A soccer filled weekend

I got up around 8:30 on Saturday, June 21, and found myself with a good bit of free time before the plans I had that afternoon. So, after breakfast, I decided to go for a walk. I had no particular destination in mind, so I just went where my feet took me. Walking in Japan can be kind of harrowing, because even some of the busier streets don't have sidewalks. This entails cars/bikes/buses passing you at an uncomfortably close distance. This picture doesn't show it too well, but...

I kept walking down the street I had taken the time I rode my bike downtown with my host dad. Eventually, I found myself near Sendai station in the heart of downtown. This meant I had covered quite a distance, and I wasn't wearing the right kind of shoes for the job. I decided to turn back when I realized they were starting to rub against my skin in a quite painful way. Had I been thinking, I would have taken the subway home, but walking back didn't end up being all that terrible. Overall, it was a really great way to see some of the city on my own. I ended up walking for about 3 straight hours.

After lunch, I got ready headed over to my host grandpa's house to head out for the afternoon. Ah, I haven't even mentioned my him yet, have I? Well, he lives about a 3 minute walk from my host family's house and comes by decently often. When my host mom told him I spoke Japanese, he simply accepted it as fact and talked as he would normally, with dialect and all. This makes him kind of difficult to understand sometimes, but most of the time it's no problem. He's really into soccer and even plays on a 70-plus team. This is one of the most hardcore things I had heard in a while. Anyway, that day he and I were going to help at a U12 soccer team's practice. He had helped out before, and he wanted to take me along.

Japanese youth teams all practice on surfaces like the one you see above, which is basically just compacted sand. I introduced myself to the team, leading them to all just kind of stand there with their mouths open in bewilderment. Practice started, and it was my turn to be surprised. These kids were 4th-6th graders, and they were better than at least half of my high school soccer team. No lie. I was really impressed with the skill that some of them displayed.

The last part of practice was a scrimmage with three teams that would change out as one of the other teams lost. I was on the team with all the adults at the practice, and it was a lot of fun playing. I managed to avoid getting burned by any of the kids, thankfully. Overall, a great experience.

The next day, my host parents and I went to a professional soccer game! The home team, Vegalta Sendai, vs. Tokyo Vindi. Why both teams' names start with "v", a sound that doesn't exist in Japanese, is a mystery to me. But a game between Begaruta and Bindii is something you don't want to pass up. There are actually two soccer stadiums in town. One is in Izumi-ku, pretty close to Itoyokado, and the other is a bit more on the outskirts of town. This game was at the second stadium, which is quite huge. It was one of the venues of the 2002 World Cup. Look at my host dad rock that USC shirt.

There were about 12,000 people at the game. At one end of the stadium were the hardcore Vegalta fans, who kept chanting and waving flags the entire game. At the other end were the Tokyo Vindi fans who had come up all the way from Tokyo to cheer on their team. These fans' dedication rivals that of those of Toronto FC. It was really great.

It rained a bit at the end of the game, but nothing unbearable. Despite a scoreless first half, the second half saw 4 goals, with the game ending in a 2-2 tie.

While waiting in the long line of cars to get out the stadium, I found out that the screen in the car is not only a CD player and GPS system, but also a functioning television.

After the game, we stopped by Coop and I got an Engrish shirt. Then, we went home and had a delicious meal of homemade ramen. I was, as my mother would say, one happy camper.

A couple more things from Friday, June 20

I realized I forgot to mention my trip to Book Off in the last post. Last week, I asked Eva where she recommended that I buy books in Sendai, and her immediate response was, "Book Off!"

Book Off is a large store of discount books, movies, CDs, clothes, surfboards (seriously), etc. To a Japanese learner who usually has extremely limited access to such materials in Japanese, it was like paradise. Books for only 100 yen! Movies for 500 yen! Crayon Shin Chan manga! I walked away with quite a bit of merchandise that day.

The ride home from Book Off was also quite interesting, as we stumbled across a couple of neat places. First, there was this little shrine hidden away from the busy street that we almost passed right by. It was, of course, very cool and Japanese-y.

We also almost passed by this long staircase that led up to....well, at the time, we didn't know what. We ascended the stairs and found it led to a pretty steep path up a large hill. It was very peaceful, and we found ourselves surrounded by dense foliage even though we were in one of the busier parts of town.

