A word about my internship

---

Ok, I'm going to write about my internship because it is fresh in my mind... it might not be as interesting for you all to read because I don't really have any photographs to include this time around. Well maybe I will throw in some unrelated ones to keep you from getting too bored.
Anyway, today was the first day of my "Field Placement" internship. The IES program has a special opportunity for students to be placed in a Japanese professional organization and once a week we go into these offices and observe and participate and try to learn as much about Japanese society as possible. It's a pretty incredible opportunity if you ask me... what better way to learn about a society than to really get into the depths of it. Kids have really cool placements... my friend Jeff is working for a CAD company (computer aided design) which does graphic work for web designs, architectural firms, and other visually-based fields. My friend Chris is working for a magazine called Metropolis which is basically an English language guide to the city... it comes out once a week and we all have fallen in love with it because it tells us about all the fun things to do (Annie and Jenny and anyone else who is coming... I will show you it). And I think Chris might get to write film reviews or something bc he is a film minor. My friend Carrie (another Ayase dorm lady) is working for an animal rights organization and I this weekend she gets to go to Ueno Park and distribute informational flyers. My friend Charissa is working in the one of the main fashion districts in Tokyo in a fashion marketing firm. Zvi is working in a travel agency translating brochures.... I mean people have good stuff.
My placement is in a landscape architecture firm. Here is the website in case you want to read about it directly... the site has english translations. www.s-2.jp
So. I left my dorm this morning pretty early and I wore heels because I thought that maybe the office would be very high-profile and everyone would be in suits. The heels were an enormous inconvenience, I find it very hard to walk in them. But maybe I will get some new heel-wearing muscles if I do it often enough. So the commute to the station where the office is near was about an hour and a half. I got to the station early and I went into a really expensive deapartment store until it was time to meet one of the IES staff. The strangest thing happened at the department store... I went in right when they were opening and there was this music that sounded like something from the Gladiator... I think glorious would be the word for it. Anyway, as I walked past each store (in my heels) the sales clerks said ohaiyo gozaimasu (formal good morning) and bowed really really deeply. Usually sales clerks say hello or welcome and maybe bow a little, but this was a full out, subordination bow. It was such a bizarre experience. Ishikawa-san met me at the station and we took a taxi to the office. Ishikawa-san is the woman who made all of these field placements possible. I think she's pretty incredible.
The office is located in the principal architect's (her name is Sugiura-san) home. This is a very unusual thing in Japan because normally the Japanese do not have people come inside their houses (for example, if you want to have a play date with a friend, you meet somewhere else). And Ishikawa-san was telling me that the neighborhood is extremely expensive and that Sugiura-san's home in particular is very large and attractive. It was a very traditionally built Japanese house... lots of wood, tatami mat rooms, etc. etc. Very very beautiful. It is so calm. I think that I would like my house to be like this one. When we arrived we took our shoes off at the front door, put on slippers and were escorted into a kind of formal living room. The room had tatami mats and a very low table in the center. And not really anything besides that. Ishikawa-san, Sugiura-san and I sat (Japanese style - kind of uncomfortable) at the table and had a little interview. I showed her some of my portfolio and she said that most of what I have done is irrelevant to what her office does. Oh well. We talked briefly about what she does, what I might be able to do, etc. and then Ishikawa-san left me!!
I met the staff (hmmm... can't remember their names) and tried to introduce myself in Japanese. It's funny, no matters how much I practice these simple introduction phrases ("My name is Molly. I go to Cornell. I am an architecture major. I live in New York.") I cannot remember them when under pressure. I ended up saying my name (watashi no namae wa morri desu) and then I spitted out a bunch of apologetic and incoherent English. Not only am I unable to speak Japanese, but my English sucks when I am surrounded by Japanese people. What a weird phenomena.
There was one guy Kide-san (I think that might be his name) who went to architecture school in the Netherlands, and he spoke English there. So he kind of helped me all day. But the other guys don't really speak English. They seem super nice though. The office is very laid-back and it reminds me a lot of Rand Hall. It is just one big room and everyone has their own computer, but the other work space is shared. Everyone is constantly talking and throwing ideas back and forth and looking at graphics and materials together, etc. etc. I really love this work environment and I hope that my job when I grow up can be somewhere like this. They just eat when they want to and wear what they want to and kind of hang out, but there is just this sense of productivity in the air. It is very much like studio.
