Introductions

Continuing on a theme from a previous post, I thought I’d reproduce more of my e-mails from Japan. By the time I started this blog up, it was my 3rd year in Japan and I was passed the wide eyed stage of wonder that filled my early e-mails, so I thought it might be interesting to reproduce them here.
Most of the e-mails are part of a correspondence and contain a lot of references to things outside of general interest to a 3rd party (discussions of movies and politics, references to questions and mutual friends, etc), so I’ve gone through and clipped different parts from different e-mails and tried to make it into one piece.

8/9/01...I live in a one room apartment, not much bigger than a dorm room, but it suits my needs just fine. And it’s furnished very nicely. My predecessor left several things behind that were above and beyond what we agreed upon. I imagine it was because he didn’t have room to pack it, but it works out nice for me. He left a stereo, several CDs, a play station and games, books, videos for the VCR, and even a bag of small change (small coins and stuff mostly, but I think it adds up to the yen equivalent of a few dollars).

I don’t know when school starts yet. Right now is still summer break. I have to come into the office every day, even though there is nothing for me to do. The Japanese place a high value on team play, and such, so it is important that I show up even with nothing to do. I imagine this could get boring if extended for a few weeks (which hopefully it won’t be) but right now I don’t mind too much. I just do e-mail or practice my Japanese.

My co-workers are pretty cool. No one speaks very good English, but a couple of them speak broken English. Most of them are quite a bit older, but one of the guys is just a few years older than me. He took me out last night with his friends. It was a lot of fun. Nobody’s English was very good, and my Japanese is pretty much non-existent, but we still managed to have a few laughs. I tried to pronounce everybody’s names, and they laughed at my inability to do it.

I got introduced to the everyone in the town hall yesterday. It was kind of weird, and very formal. We’d go into a room, and everyone would stand up, and the director would rattle off an introduction about me in Japanese, which I didn’t understand. I kept hearing the word “Protest” being used in reference to me, and I thought, “Boy, they’ve really got my number. How in the world did they know that?” But then I finally figured out they were talking about my religion, and introducing me as a Protestant. Language can be a funny thing.

About the British friends: I haven’t been to Europe as of yet, so this is really my first introduction to British culture. I have a hard time taking anything they say seriously with that accent. I just kept thinking of Monty Python. Did you have that when you went to England? Does that feeling go away after a semester?