Upon reaching the top, we were treated with a great view from a little structure that was built up there.

On the way home, we stopped by a store for some snacks, and found a bottle of whiskey that cost $1000. wooooo

That night, after yet another delicious dinner, I gave my host family the present I had brought for them. They really liked the shirts, and it turns out my host sister loves beef jerky. They liked everything else, as well. I was really glad that I could give them a little something after all they had done (and were still to do) for me.

Week 1 - School, mostly

Man, it's hard to find the time to update this. I'll try to bring you guys up to date on what I've been up to.

Monday was my first day of school. I'm going to a school called, no lie, Touhoku Seikatsu Bunka Daigaku Koutougakkou. It has about 1000 kids, making it quite big for a Japanese school.

It takes about 15 minutes to ride my bike to school, and, despite the killer hills, it's a nice ride. The first day, however, my host mom took me in the car. Upon arriving, we talked for a bit with the principal and vice principal. They introduced me and the other exchange YFU exchange student at my school, Rebecca, to a year exchange student from Lithuania whose name is Eva. Being European and all, she's fluent in English. Next, I went to my class, 2-9. I walked in to a lot of stares, whispering, and giggling. I gave a self-introduction in front of the class, which induced a few head explosions (what I call how Japanese people react when a gaijin speaks Japanese at a level above beginner). They had a desk prepared for me in the back of the classroom. I sat down, and classes started. Learned some biology words and a bit about ancient Japanese poetry.

What were fun, though, were the periods of free time between classes (which are about 10 minutes). I talked some to the guy next to me, and then a group of about 6 girls came up and started asking me a bunch of questions. That was fun. Those six and this one guy, Onomasa, have become my best friends in the class. You may think that male/female ratio is strange, but what's strange is this: in my class of about 30, there are only about 7 guys. I have yet to discover the reason.

We had gym before lunch, so everyone started changing into their gym clothes...in the classroom. This kind of surprised me, but changing into gym clothes just entails putting a different shirt over the undershirt of the school uniform, so nothing explicit. You also have to change shoes. This brings me to the interesting topic of shoes in Japan. You need a lot of them: shoes to go to school in, shoes to wear in school, shoes to wear outside for gym, shoes to wear inside for gym, slippers to walk around the house in, different slippers to put on when in the bathroom in the house, etc. Never in my life have I taken of my shoes so many times a day. But, I digress.

The guys went outside for gym that day, which entails going to the guraundo (ground). This is basically a large sand/dirt surface on which all sports have practices. I didn't have a change of clothes, so I figured I wouldn't participate that day. So, I was a little surprised when the first thing I had to do was 30 push ups in the dirt. I heard the guys muttering behind me, "dakara motenase ttsuno", which is kind of like, "Come on, welcome your guests." Luckily, I didn't have to take part in the activity of the day (baseball), so my uniform only got slightly dirty. I spent the rest of the time talking with one of the gym teachers, which was fun. I went back to the classroom and it was lunch time. My host mom packs me a delicious bentou every day, for which I'm eternally grateful. We eat lunch in the classroom and someone always turns on music, so it's pretty fun. I talked some more with people in the class. In the afternoon, there was one more regular class, and then an hour and a half art class. Turns out I'm in a class that specializes in art. I'm not to into doing artsy stuff, but I figured it could be fun. We went to a pottery class that day, which was pretty cool. Made a few, um, pots.

I sat next to Onomasa, which was pretty funny. He kept saying stuff about the guy across the table like, "Hee izu derukkusu gayee" (he is deluxe gay). The other guy would respond, and they'd go back and forth for a while, which was quite amusing.

The school day came to an end around 3:30. Then the cleaning started. As I'm sure many of you are aware, Japanese schools don't have janitors. The students do the cleaning. It's not bad, though; we were done in about 10 minutes. I stayed around and talked for a while, then headed out. On the way home, I bought some wagashi (japanese sweets) at a supermarket. I do love red bean. I think I'll be doing that every week.

No connection with anything else: my host mom just had a phone conversation that consisted of her saying "hai" 19 times in a row. True story.

Anyway, there were tests the rest of the week, so we three exchange students spent those days in the library. Here's how pretty much every day went: we went to the library first thing in the morning, worked on this art project they gave us, talked, ate lunch at 12:30, and left school. A couple of the days we watched American movies in Japanese thanks to the English teacher from Montreal, Bouchard-sensei. He is such an awesome guy. He is incredibly helpful and fun to talk to. On top of that, he speaks excellent Japanese. Khatz would be proud.

