Yen Conversion, Tensuke Dinner, and Pretty Hairs

Today was busy, busy, busy.

I made the decision at the beginning of the summer about my hair. It was dishwater brown and ugly from all the dyes I've put into it over the years, so I made an appointment at the good hair salon to have it died and made pretty before I left for Japan. Finally the time comes around and I'm debating if I want to cut it short or keep it long. In the end, the stylist convinced me that yes, I really did want it long, and then showed me a cool way to make it look good all the time without having to style or blow dry it for hours. Needless to say, this man saved my life with great color and good hair tips. I have a feeling I'll be looking pretty stylish while I'm away.

Before:

After:

After the hair place--a tedious venture that took about three hours, which I'm not used to because it's something girly and foreign to me--my mom and I went to her bank, where we had ordered my yen a few days ago. I was mad the first time we went in and exchanged $3000. I was told over the phone that the amount of yen I would receive would be 250,000 yen, which is 20,000 short of what the real exchange rate is on the internet. The bank insisted that their exchange rate was a little worse than it was online, but not to worry about it too much, so I didn't. However, when I went into the bank and exchanged my $3000, I only received a receipt for 215,000 yen. Needless to say, angry as a wet cat, but they threw the figures at me and they made sense, they were just really, really poor conversion rates. 

So I felt like I got gypped, but whatever. I can't fight the system because every other place in the area was going to give me the same rate, and this bank dropped their major fees because my mom was a card holder, so I just didn't fight them. In any case, I got my 215,000 yen and it's all gorgeous money. Like, needlessly beautiful money. So beautiful, I don't want to spend it. But then again, I'll get hungry, so I probably will. 

(And it made me review all of my numbers, so that I can count a little better in Japanese now...which is a good thing.)

After I got home from the bank, I went out with a friend of mine to a Japanese restaurant and market. We had a good meal. BBQ eel and soba set was delicious. We also had takoyaki, which was superb. Then we bought mochi and candies to have dessert. A good night? I think so.

Now, time to finish my bloody Mary and hit the sack. Eight days away and I've gotta leave the beautiful city of Columbus to return to Athens tomorrow. I have to start packing those bags soon!

(Definitely excited now.)

L

Wal-Mart Shopping Adventure

So in order to prepare for Japan, I knew I had to do the unthinkable and go to that place that I rarely visit: Wal-Mart. I've stopped shopping there over the years as the prices got higher and the items of lesser quality, but sometimes, all the one-stop convenience of that place is impossible to resist. I decided to go with my mom, who decided that I needed much more than what was on my list (which was mostly just milk, eggs, vodka, etc) so I ended up carting around this giant basket full of random items.

My original shopping list was truly (not milk, eggs, vodka, though the vodka would be alright for traveling, I think) very short, consisting simply of:
Black socks
Q-tips
Vitamins
I was guestimating it to be about $10 to $15.

My mom extended my list so that I came home with this:
Black socks
Q-tips
Vitamins
Shampoo
Loofas
Fiber tablets
Pepto-Bismol tablets
Vicks vapo-rub
Underwear
Sweatpants
Two tank tops
Halloween socks
Hipster scarf
Alice in Wonderland folders
Mismatched washcloths
etc

We ended up spending over $60 on stuff that I didn't even think of. She's right when she says I'll be happy that I purchased these things if I end up needing them, especially the stuff for illness or whatever. I was hesitant to buy these things until she said "Well, when you're in Japan and you're sick, will you be able to read the boxes at the convenience store? And what if you're too sick to look them up on your phone? Or you don't care and you buy something and you're allergic to it or it's for curing toe warts instead of the flu?" She drives a good argument, that woman. I will definitely miss her while I am away.

And nine days away I am!

(On a separate note: saw the girls tonight at the Movie Tavern. We saw Guillermo del Toro's Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. All I can say is, lol American horror.)

Tomorrow, I get my hair cut. I wanna be blond before I go to Japan. If I'm going to be stared at for being a foreigner, I might as well be a hot foreigner.

Iwate Disaster Relief Plan

While in Japan, we are planning to volunteer our time to help with areas affected by the tsunami and earthquake. We will be in the northern prefecture of Iwate.

Here is our itinerary:

 9/23/11:  Arrive in Hanamaki for an initial meeting with the Hanamaki Homestay
Association in the late afternoon.  We will meet up with the other three members
of our trip. For dinner, we travel up to Morioka and then to the Iwatezan Seishonen no Ie, where we will meet Kumamoto sensei, Ogawa sensei, and 22 students from Iwate Kenritusu Tanki Daigaku
for a meeting to prepare us for the volunteer project the next day.  We will
spend the night here.

