but I gotta stay up. gotta email some scholarship people back home about expediting a much-needed check... thanks to my computer, which broke upon arrival in Japan (I'm using a brand spanking new one) I was pretty much out of money at the end of March, aka right before the term at Sophia even started. I now have around $300 left... yeesh.

but yeah, I'm tired because I got back from the Fashion Club meeting at 11:30. by the way, I got there at 6:30.

ahhh my head hurts from trying to listen to Japanese for so long! the Fashion Club (sen-i kenkyuukai), much like any university club in Japan, is super hardcore. They are now doing the planning for two shows that will likely be attended by hundreds of people: one using older and elderly models, and another whose theme has yet to be decided by the new members. This is where we enter the pain... the bulk of the meeting consisted of the first-years presenting their concepts for shows, real lofty stuff like "Ex-formation" (which, apparently, is the English opposite of information... I think it's like possibility) and Nationalism and probably Postmodernity if that hadn't already been done. sadly, I don't yet understand enough Japanese to completely stay with the presentations, especially when a senpai (senior member) cuts in partway and lectures us on what makes constructive fashion.

I joined the Fashion Club in order to do research for a paper I'm writing on masculinity, but there are a few other clubs I've been getting into since it's the best way to meet university peeps. I go to my school's guitar ensemble and Shorinji-Kenpo, a type of martial arts. I also did ballroom dance for like two seconds, but it all got just a little too crazy for me - people take their clubs seriously. standard practice time for everything is at least three hours in one shot, except for Kenpo, which meets every day at lunch.

also: we're going to Hiroshima tomorrow. I don't believe I'm alone in thinking that I'm not entirely sure what to expect.

制服が邪魔をする

aka "my school uniform is getting in the way"

meet the oh-so-curious girl group, Akihabara48, or AKB48 for short. these girls aren't just playing a stereotype, they are capitalizing off it. I was watching American Idol with the host fam (who are in love with the show - it runs about a month behind the realtime version and has the funniest captions) when I first saw a commercial for the group: a sad-looking girl saying "Dad, I'm sorry," while a group of her and her friends sing in the rain in tattered school uniforms. first thought? this is too perfect! darn catchy hook, by the way.

as I learned more about AKB48 and the song it became unbelievable in more of a let-me-make-sure-the-producers-of-"To Catch a Predator"-aren't-somehow-involved kind of way... i.e. the lyrics of the song are pre-tty explicit. i.e. some of the girls are 18 and 19, but some of them are 12 and 13. to be sure, this sort of thing is meant to push the envelope in Japan, but maybe it's just better to leave this one firmly shut. or only openable on special occassions, like at karaoke.


here's Michio, the host dad, for anyone who wondered about his non-presence in my posts. he's quiet and has corny jokes (which I love about him), but I haven't said too much about him because I only see him on the weekends. he lives about 2 hours away in Chiba (southeastern Tokyo) near, but not with my host brother Taiyo. it was kind of weird to me at first, and every time I tell someone about the fact that my host dad doesn't live with us all the time, they assume they're divorced. his and Akiko-san's relationship actually reminds me of my parents'; they joke around in the same way, but they don't do the affection thing. just a different shade of love and marriage, I guess.

today was a good day

I have THE best roommates ever. this beautiful, lovely care package was just waiting for me at the CIEE office to take it home. got all the essentials! magazines, hair relaxer, Center Stage and Heroes, a new rubber chicken keychain, and a lot of love in letter form. such a pretty day, too... even the weather was happy for me!

oh yeah, still haven't updated about the craziness that was the rest of Golden Week Pt. 2, so I'll just put the pics here. started things off on Tuesday right in Kabukicho with a super-crowded birthday party/nomihodai for my boy Stephen (blue shirt, middle), which escalated into the kind of ridiculousness that tipsily toes the line of "too much fun." the owners were hating on us, perhaps with good reason, because they gave us bingo cards to get us to dial down the screaming!

the best part? that the night didn't end there. I missed my last train home to jump on down to Shibuya with leftover people from the party, which proved later to be a good move. our too-loud laughter (and various limbs) crashed into one another as we first stormed the Gaspanic club (dead, and as whack as everyone says it is) and then ended up at all-night karaoke. this picture was probably circa 4:30 a.m., but don't be fooled - there were always a few of us going at the microphone. gold star to Mauricio and Ai for making it the whole night.

the next day (same day?) Liza and I got on the night bus for our whirlwind excursion to Osaka and Kyoto, which is about 7 hours away from Tokyo but only 30 minutes apart. theme of the trip? Chill. we checked out the Imperial Palace gardens, caught some afternoon Z's in a temple, hung with French gaijin in Gion (geisha/maiko land) went on two ferris wheels, took in the Pacific Rim sights at a huge aquarium and ate soo much good food...

trying to climb trees at the Kyoto Imperial Garden. don't plan on getting into the palace, though, without applying to the tour

the craziest okonomiyaki restaurant... there were these mannequins sitting all around us, and pornographic woodblock prints on the walls
really big spider crabs... creepy

probably not a geisha, but this lady was having her picture taken while we were siesta-ing at Yasaka temple's pond

riding the ferris wheel in Osaka

like I said... chill

golden week part 2: the platinum edition

due to a measles outbreak (yep, measles), we have a whole week off of school!! those time-consuming club activities have been cancelled too, which makes this the perfect guilt-free time that Golden Week (first week of May - kinda like a planned Spring Break, but for the whole country) could never have been. and all because of measles?! sweet, says my MMR vaccine. get ready to partay.

