Scavenger Hunt! (Victor)

Given the clue “Find the temple where Hideyoshi’s wife Onene spent her final years”. It didn’t take long to find out that my assigned sight was Kodai-ji Temple. A relatively unknown temple when compared to its neighbors, Yasaka Shrine and Kiyomizu-Dera, Kodai-ji is a beautiful site that I personally enjoyed more than Kiyomizu-Dera, the go-to temple in the Gion area. My temple is more toned down and elegant than the other two places I mentioned above, its structures are more simplistic and fewer in number, but each of them are considered historical treasures.

Trying to find the entrance on a narrow residential street.

When I visited Kodai-ji the first time, I knew nothing about it other the fact that is where Hideyoshi’s wife died, and that she had it built to honor his memory after he died. My main focus during this exploratory first visit was to learn my way around the complex, take pictures, and make sure that I could remember the path again when we returned together in October.

Kaisan-do with view of a pond

I absolutely loved Kodai-ji. The more simplistic layout of the buildings lends itself to a quiet space in nature very well. Due to the article I read by William H. Samonides and more of my own research in preparation for touring around again, I learned that it wasn’t supposed to be that way. The complex used to have many more buildings, but due to several fires only six main structures remain. One of my favourites is the Kaisan-Do; it has many paintings from the Tosa and Kano schools.

Famous picture of Kodai-ji maki-e

The Otama-ya, however, is a very special building as it contains much of what Kodai-ji is known for; Momoyama period maki-e, also known as Kodai-ji maki-e. Maki-e is a Japanese style of lacquer where gold or silver dust is sprinkled on the lacquer while it is still wet.

Match and mochi

By far, my favorite part of visiting Kodai-ji was getting a cup of matcha tea while sitting in a tea room. Near the end of the walking through Kodai-ji, you can pay 500 yen to get a cup of tea and a small mochi snack. The perfect way to end a walk around centuries old Japanese buildings surrounded by nature.

Finding Hideyoshi’s Shrine - A Scavenger Hunt (Mahala)

For my scavenger hunt, I was given the hint:

Find the main shrine to Hideyoshi in Kyoto and also the uncomfortable memorial to his invasions of Korea nearby.

My first step in this journey was establishing what this “uncomfortable memorial” was my assumption that Hideyoshi had many shrines in the country due to his very important status in Japanese history. So, I knew that my location was in Kyoto (because of my university’s location, and the destination of our class trip) and I looked up any Korean memorials that could be connected to Hideyoshi. My research led me to the Mimizuka site. It is the burial mound of the noses of 38,000 Koreans that were taken as war trophies during the Hideyoshi invasions. It is a one minute walk to the shrine that honors the man responsible for the mound.

Upon further research I learned that the shrine has a pretty complicated history. The original site was torn down and buried by Tokugawa Ieyasu and was then rebuilt by Emperor Meiji about 200 years later. The initial destruction was because Tokugawa Ieyasu felt that honoring the man that he replaced was offensive to his position. However, Emperor Meiji believed that the people should honor Hideyoshi to reconnect with their national history and pride.

So I had my location and I just needed to visit. On a very hot Saturday, I took the train into Kyoto and first found Mimizuka. I did not stay for long, as it freaked me out to stand in front of something so dark. The gate to the mound was closed, and there was trash in front of it. This made me quite sad. I then walked to the shrine, which was also a short visit since most of the shrine was closed off. I had gone during unconventional hours during the work week, so that’s probably why it was closed. At the shrine, there were the main steps which led to where you drop your 5 yen coins and pray, and they were paralleled with two ema holders. Ema are wooden plaques that people write wishes on and leave them at the shrine. In the front of the shrine there was a statue of Hideyoshi.

These places are significant because of the fact that Hideyoshi was such an important person in Japanese history. He was one of the three men responsible for the unification of Japan. In his time of power, he led two separate invasions of Korea, which resulted in Mimizuka. Later in the Meiji period he became a symbol of Japanese nationalism and identity, which resulted in his shrine being rebuilt. Japanese history would be completely different if not for Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

Mimizuka

Prayer altar

Stature of Hideyoshi

Say What? (Victor)

I don’t get to hear a lot of the dialect from my area, Osaka, partially because of my bad habit of staying inside my room when I’m not in class, but also because many of the Japanese students in the seminar house, and around campus always try to use English when speaking to me.

Eat and eavesdrop to learn Japanese.

I tend to hear the most of Kansai-ben when I go out to a cafe or restaurant alone, and I have nothing to do but eavesdrop on neighboring tables.

The two most common phrases I hear are ええで which is equivalent to いいよ, and おおきに, the equivalent to ありがとう. This makes sense considering I hear it at restaurants where phrases like “No problem/okay’’ and “Thank you” are commonplace. I was also specifically taught the phrase おおきに at a small basement restaurant in Kyoto called Teppan Tavern Tenamonya, which I highly recommend. At the end of the meal, they gave us a thank you card that says おおきに on it, and the owner, and chef, of the restaurant made sure we knew what it meant and had us repeat it out loud after him.

