Aug. 9, 2001 E-mail from Japan

(Retrospection)

Continuing on a theme from a previous retrospection, 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).
[Editors note: Much later, in a couple years, I would discover my predecessor wasn’t quite as generous as he first appeared to be. I had paid him $300 for the furniture and TV in the room, only to discover it belonged to the Board of Education, and wasn’t his to sell...But that’s another story]

I don’t know when school starts yet. Right now is still summer break. I have to come into the office everyday, 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 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?

Useless Wikipedia Fact
National Comics Publications v. Fawcett Publications, (1952), was a twelve-year legal battle between DC Comics (then known as National Comics) and the Fawcett Comics division of Fawcett Publications, concerning Fawcett's Captain Marvel character being an infringement on the copyright of DC's Superman comic book character. It is notable as one of the longest running legal battles in comic book publication history.
In 1980, DC bought the rights to the Fawcett characters outright, and in 1987 relaunched the character in a miniseries, Shazam!: The New Beginning. Captain Marvel has not proven to be a modern-day success for DC to the degree it had been for Fawcett. As a recurring inside-joke, DC often writes Captain Marvel and Superman as battling opponents.

Link of the Day
Mary Hulst has a post on what the typical Calvin student is like. Sound famalier to anyone?