I was introduced to the project that they were currently working on... it is actually really cool. They are doing a landscape project for a guesthouse in a very beautiful area north of Tokyo. If you look at the zipper on your fly or maybe on your coat, you'll probably see that it says YKK... that is their client. It's a big company that makes fasteners. They own this piece of property with a guesthouse and some other smaller studio living-spaces and currently it is not being used for anything. The structures were designed by a famous Japanese architect (I forget his name) and the location of the site is in an area where you look north and you see enormous mountains and then you look south and you see the sea. So it's a very very beautiful area. And then there are also tons and tons of rice farms because it is an estuary (is that the word for where the river flows into the ocean?).
Anyway, for like 8 hours I made trees on the model. It was great fun. And in a bitter-sweet way it reminded me of studio... I would do a lot of tedious work and then Sugiura-san would come over and tell me that she would prefer the trees to be a little different. I hope that they end up using the model ha ha. But it's pretty cool that I got to work on the presentation model for this high-end presentation.
For lunch Sugiura-san took me out. We went to a nice restaurant a few blocks away from the residential neighborhood in which the office was located. I had one of the best meals yet (probably because the meals that I've been having thus far are either from the convenient store or from a cheapo noodle restaurant). I had a pork dish with really good seasoning, some cabbage salad, miso soup, a piece of really soft tofu, another salad thing and some vegetables. Yum. I felt bad because I don't know if Sugiura-san thought I expected her to pay. Oh well. I guess what comes around goes around and I will probably buy someone dinner later in life. After lunch, I went and did errands with her. It seemed like a pretty intimate or friendly experience to do with my boss on the first day of work... We went to a bunch of different stores looking for cotton balls to make the YKK trees with. And then we got these things which I actually don't really like... they are little batter balls with a piece of octopus in the middle. They are pretty good tasting actually, but the piece of octopus really throws me off. It's literally this chunck of purple octopus tentacle... it has the suction cups and everything. And it is like Barney-colored-purple. I think that you will like them, dad. And finally we picked up her dry cleaning and some vegetables. My heels were such a pain in the butt and Sugiura-san walks super fast so it was quite a work-out for me. I was dripping sweat (literally) by the time I got back to the office.
And so besides making trees I also listened in on their meeting where they discussed what to do with the site. I think that it would have been SUCH an interesting meeting to be at because it was basically where all of the initial ideas were thrown around and it was where the design was born! BUT.... I couldn't understand a single word. I was so tired for some reason and I had to keep pinching myself to stay awake. I now have bruises all over my forearms because I had to pinch so hard. But I really didn't want to fall asleep, even though I saw another guy closing his eyes for awhile.
So I worked on the trees for a few more hours and finally at 7:30pm I decided to go.... everyone else was still working really hard and there was no sign that they were planning on leaving anytime soon. I asked Kide-san if I should stay until 3 in the morning and we laughed, but then he said that sometimes they do. Wow. I guess these late nights at studio will never end, even in the professional world... maybe it's time to think about switching majors...
I commuted back home and I was just so exhausted and burnt out and really disfucntional. I think it has something to do with trying to interact and pay attention to a totally different language. It just consumes my energy even though it doesn't seem like it should. But I was totally disfunctional, I could barely walk and I stopped at the store to get some edemame for dinner and I was such an impatient glutton that I tried to open the box on the escalator and it exploded everywhere. So there were edamame pods all over the moving staircase and when they got to the top they made a huge mess. I had to ask this security guard to help me and he was so nice, he just scooped them all up and put them back into my shopping bag. Oh, edamame, if you don't know, is soy beans still in their pods. they look like peas or string beans or something and they are really good but i didn't get to eat them. actually i got to eat one because it landed in the cuff of my pants and i found it when i got back to the dorm.
ok i think that i need to go to sleep before i keep rambling.
sorry that this one might not be very exciting.
i'll go look for pictures.
take care

---

Photos

me wearing a robe
It's kind of embarrassing that i took this picture of myself, but i think everyone did secretly. this is back at the orientation center, they gave us robes with the new towels each day.

Tiny Pineapple
This pineapple was in a plant vendor in Ueno.

Do not feed the animals
A caption in the goat section of Ueno Park

View from my window.
I stalk my neighbor. This is her doing her laundry and hanging out with her cats.

Japanese Elvis
There were four Japanese Elvises dancing in Ueno Park. Sorry these pictures are so random. I'm trying to save my other pictures so I can put them in the article where they actually belong. And these pictures are more transient.

Typical Toilet
Here is a typical Western-style toilet. The control panel on the side adjusts the butt washer (change angle and pressure of stream), the crotch washer (change angle, pressure AND temperature), the seat warmer, and also turns on the fake flushing noises in case you want to cover up your own noises.

KITTY
A cat in the neighborhood... this picture is for mom.

Comments

[mom]

kitties
Thanks for all the cat photos. The Manx looks tough.

[Jeanne]

Late nights
I wouldn't worry about late nights. I don't think most American firms regularly keep hours that long.