SAPPORO OBSERVATIONS: AN INTRODUCTION

It’s 5:56 a.m. Japan Standard Time, and I’m sitting on my bed (read: bed, not futon) eating an apple and YouTubing Remioromen music videos. It’s easy to forget I’m in another country 13 time zones ahead in a fully furnished, Westernized apartment, even if I’m up at a painfully early time on a Saturday – then I set foot out the door and suddenly it all comes back to me.

Japanese streets are narrow and remind me of American alleyways, only much cleaner and better lit. It’s strange how iconic these streets are. Whenever I watch a Japanese drama in the U.S., I get a little Japan-sick from seeing the protagonist walking or biking on them.

(Ironically, my neighbors to the right have a Shih Tzu with caramel color fur that loves to bark at us through the window as we walk to the MaxValu. My neighbors to the left have a Miniature Schnauzer. What a coincidence.)

From our four days of quarantine, Jess, Kellie and I explored the majority of the residential and commercial areas surrounding our apartment complex. When I say “explored,” I mean to say we played on several Japanese playgrounds, shopped at the MaxValu grocery store once a day, visited a Shinto shrine and trekked down to the subway station.

Sapporo has a different atmosphere than any other Japanese city I’ve been to. Half the city is the typical Japanese prototype: squeezed-in skyscrapers, bus and subway stations galore, big chain supermarkets mixed in with small Mom and Pop restaurants. Yet because we’re in Hokkaido, most of the roads lead to a set of mountains on the other side of Toyohira River. There’s no gradual separation of mountains from the city, so a ten-minute drive across town can take you to the base of the mountain for numerous skiing and hiking opportunities.

The city itself has no building code, apparently, so skyscrapers are mixed in throughout the area instead of being built closer to the center.

From near the base of the mountains, you can even see the ocean when the sky is clear. The three of us plan to hike up the mountains sometime for the gorgeous view, but we’ll have to buy warmer clothes first because the wind and cold is already uncomfortable at the mountain bottom.

Shivering Kellie, Sarah and Jess say, “Until next time! Ja mata ne!”

FACE MASKS AND PEACE SIGNS

Swine flu. H1N1. I call it a pain in the butt.

Kellie and I left the Indianapolis Airport at 10:00 a.m. Sunday morning and met Jess in Chicago for our direct flight to Tokyo’s Narita Airport. We noticed that several of the other passengers, none Caucasian-looking, were wearing face masks, and we felt a little guilty for not buying masks ourselves. That guilt lasted about, oh, 30 seconds before we realized how self-conscious we would feel wearing them on a plane with more than half of its passengers not wearing them. Not to mention we’d be wearing them for the better part of 13 hours.

13 hours. More than half a day sitting in the same cramped position on a Boeing 747.

I managed to sleep about two and a half hours. The rest of the time was spent eating Cheez-Its, watching “20th Century Boys” with subtitles on Japan Airlines’ entertainment channels, listening to Japanese pop radio, and just plain daydreaming. Unlike last summer, I didn’t bring my NAKAMA 2 textbook, so I couldn’t drill myself on kanji to pass the time.

To our relief, two meals and several hours later, we landed in Tokyo. To our disappointment, we were forced to stay on the plane for another hour and a half under “quarantine check.”

This quarantine check involved filling out a questionnaire about whether we had been sick or near someone who had been sick within the last week. Male nurses dressed in blue scrubs connected in the back with duct tape passed out face masks and collected our forms in an old filing box with a string shoulder strap – a makeshift bag, I guess. The nurses took some passengers’ temperatures, but other than that, quarantine wasn’t much more than waiting to be dismissed.

After about 15 hours on our 747, we finally stepped on ground again. It didn’t matter that we still had customs and passport checks to go through, or that we had another hour-and-a-half flight to Sapporo’s New Chitose Aiport. We were out of that plane and officially in Japan, and that’s all we really cared about.

To pass our two-and-a-half hour layover in Narita, we took turns napping on the surprisingly comfy plastic seats and watched Japanese music videos and newsflashes in English about H1N1 and Japanese entertainers on arrest for something. I remember falling asleep to the sounds of spectators cheering on a televised sumo match.

I don’t remember falling asleep on the plane, but I woke up to find we had already landed. In Jess’s words, “That was the best flight we’ve had yet.”

After being picked up by two English professors at Sapporo University, we learned that the university requested that we stay away from campus for four days just in case we had caught H1N1 at the airport.

Yay. Another quarantine. (We have come to hate the “Q” word, as we call it.) At that point, after more than 24 hours either in an airport or flying to another one, we didn’t care anymore. Really, we’re not high-maintenance travelers.

Warm shower. Sleep. Food. That’s all we needed. And once we got the keys to our apartments, that’s what we got. (Except for the warm shower. More on that later.)

BLOG SOUNDTRACK: Remioromen "Sakura"

愛されたきおくがあるだけ。。。

In the few weeks since my last post, I've finished classes for the semester, helped students prepare for their Japanese oral and written final exams, won a couple scholarships, attended ceremonies for said scholarships, ridden carnival rides in a school parking lot (while screaming Japanese words with Jess and Reika), given a presentation about diversity, and performed a Japanese roleplay about Obama. (And no, I wasn't Obama, but thanks for asking.)

So, as I mentioned, SCHOLARSHIPS! I found out earlier this week I will receive $7,200 for my studies at Sapporo ($800 for travel expenses and then an $800 stipend per month for 8 months) from the Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO). The organization gives out 1,800 of these per year to international students who plan to study at a Japanese university for anywhere from three months to a year.

I'll admit, I'm still getting used to being described as an "international student." Even though I've studied abroad before on field studies in Italy with the Honors College and in Japan with the Kentucky Institute for International Studies, all of the documents I read were geared toward me and never directly called me an international student or foreign exchange student. I still see myself as me, the same American who just happens to be studying for eight months in Japan; I never gave much thought to the new label I would have. Last summer, I was a "tourist." This year, I'm a "foreign exchange student." Can't say I mind the change. :)

Because individuals have to be nominated by their Japanese host universities for the JASSO scholarship, I had little control over it. Apparently, my GPA, basic education info and letter of recommendation was enough, so now I will have some money to subsidize my apartment rent.

[TO BE CONTINUED...]

Blog soundtrack: Remioromen "Nagareboshi"