Let the bourbon flow! Even though I only got cocktails.

Kansai-ben speakers will probably despise me for saying this but another reason I don’t pick up on the dialect a lot is because most of the time it’s not different enough from Tokyo-ben/standard Japanese that I get confused. If I said that out loud to someone from the Kansai area I’d probably get yelled at. I’ve been told by my Japanese professor here that the people who use Kansai-ben are not only very proud of how they speak, but also specifically have a special hatred and sense of superiority towards people from Tokyo and how they talk. I may be misremembering, but the first time I really noticed Kansai-ben was when I went to a bourbon bar called Rogin’s Tavern in the middle of Osaka where an old man was having a conversation with the bartender that I felt I should’ve been able to understand but was having a strangely hard time. Also, it was my first bar experience so that was pretty fun and funky.

Say What?: My Experience with the Kansai Dialect (Mahala)

Before coming to Japan, I was aware that the Kansai dialect was a bit weird compared to the Japanese I have been learning for the past 3 years. I was a bit scared because, truthfully, I had no clue what that meant. However, after being in Japan for about 5 weeks now, spoken Japanese does not seem super different like I expected it would. To be honest, I have really heard about 2 or 3 words that belong specifically to the Kansai Dialect.

The word　めっちゃ　is probably the most common kansai word I have heard. It means ‘a lot’ or ‘very,’ and replaces the word とても. I kept hearing this word all of the time and finally figured out its meaning. Another word is おもろい　which replaces おもしろい and means ‘interesting.’ There are probably many other words that are Kansai dialect, however as I learn more every-day language in Japan, these words are never differentiated from “normal japanese.” There have been a couple times where my japanese friend has been asked to give us some words in Kansai-Ben, and she can’t really list more than three things., Kansai dialect is how she speaks, it isn’t anything different or unusual.

To me, adopting these words has been strange. In some instances, when describing something I try to adopt めっちゃ into my sentence and I am unsure whether I am using it correctly. I know I am, but because I learned a different word previously, it feels wrong when I say it. However, as my Japanese improves, I know that being immersed in the Kansai dialect will eventually cause me to use words from Kansai and I think that that is really cool.

A night out in Ebisuhigashi, Osaka.

Mapping the City (Charles S)

Days 1-2

The first two days were right off the bat of being in Tokyo. I hadn’t slept much in the last 48 hours and it was incredibly difficult to accept the reality of where I was. I went to Akita Airport via plane instead of the bullet train due to price (which was surprising as I thought I would be somewhat linked to larger cities via that train.) Upon meeting the staff who were in charge of the bus we drove an incredibly short drive to the University. I would come to know that the views of rice paddies and farms were in the opposite direction of where I came from, so the only thing I could see during that drive was dense vegetation.

The campus’s size was unclear at this time. But after reaching my dorm it was clear that I was on the edge of it. Directly across the street was a huge community garden, filled with many unrecognizable plants. Even the smell of dead plants that fills the air in most rural areas was incredibly different. The first “landmark” that I would say I recognized outside the school was the garden itself, but specifically the garden shed. The shed seemed to be an old bunker, overgrown on the sides with vegetation, and also had spaces for plants and a bridge built into its sloped side. I will link the picture I took of it, as I believe it is the first picture I took in Akita.

The second day I woke up at around 5:30am. My Roomate turned out to be from England, and the degree seeking students would not arrive for another week or so. I had yet to meet any locals, and the place had not yet been properly humanized for me. At around 7am I went for another walk past the garden, further this time to the corner of my street, which is AIU on one half and residential on the other. There I found the konbini. Upon glaring at the katakana for too much time I realized its name was Banafe. I interpreted this to be shorthand for Bananafish, because the logo on the sign was a fish in a banana peel. I still have yet to truly decipher the meaning of that. The moment that would follow is one that I think shocked almost every Japanese learner that walked into the store that day.

I had used Japanese in Tokyo to order food and to ask for directions, so I was confident in communication within Banafu. It is owned by an older married couple, who spoke in what I have since learned is a heavy dose of the Akita Dialect. I knew that the dialect was present here before I came, but I had projected more of a sense of rareness on people actually using it. I couldn’t understand a word that he said past good morning. I did learn that their dog's name is Ku-chan though. I am aware that this essay is sparse in content discussing the map making process, but with so very few landmarks so far the first two days established my center of the world for the next few weeks. That being Banafu, specifically the vending machines and picnic table outside of it, which would hastily become a very social area.

Days 5-7



The next week would have my map expanding from just the campus, and this is where it started to get a little complicated. I went to the local mall this week, as our school's bus stop has a direct link to it. I went to buy cooking materials and things of that sort. I wasn’t quite sure if the area the mall was in (which was a ten minute bus ride away) was considered to be in Akita City itself. I would learn that it isn’t quite there yet. Passing rice paddies and a river, newer buildings and residential areas began to present themselves. Upon checking the bus schedule for the mall me and the kids I was with realized that it would be another 3 hours before the next one back, so we decided to walk it. The walk began as a sort of side of the highway affair. It wasn’t an attractive scene at first, the area where the mall sits is strip mall filled and on a busy road.

