When I'm stuck at work with nothing to do, and without access to a computer, I waste away my time by writing. The majority of it is fairly asinine, but it's an effective way to pass the day. Keep in mind the state I am in when I wrote most of this; extremely bored. Some of it gives insights into Japanese culture, some of it is just horrible ideas that I have that day. So without delaying further, more thoughts, but without access to my computer:
1) I'm very glad that i decided against studying abroad; interning has far more benefits. When you study abroad, you're usually stuck in classes with other study abroad students. This completely ruins my entire point for wanting to travel, which is to be immersed in the culture. At my internship, I'm surrounded by coworkers and am the only intern (as well as the only English speaker). I also get paid, which couldn't happen if I was here on a student visa. This job is moderately an actual job, so I'm not just another English teacher in Japan. This seems to often surprise people; that I'm an American working at an all Japanese company. Finally, through AIESEC, I have a group of friends that know everything about Nagoya, and can easily help me. Plus, we all share the common interest in traveling and wanting to experience other cultures. Studying abroad is too sheltered, and often ruins the chance to truly experience the culture.
2) I gave a variation of the previous speech to a group of incoming freshmen at Nagoya University, in an ad libbed mixture of English and Japanese. I have no idea how much was understood, but it went over well.
3) (I then write 2 pages worth of descriptions on how my handwriting has changed. Not only would it be incredibly boring for most people to read, but without the diagrams and size charts, it's even more confusing. I was really, really bored.)
4) I have an odd relationship with suspense. I will read spoilers for movies or books without a problem, but will not do so for TV shows (ie BSG). I also really enjoy when my phone beeps to tell me that I have an email, but I am unable to check who it is from because I am in a clean room suit. So I get to imagine who it's from until I can take a break or until I head home. Even then, I'll wait until I get on the bus, then finally check. Sometimes, the email is a big waste of my time/suspense (stupid phone company emails). Recently, though, the emails have been from people much more interesting than I had imagined while waiting. The content of these emails have increasingly become better, and put me in a good mood as I quickly change my plans to meet up with the person; so the suspense is worth it.
5) On days that I work with the sales team, I consistently miss the bus to work. I put off shaving and ironing until the morning, sleep in, and always have to check ebay auctions in hopes of finding some missing records. But it really doesn't matter, as I've already been here
1.5 2 3 hours, and have done nothing more than say "good morning" to some people. Maybe I should sleep in even more...
6) I'm fairly proud that I can speak, atleast some, Japanese and use it as much as possible. But I discovered something; if you're intent is to flirt with a girl you haven't met before, the "confused, English-speaking-foreigner" is much more effective than the "confident, but bad at Japanese foreigner." Although encounters stemming from the former tend to remain much more short-termed.
7) I've tried to organize my thoughts on this before, and eventually hope to formally write about it; the prominence of convenience stores within Japan. These stores exist separate from gas stations, which is almost always the case in the US. Ironically, if gas stations here have any sort of building, at most it houses a drink vending machine. The convenience stores here are completely independent, and are everywhere. You can do all the normal stuff: buy food, limited supplies of groceries, magazines, some dvds. But you can also buy concert tickets, bus tickets, pay for online purchases...before I set up direct-withdrawal with my bank, I would go to a convenience store to pay my phone bill.
The prominence of vending machines on every corner encourages the notion of instant gratification, and such places expand on it. These 24-hour havens often provide surprisingly well made food, access to microwaves and hot water dispensers for ramen, as well as a wall of magazines that they have no problem with you standing there reading for hours. If you go by any Japanese convenience store, you will always see atleast 3 people just reading magazines inside. At times, I'll stop in and thumb through one while waiting for a bus. Which may be a reason why convenience stores are so successful. Japan is primarily a place of pedestrian traffic and mass transportation. With people walking/riding their bike/waiting for a bus right in front of the store, it is very easy to entice them inside (opposed to car traffic, which requires more effort to park, then enter the store).
The highways in Japan, from my experience, have primarily been toll roads. This discourages people from exiting, find a restaurant to eat at, then get back on the highway. Instead, they have these hubs of small restaurants/convenience stores/vending machines that cars can access, without exiting the highway area and paying a 2nd toll.