I kicked off Golden Week with a movie in Shibuya with Liza, Jordan and Christine, the Kajigaya dorm girls. it's been a while since we chilled, so it was nice finally getting to spend this time... apart?? yeah, so it definitely wasn't my intention to split up as soon as we got to the theater, but none of us realized that they were seeing Spiderman III, which I had already watched (on opening day, baby). no big, though; while Bad Spidey was keeping them company, I became yet another witness to the sprawling, multilingual sadness they call Babel.

good. grief.
and not just because it's depressing. maybe one-third of this movie is in English, leaving the rest to be decoded by Japanese subtitles in a really annoying font. I did learn something about myself, though - I have indeed lost all my ability (using that word loosely) to understand Spanish. God, 1 kajillion, Tower of Babel... let's say 30. some people just have a gift.

in happier news, on Sunday, me and some program kids got to check out sumo wrestling. even though our seats were as far back as far could go, you could still see the ring and all the leg-stretching, salt-throwing, large man-stomping action pretty darn good.

for your orienting pleasure

here's Sophia (上智大学). it's pretty compact, which is convenient:

I live in Minami-Yono (南与野) which is in the upper left part of the of map, next to the purple blob. Sophia's at the Yotsuya station, which aslo has a purple blob marked next to it (I tried to do a star, but using Paint with any skill is sadly beyond my capabilities)

this is just one tiny part of the greater Tokyo train/subway system, though. there are also like twenty different lines owned by just as many companies involved in this colorful matrix of commuter fun.

that's what I'm talking about, Akiko-san!

finally. the kimono pic. special shoutout to Akiko-san, the host mother that knows how to hook a gaijin up. another one of my friends here and I really wanted to go traditional, but the only option we knew was going to Kyoto and paying a $100 for a professional to do us up and take a couple of pics. no wig or makeup included in this little treat, but for free, who cares?

oh yeah, there was a camera crew as well. apparently, our little gaijin-become-traditional-japanese-adventure was something TV Tokyo felt like filming. I don't know why Japanese peeps would want to watch a bunch of gaijin try on kimono, but if you want to hand me my 15 minutes, I'll take it.

in fact, because of Akiko-san, I've been getting to do a lot of random things with the international community in the Saitama (the "city"/prefecture where I live... kinda like a zip-code or a burrough). Me and Stephen are her 33rd and 34th exchange students, so she's used to showing people like us the Tokyo ropes.

we went to an ikebana gallery showing last week, where I got to bust out my mono no aware knowledge (japanese aesthetic ideal about beauty in nature), and lately it seems like I'm always hanging out with her friend's exchange students. a few days after that, I represented America (dubious, dubious) at a Cub Scout Rally - good pay, nice swag, but my cheeks still hurt from smiling so much. This week, is Golden Week/vacay time for all of Japan, so there was a pretty cool international festival up near Omiya that I was recruited to paint kid's faces at. oh, Japanese children. is there such a thing as too cute??

what??? I'm black?!?!

I know! it's a shock to me too! except... I'm kind of serious : /
before I came here, I had the idea that as a black person, I was going to be even more of a rarity in "racially homogenous Japan"... y'all know the deal, i'm sure. children would point, men might stare, and I'd probably get some extra breathing room during the morning commute. the reality? today was only the second time a kid has stopped and mentioned to their parent, "look, she's a 外国人!" (foreigner)

now, I'm not exactly the most observant person ever, so no one should use me as the authority on how minorities are perceived. little kids do give me a few more glances than they might others, and I get obvious once-overs every now and again. but in central Tokyo, there are a lot of 外国人, enough that I see at least a few different black people every day. especially Africans, man... most seem to either own hip-hop clothing stores or work the club promotion scene.

but even in Saitama, the "suburban" spot where I live now (using that word loosely... it's funny how neon can find its way out of Shinjuku and Ikebukuro so easily ) the only other two foreigners I see at my station are African! I even met one of them - his name is Babs, and he's from - yep, Ghana. of course. I ended up running into him again today, in Shibuya of all places (kind of the epicenter for youth trendiness), in quite the depressing way: I saw a black guy coming towards me out of the corner of my eye, and immediately put the defensive blinders on before I realized I knew the guy trying to wave to me. oh, awkward turtle. swim, darn you, swim!

何で、そんなに？！I'd like to think that the worst instance of black stereotyping I've seen here wouldn't have been my own...