We passed gigantic old factory buildings and tangled electrical plants. We soon got back into the countryside, passing the sparse towns throughout the walk, which you could walk through 10 minutes a piece. It darkened and started to rain halfway through the 2 hour walk. So my mind's geography of that direct path is hazy. It seemed like we were deep within the woods and hopelessly far from anything, until the light at the end of the tunnel named Banafu suddenly popped up on the left. That weekend I also passed the local shrine which was deep within the forest between the school and the airport. I found signs for it by trying to find a secluded parking lot to skateboard in, and followed it for about 45 minutes.

12-14 days:

By this point I had been to a big new landmark, as well as the City itself. Both of which were way farther than I expected. The landmark in question is the beach that was recommended to me and other internationals. It was a 45 minute ordeal to get there by train and bus. On the way we stopped in Akita City Station, but didn’t go into the city just yet. To get to the first train you need to take a bus from right outside our cafeteria to the closest town I walked through on my way back from the mall. The town is called Wada, and that is where the closest train access is. The bus ride to Wada is less than ten minutes. On the train we traveled about 7 and half miles to the city, passing more Paddies and different little towns at each spot. The surrounding hills and mountains bowl this area in, their peaks are sharper than the more rounded out hills of the Massachusetts mountains that I’m used to. The train was also significantly more crowded than I thought it would be. At the station we transferred trains and rode another 15 minutes to the town that was next to the beach.

This town was the first time I experienced sights that were familiar to me. Most buildings were abandoned and most windows were boarded up. There were houses made of sheet metal, and very few people around. The town itself consisted of different buildings built along right on the beach before the sand started. There were a few people surfing and the only person I saw outside the water was a carpenter. The beach itself was covered in plastic. Beach toys, bottles, and other assorted plastics peppered the beach. It was saddening, but it was also an important moment to me for reasons I still have difficulty describing.

Ever since I have been here, I have been amazed at the cleanliness of the countryside. Even though I knew cities here were relatively free of street trash, I still hadn’t seen any litter the whole time I had been here. This perplexed me due to the sheer amount of vending machine drinks being consumed by everyone in my close proximity. Everyone sits and consumes them at the banafe, and still the area stays clean. The beach (although it was saddening for us) grounded me in a way. In my head I almost exclaimed “Oh! So this is where all that trash is.” In a messed up way I felt more at home after I saw this. Along with the more impoverished area we were in, this trip assisted me and looked at Akita as a more real place than I had been, and also helped me relate it to the place I call home.

We also went to the city itself a few days after the beach. It was bigger than I thought it would be based on AIU’s landscape. After exiting the station there was an arms race protest as well as a festival featuring Kanto (a local sport that consists of balancing many lanterns on a pole.) None of the kids I was with had sims yet, so we walked around the city hoping to see the castle in the center park. The park was closed so sadly I have yet to experience that, but we could see it poking out of the park as we walked around. The only thing we knew about was a second hand store called Hard Off.

There were surely buses in the city that we could have utilized to get to the store faster, but we were all too overwhelmed and phoneless to utilize them, and so we walked. It took hours to find, and on our way back the sun had began to set. This is when I encountered a new problem. Akita City was pretty barren at night. On our way back to the station we noticed a street we hadn't seen before. It was full of Izakaya and music, and the familiar pop culture fantasy neon signs. Upon further investigation this part of the city was a sort of red-light district. Even though the area had earned itself that title it was still well known to the Japanese kids I met later that it had a fun and busy night scene. I also learned this area only opens up at 9, which is right when the last bus is. Leaving the area we saw many kids our age rushing out of the station we were walking into. It was really nice to see so many people, and feel the rush of population again. Hopefully I can figure out a way to explore the city at night.

Mapping My Way (Victor)

Being as timid as I am, and that my friends were far away from me, living on the college campus while I lived in a building thirty minutes away, I explored as little as possible at first. I only went to the small grocery store five minutes away the next day out of necessity for food, and after it was acquired, I didn’t leave the building again until orientation a couple of days later. I was absolutely terrified of going anywhere by myself. Despite there being a bus stop right outside my building that took me straight to campus, I opted to walk my first several trips because I was too nervous to take the bus alone and I didn’t get a bus pass for almost two weeks because the thought of getting to, and navigating a train station alone was also scary. I didn’t go anywhere I didn’t absolutely have to, and I tried to rope in my roommate or friends for every trip I went on.

My understanding of the world around me represented by sticky notes.

This fear of exploration, particularly by myself, meant that I didn’t have any understanding of my surroundings and even though I walked to campus several times, I was so glued to Google Maps that I didn’t absorb any landmarks.