After school every day, Rebecca, Eva, and I did some fun things. One day, we went to this huge mall called Itoyokado. I bought a couple of Harry Potter books and experienced my first taiyaki in Japan. mmm taiyaki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiyaki) Another day, we went to karaoke. That was incredibly fun. It was Rebecca, Eva, Sora, Kailee, two Japanese guys and I (Sora and Kailee are the two other YFU exchange students in Sendai). We sang for 4 hours! The best part: before 6:00, it costs only 10 yen an hour. Add one mandatory drink and you get 4 hours of karaoke fore 340 yen. You could also bring in all the snacks and drinks you wanted, so we had a veritable mountain of snack items on the table in the room. It was truly great. Oh, Susi, I suddenly had a sister who was really into Arashi, if you know what I mean.

One of those nights, I also visited the kindergarten where my host mom used to work. It's a pretty unique place because almost all of the teachers are gaijin (foreigners). Kids go to this school until the 4th grade and half to all of the instruction is in English. It's a child's paradise. There are waterfalls, tons of slides, a horse, bunnies running around, etc. It was a very interesting experience. (I'm just giving a basic overview of things because I'm pretty behind)

On Friday, I went back to the class and talked with some of my classmates. There was an earthquake drill, and this gave me a lot of time to talk with people. That was fun, and those 6 girls I mentioned earlier invited me to kaitenzushi (sushi conveyor belt) and purikira sometime the next week. I was (and still am) really enjoying myself.

There's so much I left out in this post, but it's a pretty good overview. This post brings us up to Friday, June 19. Today is Wednesday, June 24. Eh, not bad.

The first couple of days in Sendai

After having tea with everyone at the station, my and Rebecca's families took us to an observation deck to see the city we would be living in for the next 6 weeks. Sendai is quite the large city. It really is. (sorry, just reread The Catcher in the Rye. Now I'm reading it in Japanese!) Seriously, though, downtown Sendai actually reminds me a bit of Shinjuku.

After spending a good amount of time at the observation deck (it was my host sister's first time there!), my family and I headed to their house. You think the roads are narrow in Germany? We were centimeters away from every person and car we passed on the ride home. It was a a pretty harrowing experience, but by now I've gotten use to it (writing this about a week later). The house is quite big by Japanese standards. It has a garage at street level and two floors above that. Inside, I'd hazard a guess that it's a pretty normal Japanese house. There are two traditional tatami rooms with sliding doors and all, one of which is my room! haha, I have to duck to get into it.

In the bottom right of the picture of my room, you can see part of the welcome sign they had at the train station.

After showing me around the house, we went to Coop, which is a supermarket. haha, I made a bit of a mistake in the car. The music playing was your regular J-pop/boy-band type music, which is totally fine with me. However, they asked my what kind of music I liked, and the first thing I listed was hip-hop. We finished up the ride to Coop with Hollaback Girl serenading us >.<

For dinner that night, my host dad decided we would have sukiyaki. From wikipedia: Sukiyaki consists of meat (usually thinly sliced beef), or a vegetarian version made only with firm tofu, slowly cooked or simmered at the table, alongside vegetables and other ingredients, in a shallow iron pot in a mixture of soy sauce, sugar, and mirin. Before being eaten, the ingredients are usually dipped in a small bowl of raw, beaten eggs. It was totemo oishii (very delicious) (that's for Caden).

The next morning, I did what any good Wolff would do when he/she finds his/herself in new environment. I went for a long walk around my neigborhood (Mizunomori). By the way, I've found it's pretty amusing to say my adress translated entirely into English: "Me? Oh, I live in the Forest of Water in the Blue Leaf District of Sendai City. No biggie." It's like I'm in Naruto or something.

Had a delicious breakfast.

I always kind of try to hide the fact that I'm taking pictures of the food, but my host mom is always sees and is like, "Go ahead! Go ahead!" teeehee

After breakfast, I set out on a bike ride with my host dad. The original goal was just to go to the school I would be attending, but we ended up being out for about 4 hours. After going to the school, we went to a temple called Rinnouji that's about a 15 minute ride from the house. The temple was incredible, but what really amazed me was the traditional Japanese garden. I took so many pictures. There was also a 茶会 (tea meeting?) at the temple that day, so there were all of these ladies walking around in kimonos. A very cool experience.