8) I am awful at guessing girls' ages, and being in Japan has done nothing but increase the frequency of these inaccuracies. The enforced uniforms for schools normally keep me from thinking someone is older than she actually is, and whenever I see a school uniform, I immediately know that she is nowhere near the age range of people I like to meet. Mistakes still happen.
After missing my bus, I walked to the larger bus stop to catch another. Diagonal from my own crosswalk, I make eye contact with an attractive girl. Continuing my "smile" experiment, I smile at her, and she smiles back. I play the whole coy "look away, then look back again" act, with success. A slight wave, a quiet laugh and a smile later, I check to see if I have enough time to talk to her before my bus comes. I'm already late, so I start to walk for the adjacent crosswalk, where we would meet on the other side. We both start to cross, when I see that she's wearing a high school uniform. I decide that punctuality is an important workplace virtue, and turn for the bus.
To counter this, and correct my "age karma," I accidentally flirted with a lady atleast 20 years older than me. It all evens out.
9) The prevalence of cellphones in Japan is an odd occurrence. Other than a few rare occasions, high-tech personal computers aren't that common. And despite its image, the general population of Japan aren't particularly gadget savvy. So why is the Japanese mobile phone market one of, if not the, most advanced in the world? I think this stems from similar reasons for Japan's prevalence of convenience stores; Japan's mobile society. Riding trains/buses and waiting for said buses, gives one a lot of free time. Organizing a meeting place also requires active communication, since plans change, trains are missed, etc. Calls are not allowed on public transportation, but emails are. Often, commuters use their phone as a media device. TV, radio, mp3, movies, internet...many people don't own a PC because a phone satisfies all their needs. Japan's street and city layout make absolutely no sense, even to people that live here, so navigation software and applets are commonly found built into phones. Mine came with a Japanese/English dictionary, which has been extremely useful. There is a movement to tie your phone with a debit card, then use the phone to pay for items. With Japan being very cash oriented, this may encourage the widespread use and acceptance of credit cards.
Despite the common use of cellphones, Japan is very peculiar about wireless transmission safety. When around train seats reserved for the elderly, there are signs warning you to turn off your phone, for fear of interfering with pace makers. Very, very few phones in Japan have bluetooth, and with the law requiring a hands free headset while driving, they are all of the wired variety.
10) (4/11) After sitting at my laptop all morning organizing music/fixing my resume/checking news sites, I assume that today is going to be another day of nothing to do. That is until 10:30 comes, when I'm told to grab my stuff; we're going to Shizuoka! It's up in the mountains, so I'm looking forward to a nice road trip through the mountains.
After driving for 4 hours, we drop off a pipe-type object for a customer, turn around, and drive back to Nagoya. 8 hours of driving to talk to customers for...20 minutes at the most. I got a nice long nap in going both ways, although my legs hurt from being squeezed in the car for so long. You can actually see my knees above the dashboard if you are looking through the front windshield. I should find a new book or something. Atleast the mountains were interesting. We went to an area where the entire town is famous for its tea, so there were tea fields everywhere. If you haven't seen a tea field, it's rows and rows of identical looking small, green hedges; almost like waves. We drove by an area where the mountains met the ocean met the green ocean of tea fields. If it wasn't for me getting home an hour late, I would have called it a fairly good day. And if I had time to take pictures. Oh well, next time.
11) I need to get back into the habit of continuing my smile experiment, but I recently became more interested in a different experiment. Until I can think of a better name, I'll dub it the "Touch Experiment." The west is much more...touching(?)...when it comes to other people. We shake hands, hug people on the second time we see them; there's a lot of touching going on. Japan is not so much, with bowing and staying your respective distance from each other. So I'm going to test reactions when I go against this. I'm talking about hugging on re-meets, and more specifically, touching during conversation. I'm curious what the reaction will be when we're laughing, and I gently touch their arm or something. Will they make a connection between laughter and my touch? Or will they just think it's an odd American habit? I guess the judge for the verdict won't be if they accept the touch without moving away/flinching, but if they respond in kind with tactile feedback. It'll either be a great experiment, or I'll just come off as creepy. I can't lose!