My small world

Even now that I’ve been in Japan for a few weeks, I still haven’t done much exploring, which I regret because I now have less and less time to go out as the semester ramps up. I have my major landmarks, like Himawari, the very bright and bold pachinko parlor that signals where I need to turn right to get to campus from where I’m living. The Top World Market is where I do more extensive grocery shopping trips, and it signals that I’m getting closer to home but my bubble is still so small. For example, I’ve never turned left at Himawari, I take the bus whenever I can, blocking me from taking in information from my environment, and I’m still not comfortable taking the train alone.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to take some bigger steps on my own soon.

Navigating Japan: My Experience in a New City (Mahala)

Today starts my fourth week here in Hirakata and it has been quite the journey to figure out how to get around a country that I have never been to before. Usually when I go someplace new I am with my mother who knows exactly where things are, what to do, and how to get around (if we don’t have our own car with us). It’s been helpful for the last 20 years of my life but now I don’t have her with me to navigate us. I have definitely noticed a difference in how I function in a new environment without her. I am the one person in my family who doesn’t do well with directions so at home I normally try to become familiar with a couple different areas of a city and work out from there. I noticed with this week’s exercise that I have done the exact same thing here.

My first week here, I was still recovering from weird jet lag and attempting to fight the insane heat, so not much exploring was done. However, I was still able to establish some main points of navigation close to me.



[Map of my surroundings after 1-2 days in Hirakata]

As I said earlier, I didn’t really get out much the first couple of days. The only thing that I actively searched for was somewhere to buy groceries. In this search, I did not stray far from campus. The only thing that I was totally sure of was the Lawson at the end of the street. I did go a couple of other places, but I was following other people at the time and very quickly forgot where we had gone.



[Map of my surroundings after 5-7 days in Hirakata]

After 5-7 days I was a bit more comfortable with the main intersection next to campus. I found a closer location to buy food that was right next to campus, and I saw that the perpendicular street was the way to Kansai Gaidai’s second campus, and was host to a lot of restaurants.



[Map of my surroundings after 10-12 days in Hirakata]

This is the chunk of time in which I really started to explore. As you can see in the map above, I became a lot more familiar with the main streets next to me and traveled farther down them. I was also able to locate two train stations, and took trips to Kyoto and Osaka. This area of the city is what I have really mastered. I have yet to really travel up the street though, I have only been to the store Izumiya once.

To me the easiest part of navigating is finding landmarks and their immediate surroundings. If we were to use the map as reference for cardinal directions, to the north is the big train station and the Hirakata T-Site which is a big shopping area. To the south is the Nakamiya Campus and is the direction that the bus route runs (seeing as there were only stops on that street). To the east is where I live and is a highly residential area. In fact most of my immediate surroundings in Hirakata seem to be housing.



[Bookstore inside of Hirakata’s T-Site Shopping Area]

Although I am familiar with this area, I still have no clue where I am in reference to Hirakata. I don’t even know my general area on a map. So there is a lot of work for me to do in learning my surroundings. But, I am starting to find exploring more fun than stressful like it was in the beginning. I hope to learn more about Hirakata soon!



[A picture of the main street while on my way back home]

Mahala's Big Day Out (Mahala)

As I set out on this journey I hope to put my mind at ease. The past two school years have been a bit difficult for me in reference to many things that would cause anyone a bit of uneasiness. But this year is going to be completely different for me. I will not really know anyone, therefore I will not feel obligated to spend as much time with others like I did in Beloit; and, I will not have an on campus job, which will give me free time at college that I have never held before. These two things gives me the opportunity to actually have the proper time for my classwork and to have small daily adventures around a place that is completely new to me. I love exploring and am always sad when I can’t see more of the places I visit, but a whole year will give me so much time to explore.

The biggest challenge that I will face is the lack of confidence in my Japanese language abilities. I tend to beat myself up a lot about not being at the right level for my classes, but the other half of me understands that I have never properly had the chance to learn. There is only so much that sitting in a classroom can do for you and your target language.

Time is what I hope to get out of this experience the most. Time to really engage with the hobbies and things that I have lost over the past couple years, time to explore Japan, and time to let the language sink in. I believe that at the end of this year, I will definitely be able to see a difference in myself.

Last shots before I go--reenacting my first day of kindergarten.

My First Big Trip Alone (Victor)

As I set out on this journey I hope to push myself further outside of my comfort zone than ever before. I’ve never been away from home for so long without so much as a weekend back with my family but this time I won’t see my house again for four months. 

Final Look

Of course furthering my language skills is always my goal for studying abroad but I also want to learn to communicate with people that grew up in a completely different environment than I did. It will be challenging to adapt to Japanese culture, as much as I research ahead of time, I can never truly understand what it will feel like to be there until several days or weeks after I’ve gotten off the plane with no reasonable way to change my mind and go home.

Being so far from my friends and family, I expect to be challenged with loneliness and isolation greater than I’ve ever experienced. I won’t be able to text my parents during the day and get a snappy reply, I’ll have to plan calls ahead of time, I’ve never had to do that before. Years ago, I went on a trip to China with my 8th grade Chinese class and I didn’t have much communication back home then either, but I was surrounded by my English speaking classmates and a nice teacher that was constantly checking in on us. I’m mostly alone on this journey, and that’s scary.