Next, we went to a small 和菓子 (wagashi - japanese sweets) shop that sold a certain type of mochi that Sendai is famous for. Its exact name isn't coming to me right now...

We kept riding until we got to downtown Sendai. We went up the street where they do this things called the "Pageant of Lights" in the winter, which is basically a huge display of Christmas lights. There was some event going on downtown and there were a lot of food stands set up, and I tried a couple of things that I had never heard of before. Finally, on the way out of downtown, we ran into this German festival with a beer tent and everything. I found myself forgetting what summer it was.


Oh, someone tell Yuki I ate at Mos Burger. It was better than McDonalds.

Tokyo Day #2 and Arrival in Sendai

We were supposed to get up at 6 the next morning, but most of us ended up getting up earlier beacause of jet lag. Big J turned on the radio, and right away we heard rajio taisou (radio excercises). These are basically light stretches accompanied by a calming piano tune that many (older) people in Japan do every day. See if you can spot the elderly people doing the rajio taisou in the picture above. We had done these in San Jose every morning, so we kind of took part in the hotel room as well.

We had a few choices for breakfast that morning (all of which were free for us :D), but, since we were in Japan and all, we decided on a Japanese restaurant called Kagari that had a breakfast buffet. It was the right choice.

After breakfast, we went to the Tokyo American Center (where pictures are not allowed). There, we listened to 4 people in the foreign service talk about their work for about an hour and a half. This may sound cheesy, but it was something of a life changing experience for me. What they were describing sounded like something I would love to do, and I`m definitely going to consider it as a future occupation.

turns out Tokyo is crowded

Next, the JUSSE and Okinawa Peace Scholars students went to the YFU Japan office to meet ambassador Okawara. We got there, went into a conference room, and listened to the good ambassador speak for a while. However, I`m afraid I didn`t pay too much attention. I was busy going over my little speech again and again in my mind to make sure I had it down! Finally, after about 15 minutes of the ambassador talking, I was called to the front. I gave the speech (remembering too slow myself down ;) ) and presented the plaque. I was quite nervous, but everyone said that it didn`t show. We ate lunch afterwards, and the YFU office had a very nice meal catered for us.

After lunch, we had about an hour to walk around the neighborhood we were in. This was like giving water to a parched man in the desert since we weren`t allowed to leave the hotel to explore. We were in Roppongi, which is one of my lease favorite Tokyo neighborhoods. All the same, though, it as nice to be able to freely walk around.

We got back to the hotel around 4 and just chilled for a while, playing cards in Skyler`s room. Caden left (because his host family lives in Tokyo) a bit after an episode involving him leaving his passport in the room after checking out. After a bento dinner, we decided to go ahead and do karaoke at the place on the 47th floor. So, we got a room with 8 or 9 of us splitting the hourly charge of $84 >.< It was so much fun. From the Backstreet Boys to Seishun Amigo to Kanye West, it all went down with a breathtaking panorama of Tokyo at night right beside us.

The rest of the night was also very fun.

The next day was the day we were to go our separate ways (i.e. go to the cities our host families live in). Everyone was pretty sad about parting, but also excited about finally getting to meet the people who would be their families for the next 6 weeks. 3 other students going to Sendai and I got to go there with the shinkansen (bullet train)! I far prefer traveling by train to traveling by plane because you get to see so much more. What really struck me on the trip was just how far out the Tokyo metropolitan area spreads. It`s not sprawl, in the convential sense, either, as what you continue to see is high density, mixed residential/commercial development. Oh, Susi, I finally read Ender`s game. Yes, it was awesome.

After about two hours, we arrived in Sendai! It was a really great moment, because all of our host families were waiting right on the platform with welcome signs and all that good stuff. After taking a couple pictures, we all went out for tea. I talked a good deal with my host dad and sister. My host dad, Yoshiyuki, is a software engineer at a company called Fujitsu. He really likes basketball and used to play in his younger days. My host sister, Maasa, is 16. She`s going to America for a year-long exchange in August. My host mom had to be somewhere at that time so I didn`t really get to talk to her. My family is really nice.

I`ll try to update this more, btw (seriously, though, it takes a really long time on this computer)