My Long Post

Pedaling home from the grocery store in the 7:30 dark, torrents of rain cooling me off but soaking my recent purchases nestled in my front and back baskets, I thought to myself: This is my life now. I live in Munadaka-machi, a small suburb north of Takasaki. I sleep on a pile of futons every night stacked up on a tatami mat floor. I buy my groceries at Saty and at the international market because I need bagels, tortillas, and olive oil. This is what I do now!

I bike 10 minutes downhill to school every morning and 20 minutes up, and I’ll do that until I get a car in a couple of weeks (I can rent one for about $150/month if I don’t mind learning how to drive on the left side of the road). Bus fare is ungodly expensive (400 yen ~ $4.50 one way to the train station, so any time I have to go downtown, which is often, it costs about $10.00). The trains are much cheaper (about $1.50 or $2.00 for the same trip that on the bus is twice that) but inconvenient for me, since I live a long way from the train station! My life now is so different from the past year at 107 Kensington, where I had a huge house to spread out in, transportation, a cell phone, and free wireless hotspots all over the city (not to mention all my friends!).

I never thought I’d be so reliant on external communication, but it’s all I want right now! Without a car, reliable, consistent internet service, or a cell phone, I am suddenly 13 again, relying on everyone else to take me places and contact me. I have managed to navigate the bus system fairly well (Aeon Mall  Takasaki or Maebashi Station, Stations  Aeon Mall) except that one time when I took the wrong bus and ended up on the other side of the town with no way of explaining myself to the driver. (It ended up okay, but only after I shed a few tears of impotence. How do you say, “What should I do?” in Japanese, anyway?) I can get around my neighborhood on a bike, as long as I don’t mind getting wet if it rains, which I actually don’t, since it’s so hot here! But I can’t go buy a microwave or a sofa without help, and I hate the feeling of not being able to move freely, or to call someone and see if they want to hang out.

If I want to use the internet, I have to take my laptop to Starbucks, where they charge me by the minute, or use the computer at school, which has limited access (for some reason, Yahoo Mail is blocked but I can check Facebook). I guess that’s one of the misconceptions I had about Japan: I thought everywhere would have free wireless and that I could connect any time I wanted. Shows what I know. Maybe I’m in the Warren County of Japan, just with a higher population. This disconnection will not last forever, though: as soon as I have my sweet iPhone4 in my hands and am streaming episodes of Lost from Hulu on my high-speed fiber-optic cable internet, I will feel a lot better.

I am happy to be meeting a lot of cool people, though. I have plans to have dinner in Maebashi tomorrow night with my three new girlfriends, which is exciting.

I’ve also gotten a lot of help from my predecessor, who hung around a little more to get all of his stuff shipped off and to make sure that I knew what was going on. I spent today with him, his mom, and his host mom from years back. We had a fantastic Japanese lunch in a special restaurant where there were both inside shoes and bathroom shoes. Then we drove up to the hill that the famous goddess lives. She is imposingly tall as she stares at you through closed eyes, but Adam and I ran up the stairs anyway and viewed Takasaki from hundreds of meters up. According to legend, girls should never bring their boyfriends to this park, because the goddess gets jealous and makes them break up (watch out, ladies….).

I also went to the Maebashi fireworks festival last Saturday with three other JETs (or ALTs, however you want to call us). We took the right bus, but missed our stop completely, so we had to backtrack a while before the found the right festival. Luckily, though, the city bus drivers communicate, and when we got on the bus going in the other direction, the driver immediately asked us if we were going to the festival. He didn’t even charge us for the extra lift! I wonder what the other driver told him. . . . watch out for the group of loud gaijin trying to get to the fireworks? It’s not as scary getting lost with a group of people, especially when two of them speak fairly decent Japanese; the problem is getting lost alone and being helpless!

The fireworks were beautiful, but very long—maybe two hours of explosions. There were cool fireworks that exploded into smiley faces, cat faces, and flowers, just like in Takasaki. There were so many people there I couldn’t count them all and it was really fun! Afterwards, my friends and I were talking and some Japanese people overheard us. They were all pretty drunk but one more so than the others. He kept speaking in English to us loudly, and trying to get us to say what I think was a bad word in Japanese (we refused). It took about 45 minutes to walk back to Alice’s apartment, but we made it! The next day we had breakfast at Joyfull’s (yes, with 2 l’s) which consisted of a hamburger patty and rice for me, and miso soup and vegetables for the other girls. Where is Waffle House when you need it?! Or Jan’s House!

Living here is exciting, frightening, adventurous, scary, and wonderful, and I feel thrilled, sad, homesick, elated, competent, and incapable—all at once! Some days I feel happier than others. Some days I want to scream, “Quit staring at me! Or at least talk to me!” I’ve been sleeping great at night and I think it has something to do with the waking up at 6:45 and the 30 minutes or an hour of biking every day. (I am going to have some sexy legs soon!) I am falling into a groove, and I think as soon as I establish a real schedule—school, home, friends, etc.—then I’ll feel much better.

Thanks for being interested in my life; I hope it’s as scintillating as you’d hoped. I’ll try to put up more pictures on Facebook soon.

P.S. I missed my bus from Maebashi to Takasaki, so I'm spending the night with my friend Amy in Maebashi. I'm going to be late to work on my 4th day. That is not cool. At least it's the summer and there aren't a lot of people around...