Mt. Fuji from the air

But I also hope to learn how to overcome fears like this and be able to go on more adventures after this one.

Welcome to Kansai Airport, Osaka

Kansai-ben (Shelby)

I’d heard from many people before I came to Kansai Gaidai that if I went there, I would have to deal with Kansai-ben. I didn’t think much of it, it’s just more Japanese that I would have to learn, or at least get used to, right? So far, that’s mostly how it’s been-- I’ve listened to how people speak, and while some things took longer to figure out, and sometimes an explanation, I figured out the common expressions they use here. I also learned that many students here, or at least many of the ones that I’ve talked to, aren’t from the area and don’t know Kansai-ben.

Kansai Region

A couple of the first words/phrases I heard and noticed were うち (uchi) and ~へん (hen). For the longest time, I could not figure out why people were saying うち. The only thing I could think of when they said it was “house,” and that made no sense at all, making it hard for me to follow the rest of what they said. It wasn’t until a day in Japanese class, several weeks in, that I learned うち is used in the same way as 私 (watashi). After that, things made so much sense since I wasn’t focused on the thought, “What does any of this have to do with a house?”

I had a much easier figuring out when people used へん at the end of their verbs. This was mainly thanks to a lot of context-heavy situations when people didn’t understand either what I was trying to say or they just didn’t know an answer to a question. Then they would use 分からへん (wakarahen) instead of 分からない (wakaranai). It still took a long time to puzzle it out, but I was able to do it myself.

Kansai-ben examples

Since I’ve been here, I haven’t really heard anyone talk about Kansai-ben, other than to say that they don’t know it. The people who do know it, as I mentioned in another post (I think), don’t seem to know which words are Kansai-ben and which are “standard” Japanese. In a way, as Furukawa-sensei mentioned during a recent class, this is kind of a way in which they take pride in their dialect-- they don’t have the same kind of boundaries that those with other dialects in Japan do. They don’t try to speak “standard” Japanese to people because they either don’t feel a need to or don’t know the difference in what they’re saying to what is considered “standard.”

Osaka History Museum (Keaton)

When I started school at Kansai Gaidai, everyone received a booklet which allows free admission to many museums in the Osaka area. With one of the selected prompts being a trip to a museum, I thought this is the perfect chance to try it out. I chose to go to the Osaka history museum.

The museum was divided into four levels of exhibits. The first level focuses a lot about artifacts from around the Jomon period through the Yayoi period. This includes tools, dioramas of settlement layouts, and religious practices. The theming gave off a very mysterious vibe. There was mostly dark lighting with music played with very “traditional” sounding instruments of flutes and strings.

One of the displays in the first exhibit.

The second exhibit took place in the Edo period and explained daily life and major event during this time. This part felt most like a story where a Bunraku puppet, named Naniwaya, explained every part of the exhibit in an upbeat tone. The last exhibit was about the “Great Osaka Era.” This part is advertised as a look at modern and contemporary Osaka. This floor has large replicas of trains and markets from an early 1900 time frame.

The large set for "The Age of Greater Osaka"

I felt like the story that was being told in this museum is a very positive one. First off, the names for exhibits are grand titles like “The Age of Great Distribution” or “The Age of Greater Osaka”. This also shows in the presentation. Every picture, statue, and cut out has a smile on their face. I had a hard time finding a part of the museum that talked about any negative events or tragedy. This seemed to paint a very nice picture of Osaka, but does not seem to tell both sides of the story. There are also big gaps in eras covered. The museum went from their “ancient” exhibit, to the Edo period, and then to the 1900’s. It feels like there were a lot of events not covered and the museum was very selective in what they presented. Despite my criticisms, I understand that a lot of the presentation is for kids, and it was nice to see the kids engaged in the colorful and extravagant sets they had. And in the end, I am glad that the kids were excited to learn about history.

Places to Find (Shelby)

Two weekends ago, October 13 and 14, I met with Furukawa-sensei in Kyoto. After we went to various places for those two days, Furukawa-sensei sent us on our way to find somewhere we hadn’t been yet. There are no shortage of places to visit in Kyoto-- places for tourists, history buffs, or just places you can happen upon by chance. For me, I wasn’t thinking about going to a well-known place that people are likely to know or can easily look up. While those places are important and often nice places to visit, I opted to take another route in finding a place to go, one that I preferred to be on the way back to Hirakata City. Thus, I took to Google Maps to decide for me, and I chose a temple at random to find and visit.

My decision took me to Tobakaido station. From what I saw of the town and the size of the station, the town is likely small and relatively unknown to tourists. I saw few people there and only two foreigners. That being said, from the station, it took roughly 3-5 minutes to walk to the temple I had chosen. Based on what I saw of the town, I wasn’t expecting a large temple, but what I found was even more out of the realm of what I expected; in fact, I almost walked right past it. It was right in between two housing complexes, with one stone post and a wall that you would expect to see at a temple. While I can’t read what was on the stone post, I’m assuming it had something to do with the temple.

