Friends up North, Part 2
The Yamasa Speech Contest was Friday so the class all left the school in the morning and walked to the Civic Centre down the road. It was pretty good and my friend Scott took first prize with a speech about how Japanese language learners don’t actually interact with the native speakers in the country and just live in their own 外人世界 (gaijin-sekai, foreigner-world) at Yamasa, with people who speak their own native language. After the contest everyone was going to eat Yakiniku together but I had to excuse myself so I could get to Tokyo on time. I would have been able to do that if I’d got on the right train.
I packed my bags and ended up with my backpack with clothes and miscellaneous technology (Nintendo DS, camera, etc), a Tower Records bag with all the souvenirs for my friends, and my jacket attached to my bag, since it was pretty warm in Okazaki that day. I got to the station and got my tickets, as usual. (I’m getting pretty efficient at it by now.) I got to Nagoya without any trouble, got to the Shinkansen platform fine, and looking at the timetable I saw that the first Shinkansen leaving was the Kodama, which I know is the slowest, but how slow can it be, right? The Hikari and Nozomi are more or less the same so surely the Kodama isn’t much slower.
Boy was I wrong. I got on board and we left the station and the announcer listen a whole load of upcoming stops. In fact, we were even passing through Okazaki. I asked the man beside me if he knew what I should do, and he said that I could get off at the next station and go back and then change trains to a faster on at Nagoya. He said he’d done this before but was caught immediately and had to pay more money so he advised me to be careful. I got off at Mikawa-Anjo, which is basically two platforms, one “this way” and one “that way”, a stall selling newspapers and sweets, and another one selling bento. I had to wait about twenty minutes for the next train but a Kodama eventually arrived and brought be back to Nagoya where I got onto a Nozomi and ended up only being an hour late arriving at Tokyo station. I got the Yamanote line up one stop to Kanda and then changed to the subway and got the Ginza line to Asakusa where Ayumi and her boyfriend, Jian, were waiting for me.
The trains going from Asakusa to Ashikaga (the station nearest Ayumi’s home) weren’t very frequent so we had a bit of time to kill and went to Mister Donuts, or “misu-do” as they call it. I asked for milk as part of my take-away and they apologised saying that every other drink except milk was available for takeaway :-/
We eventually got onto the train anyway and I got a bit of rest.
When we arrived at Ashikaga, we got into Jian’s car and he brought us the shopping centre where Ayumi works. She introduced me to her co-workers, two girls about the same age as us. One of them looked up at me and just said “綺麗” (”kirei”, “beautiful”) and the other couldn’t stop staring at my nose and my eyes. They kept commenting on them and kept leaning in closer to see my eyes better. I didn’t have any trouble with this.
After we picked up some food at the shopping market nearby (Yakitori and orange juice), we headed home to Ayumi’s house for dinner. Her grandmother, father, and mother (who I first thought was her older sister) were there and dinner was just about ready as we came in. A few of Ayumi’s relatives and neighbours came in and though at first it was a little bit intimidating, I got comfortable with the Japanese and had the whole table quiet listening to my ideas about Japanese and Japan and how it’s different to Ireland. One of my favourite films started on TV and I half watched it as I interacted with the family. Her brother arrived home too and there were a dozen people in the room all together at one stage. Her brother, Yuki, is a year younger than me and is into anime and that sort of thing, so I was able to talk to him a bit about that. He said that the time-travelling Mikuru from Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu is best and I said that I agree but that the time-travelling version doesn’t have the dojikko characteristic that the original one does so I’d have to go with the original. Everyone else in the room understood as much of that as you just did (unless you’re Seán).
People pointed out many times how Jian was more nervous than I was about eating dinner with her family and it was true.
A couple of kids from next door came by and the little girl, Kumi-chan (age 6) had just started English and even though they were both incredibly shy, she was able to tell me her name and age in English, and say good night to me.
After we finished dinner, myself, Ayumi, Jian, and Yuki went to return some DVDs and look at what films they had in the video shop. Their American action film section was really impressive and I found the American-80s-action-film section and spent quite a while there, looking through classics like Black Rain and 48 Hours.
Jian dropped us home and said goodbye and I sat with the family around the living room watching TV and talking for a while. Eventually people started falling asleep. This happens because you sit on the floor in Japan, and it’s easy to fall asleep on the floor if you’re not participating too actively in the conversation. In the end, myself, Ayumi and her mom were awake until about 2am looking through family photo albums and photos on my iPod.
Ayumi showed me to Yuki’s room, which I was to sleep in for the two nights, while he slept downstairs on a futon. His room had an original Famicon (Nintendo Entertainment System or “NES”) and an electronic drum kit. His bed was pretty hard but that’s what I’m used to and I actually quite like it now. The beds are much more supportive here and my back hasn’t been giving me much trouble at all.
I woke up the next morning shortly before 9am. Kaori was coming over to the house at 10am and Ayumi knocked on the door to wake me up about 9.20am.
February 25th, 2008 at 11:13 am
It’s so cool that you met someone who understands all about Haruhi and stuff, looks like he’s into 年上お姉様 by the sounds of it. Can’t say I disagree really!