9/24/11:  Travel by bus with our Iwate Kenritsu students to Otsuchi.  Here we will be
Based at a kindergarten (Osanago Yochien), but will be participating in a cleanup project
that will already be in progress.  Iwate Kenritsu will supply the gloves, a mask, and clean-up
tools. Here we will participate in a river cleaning project and visit Osanago
Yochien again at the end.  All this will take us to about 4pm.  Then we board the bus again,
this time for Hanamaki.  We will stay at the Folukuloro in Towa-cho for an onsen inn, to meet with
the Hanamaki Homestay Association and the newly formed Towa Ohio University Yuko-kai (Friendship Association).

9/25/11:  We will tour a famous local shrine/temple compound and see the famous Bishomonten Ritzuzo (Boddhisatva, Guardian Of the North), go apple picking, and eat lunch before board the Shinkansen again in the early afternoon.

I will be working with my close friends at the kindergarten which I was told has quite a story. My sensei explained this to me:

To give you a little more background, the kindergarten building was damaged

in the tsunami and then caught on fire, so there will be plenty of
devastation to see right there.  The teachers took the one and two year old
children to a neighboring hill to get away from the water, narrowly escaping
with their lives.  We are going to be buying and sending (maybe even
carrying in) some English language books.  The director has a program where
volunteers from the neighborhood read English books to one and two year olds
to jump start there English. Staying here will not be a benign assignment.
Normally, they aren't open on Saturdays (9/24), but since we are coming,
they are having a "regular day."  However, they want only at the most, five
of us here.

I am very excited to be participating in this assignment. I really had my doubts that I would be able to lift heavy things out in the field or do well in the heat, so I'm glad that I have a chance to be inside and interacting with people like I wanted to. I know it will still be exhausting, but I'm thinking this will be a very good trip. We get to meet a lot of new people and establish a friendship with this part of Japan that we had no official ties with before. 

Now that I am ten days away from leaving, I am becoming more and more excited!

(And nervous.)

I suppose it's time to hit the books!

L

History, or is it Herstory?

I started this blog in order to document one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life: my study abroad in Kasugai-shi at Chubu University.

Ever since the age of seven, I have wanted to go to Japan. The passion started because of my father, who traveled all over the world with Motorola company. When he returned from a six month stay in Asia, he gave me my first yukata and ever since that day, I have wanted to visit this country. I did the usual things that children do when they have an interest: obsess over it. I wrote reports and did research on the internet that suddenly had exploded into a network of information and people I could learn from readily. When I went into middle school, I discovered anime and manga, which are Japanese animations and comics, and fell deeply into that world of culture and art. At that time, my interest in the language bloomed and I began trying to study on my own, attempting to read comics and magazines in complete characters. Unfortunately, my studies only went so far, even through high school, and I had to be content with knowing that in college, I would study it officially. And, in college, I would go abroad.

There was no room for any argument. Thankfully, my mother and stepfather supported my decisions and never said no to my accumulation of Japanese textbooks, comics, and DVDs. When I told them I would be going to the university in my hometown, I think they were happy I decided to stay close to home. I was happy for this as well, but even more so because I knew about the great program this university offered in conjunction with three other Japanese universities.

I decided in my first year that I would wait until my junior year to go abroad. I wanted a few years of study before I went, because I did not want to struggle with the language when I went to Japan. I wanted to go and enjoy every moment of it.

So I worked hard and waited until the spring quarter of my junior year. I bought my ticket. I got my visa. I had my bags packed...

And then disaster struck on March 11, 2011 at 2:45. The earthquake was a 9.0, causing a large tsunami that devastated the northern prefectures of Japan. Sendai was under water. Small coastal towns were wiped out. Over 11,000 people died or went missing. The country was shaken, literally, by this event. Their courage was tested when the nuclear issue arose. The Fukushima-daiichi plant had been damaged by the quake and partially flooded. Nuclear waste was leaking out of the structure: into the ground, water, air, everywhere.

My university cancelled my study abroad seven days before we were supposed to leave.

I cried selfishly, because I thought this was a personal attack against my dream. I have never had the best of luck, and this was just another example to add to my expansive list. But then I had to stop crying, because I realized that people were dead or living in shelters and the entire country was suffering because of what happened, not just me.

So I had to wait.

Waiting is so, so hard, when you wanted something and were so close you could taste it, only to have it snagged away seconds before you were about to jump headfirst right into it. And now, here I am again, just eleven days away. I fear I will get another call, saying once again that there were complications and they're very sorry but...

However, I have to stay positive. If I dwell in the negative, I know I'll be torn apart, even more so than if I have it ripped away from me again. So I'm packing slowly and waiting until the last minute to say my goodbyes, playing it safe. I'm not excited, not yet, because of that whole "once bitten, twice shy" sort of thing. I want to jump up and down and be ecstatic, but I'm going to have to wait until the airport to do that.

(No, but really, I'm very excited, just afraid to show it.)

And there are a lot of things to get done before then. I need socks. I need to get a hair cut. I need to eat massive amounts of BWW because I know I'll miss the taste of their juicy wings and a cold Dos Equis within the first month.

Once I have done these things and the weekend has arrived, then I can start to be ridiculously and annoyingly excited to everyone I meet.

L