Post by the temple entrance

The temple wasn’t really a temple at all-- it was a small space in between the houses around it, where a small, orange altar had been set up. That was all. There were no people, but there were bikes, likely belonging to the people who lived in the houses whose front doors were right next to the small altar. I could tell that it was visited at least kind of frequently, as there were cups that I guessed were offerings on the altar.

Temple gate

I wouldn’t say that I was disappointed in my choice of actions, but I was very surprised that such a small temple would show up on Google Maps. I know, just from going from my house to school, that there are small places like that everywhere in Japan that you can walk past a hundred times before you realize it’s a shrine. I assumed that it was probably just a neighborhood temple.

Site Discovery in Kyoto (Keaton)

For my field notes, I looked at Nishiki-Tenmangu shrine. Strangely, this was not my first choice in selecting a site to research. I decided to look do my report on this place because of its surprising appearance. The shrine itself is in the middle of a busy shopping district with an arcade, samurai museum, and Wendy’s just a few feet away. While in the middle of this chaos, Nishiki-Tenmangu is behind an open gate which feels like it takes you to another world.

What you see when you walk in

Unlike the rest of the shopping district, the shrine is outside, and like many other places like it, Nishiki-Tenmangu has all the materials most other shrines have: hand washing station, omamori for sale, and ema. The ema, which people write hopes and dreams on, were the most interesting. Since the shrine is right in the middle of a tourist heavy area, there were many ema written in non-Japanese languages. While there were some ema written in various European and Asian languages, about one-fifth all the ema were written in english. From reading the Eenglish ones, I found that most wished for general things like good health and a happy future.

The shrine also has unique characteristics that set it apart from shrines that I have seen in the past. One of the first attributes I notices was the brass bull towards the entrance of the shrine. I saw many times during my visit the bull getting touched and rubbed. It is clear that it is a common occurence from the obvious color change on the statue’s head. Other unique features I spotted were two machines near the head of the shrine. One machine was a robot Kamishibai that told a story by selecting different pictures for each part. The other machine took me a while to understand, but eventually, I saw that it was a fortune teller that uses a mechanical dragon to pick a fortune out of a bowl.

The fortune telling robot also comes with English fortunes 

This place is on of the shrines for Tenjin, a kami for studying. While some may use this shrine for that purpose, I found no English ema about this topic. This may be because of the high amount of tourists that visit this shrine. The shrine does contain many resources for english visitors. This includes detailed maps of the shrine, warning signs, and instructions on shrine etiquette. The shrine seems overall welcoming to tourists, and it is nice to see a shrine that welcomes both the local and the visitor.

Student Lounge (Shelby)

One place that I go almost every day of the week is the student lounge in the center for international education on campus. The room is large, with many chairs, tables, and couches, and a large wall in the back showing the time for various places of the world. International students and native Japanese students alike come to the lounge to hang out, do homework, recruit people for events, or take naps. Some people even use the building next to the lounge, where there are large, reflective windows, to practice dancing. I, personally, like to watch them sometimes while I’m there.

People use it as a mutual meeting ground when they need to meet up with someone or get a group together because almost everyone knows where it is. Often times, the Japanese students who are not part of the study abroad prep program go to the lounge to find students that can help them correct their English homework or help them with a project. I’ve been approached by several girls who have asked me to help them correct papers or understand a part of their class reading. Just recently, I was asked by a trio of students in a Japanese linguistics group to help them with a project where they have to teach someone ten Japanese words, so they decided that they would teach me ten words of the Kansai dialect. I was also asked by a few people if I was interested in participating in field trips or volunteer activities.

Volunteer Opportunity Flier from Last Week

The student lounge provides a unique dynamic on the campus, as it is not an exclusive area for international students or students who want to study and it’s not a place where there are any particular set of expectations. People are loud, they play games, do homework, nap, or just do whatever they want to do. Japanese students seem to go there to hang out with other Japanese students rather than to meet international students, which I find surprising, as it’s probably one of the most densely populated places in terms of where international students go. And, as someone who has the chance to sit in the lounge for extended periods of time, mainly over lunch, it’s interesting to see the amount of people who come to the lounge to eat lunch. As soon as lunch is over, the room quickly empties and becomes incredibly quiet. And even then, when people are in class or eating lunch, there’s almost always people dancing outside.

Japan’s Gashapon (Keaton)

When looking at what I was consuming here in Japan, the gashapon, or gacha, is a strange decision I settled on. This is because I have not been buying a lot of gachas (compared to my friends anyway), but I believe this is not the only thing involved in the culture of gachas.

First off, gashapons are small dispensers that give out a small item depending on the gacha you use. These items range from small magnets that cost around a 100 yen to a modest size figure that can cost around around 500 yen. These little machines can be found almost anywhere and can be found in groups. While you find a lot of these in groups of around six, there are some places that can contain rows and rows of these dispensers.

Example of a typical gacha station.

America also has gacha, but on a smaller scale. Supermarkets may have a small candy or bouncy ball dispenser near the entrance that costs 25 cents, but Japanese gacha give off a different feel. The items you get from gacha differs depending on the machine; however, most of the gachas are anime related. By appealing to fandoms, Japanese gashapon gain more incentive to buy than a 25 cent bouncy ball. Not only this, but the items you receive are quality products you could buy at comic stores like keychains and pins.

One of the items I was able to get.

But like I said, I have not purchased from a lot of gacha, but I still feel like I am a consumer unlike some customers I have watched which come to machines with a cup of 100 yen hellbent on getting the one they want. For me, like the gambling high of getting the right keychain, there is also a high in finding the right machine to use. Since gashapon cover many properties, there is always new gacha to find, and finally finding the one with the show that you like is a exhilarating feeling. I even biked an hour out of my way to just use the gacha because my friend told me of a gacha I was looking for.

Gacha are more than just a machine on the side of the street. However small they may be, the nicknacks you can get from gashapon can be a way to show off your interests for just a small small price. While the item may be nice, finding the gacha you have been searching for is half the fun. While I do not buy a lot, I am always waiting to find the the one gacha that will make my day.

Adjusting to a New Home (Keaton)

When I got to Japan, I knew nothing about my surroundings and knew I had to start from scratch. Because of my unfamiliarity, a daily victory only took my ability to walk from point A to point B. Even when I moved again from my dorm to my host family, I found myself worried about getting lost in the new maze-like surroundings I was living in. After a while, I was able to switch off that survival mode, really take a look at my surroundings, and discover new locations that were off the path or just hidden from my peripheral view.

When I first started to leave my temporary home in the dorm, I found that the local convenience stores were most important to know. Since we were not given any meals, it was up to the students to supply meals for the first week. This led to me finding cheap meals at convenience stores. After multiple trips, the path to each store was paved more and more in my head. While I felt confident about these destinations, I felt I was not truly exploring. I knew where I came from and where I was going, but I completely ignored everything in between.

Once I started the first week of school orientation, I started to stray off the necessary path. My mental map did not necessarily gain new paths, but instead, gained branches off the main path I was using often. I would go a few blocks to the south to find an arcade that was hidden by a few rows of tall apartments. I would go a few blocks west to find a small restaurant that was only visible by looking at google maps. Even buildings on my main path have revealed secrets, like a karaoke bar tucked away with a not-so flashy exterior.

One of many karaoke bars I have walked past.

After moving to my host family, I felt like I had to start the process again. However, I found that I did not have to. Once I discovered my bike route for traveling to school, all I did was add to the long main path I already had engraved in my memory. I still feel like there is work to be done to be completely confident in my surroundings. While I know the way to my school, I know almost nothing about the maze-like surroundings of my host neighborhood. My host family lives in a small house that is connected to a long and winding row of similar houses that makes it hard to find my way back home.

The street right outside my door.

After looking at the mental map I constructed over these two weeks, I notice how much the city changes once you go farther in any direction. Some places get heavily populated quickly, while others quickly turn into a shopping district. However, the more I move away from the center of my map, the more the city stops looking like a cluster of different neighborhoods and starts looking like a singular community that flows together seamlessly. With each passing day, I am feeling more and more familiar with this new neighborhood of mine.

Where Am I and How Did I Get Here? (Shelby)

Honestly speaking, I am a person with no sense of direction. I can’t read maps very well, probably because I can’t tell how far away something is even if you tell me, “It’s about 200 feet to your right.” I can’t visualize how far away 200 feet is unless you tell me that something, like a building or other landmark, is at the 200 feet mark. The only way that I can navigate even my home town and the areas around it is by visual cues. I know that I have to turn at the road with that specific pothole to get to my house. I have to take the exit with the terrible landscaping to get to Walmart. So when I’m dropped somewhere where I’ve never been before and have to find my way around, it takes a lot of time and a lot of mistakes to figure out the best route.

Creating my own maps made me really think and focus on the things that were around me. Over time, I would have remembered those places, like the super markets and the conbinis, but it would have taken a lot longer for me to remember where they were in association to everything else. At first, everything was overwhelming. I didn’t seem to ever know exactly where I was or where exactly I was supposed to go. There wasn’t anyone who really spoke English that could help me, and my Japanese isn’t good enough to fully understand if someone tells me how to go somewhere. I felt out of place, like I would never be able to find my way around, use the bus, or get anywhere new. After a week or so, I’d managed to figure out the bus, though. And I recognized the streets and stores that led to and were around my campuses.

First map attempt.

This all changed when I moved out of the university housing and into my host mother’s house. Right after learning the route to get to campus, I was suddenly thrust into a completely different side of the city in a very twisty neighborhood. Thankfully, I wasn’t alone in this move. Even though my host mother gave us maps and highlighted and explained the easiest routes for us to take to get to campus, I wouldn’t have been able to get there by myself. At least, not without using Google Maps the whole way. My housemate can read the maps and was able to recognize parts of the route much faster than I was, allowing us to find a quick route to campus. Without her help, I would have had a very tough time finding my way to campus, or I would have already spent a small fortune on bus fare.

The first place I learned how to get to.

I don’t really feel like a “part” of the city yet, but I think I’ll start to soon enough.

Perspective as you Grow (Shelby)

When I originally thought about studying abroad, I thought about it in terms of learning about an entire culture during my time there. I thought that I would be able to increase my language ability through simple exposure. But after studying, not only Japanese and Japanese history, but everything that I’ve studied so far, I’ve realized that my view of studying abroad, and really studying anywhere, was very superficial.

Akita Prefecture Kiritampo

While I will be able to learn more about Japanese culture, I will be mainly in one corner of Japan, where they have their own nuances of Japanese life and language. They have their own history, important places, landmarks, and ways of living. I’ve come to realize in my two years of college that I want to learn these things. I want to learn what aspects of history the Kansai region focuses on, what places and daily habits are unique to them. I want to learn the differences between the “standard” Japanese and the infamous Kansai-ben.

Grasshopper

None of these things will give up their secrets without a little work on my part. Not only will it be necessary to seek the histories and landmarks out on my own, but I have to overcome the language barrier I face in order to understand the importance of these things. Even with what I have learned before coming here language wise, it is a very different than what is used in everyday life.

As I Set Out on this Journey (Keaton)

As I set out on this journey, I look forward to the exercises I will have and the skills I will learn.

Coming from a small city in Wisconsin, moving to Osaka, Japan will feel different from what I am used to. The city, along with the college, is much bigger than my hometown of Neenah, Wisconsin and my collegetown of Beloit, Wisconsin. Size is not the only aspect that is different. Food, transportation, and laws will all change when I move there. While I have been to larger cities before, this will be the first time I will stay there for an extended period of time. I am looking forward to discovering the town and adjusting to this larger home. While living in a big city is one thing, living in a foreign country is another. I have never traveled to a foreign country before, so living in one for five months is nerve-rattling to say the least. Everything from the plane ride to living with a host family, will be completely new to me, but I can not wait to start.

During my time in Japan, I plan to improve on different aspects of my work-in-progress language. I hope to grow in parts of Japanese that I struggle with, like speaking and listening. At the same time, my more comfortable skills, reading and writing, will be tested in their native and modern environment. While living with a host family and talking with a speaking partner, I will be able to exercise these trouble spots more often. I will also become more comfortable with everyday encounters like asking for directions and ordering food. While this comfort level will take a while to achieve, I will try my best to feel challenged while enjoying this new experience I am grateful for having.

With the support from my peers and my family, I am going halfway across the world to gain new experiences and improved skills to grow as a person. Wish me luck!




Taken on the bus from the airport. I'm not used to mountains and ocean, either!

Nandeyanen!? (Ethan)

While in Japan, I’ve learned many new things about the language.  I’ve learned a lot of new grammar, kanji (Chinese characters), and vocabulary.  Of all the things I’ve learned, one, which can’t be learned in a normal class, is Kansai-ben.  Kansai-ben, or Kansai dialect, is one of the many regional dialects in Japan.  Because I go to school in the Kansai region, this is the dialect I’m exposed to the most. 

Map of Japan showing all the regions.

I’ve learned Kansai-ben from many of my Japanese friends.  There’s never a particular type of situation in which they bring up Kansai-ben, they just always teach me a new one here and there.  We’re typically having a casual conversation and the person I’m talking to will use a word I don’t know and then explain to me that it’s Kansai-ben.  I often don’t have to ask about the word, as it’ll be explained to me before I ask.  On a few occasions, however, I’ve also had to ask about particular words and phrases.

 I find it interesting that all of my friends from the Kansai region seem happy to teach me Kansai-ben.  Friends from Osaka, Kyoto, Wakayama, and various other places in the area all use and teach me Kansai-ben.  Sometimes, though, I wonder how much particular words are actually used.  There are certain phrases I hear pretty frequently, but I don’t typically hear some words that I’ve been taught.  Regardless of use, people want to teach me Kansai-ben and I think it’s connected to a sense of pride in where people come from.  To some extent, I understand this, and I enjoy teaching people unique words from my region as well.  Recently, I even had a conversation with a friend in which we were exchanging special words from our regions.

Map of Kansai and all of the places it includes

I try to use a little bit of Kansai-ben here and there and I’ll try to throw in my most recently learned word to a conversation but it can be hard.  It feels a little awkward to use Japanese that I didn’t learn in class, but my friends seem to be encouraging and always happy to hear and use Kansai-ben.

*The title of this post is a popular Kansai-ben phrase and roughly means “What the heck!?”

Note: The map of Japan came from http://www.jref.com/articles/regions-of-japan.154/ and the map of Kansai came from http://traverseworld.com/Kyoto_and_Kansai-japan/