私の起臥

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Hi friends!!

So I just realized that my last two posts have been filled with crazy wild adventures around Tokyo, so I wanted to make a more low-key post about what my 起臥(kiga--daily life) in Japan is like. 😊

朝(Asa--Morning)

Everyday I wake up at 7am (Mom, aren't you proud of me??) and start my morning routine. My older host brother and I are the only two in the family who shower in the morning, but because I normally wake up earlier than him I get the shower first. In Japan, people normally shower and bathe at night, and having an actual shower in the house is super uncommon. The toilet and bath are in two separate rooms, so you don't have to worry about waiting for someone to get out of the bathroom if you really have to go to the bathroom. Also, who really wants a toilet in the same room they clean themselves in? Toilets are gross, yo.

The 風呂場 (furoba--bathroom) has a tile floor with a drain in it because when you take a bath in Japan, you always clean yourself first before お風呂に入る (ofuro ni hairu--enter the bath). There's typically a big nozzle-wand thing that you use to clean yourself, and you sit down while you wash your hair and body (there's a stool in the 風呂場 you sit on, and a bucket which you can use to fill with water and dump over yourself if the 風呂場 doesn't have a nozzle-wand). After you've cleaned yourself, you then fill the お風呂 with hot water and take your bath! I've done this a couple of times (at night) and it's suuuuper relaxing. 😊 Also, because you bathe after you've cleaned yourself, the bath water is clean enough for the next person to use so you don't waste water.

As for toilets (yes, toilets get their own mini section), those are an adventure in and of itself. The whole thing about the toilets having bidets and spray function to clean your butt with are real, as are the seat warmers, toilet sounds that play when you're doing your business, and the air dryers to dry your butt. Toilets in Japan are super fancy. You pretty much never have to use toilet paper, it's kinda cool. I swear, every time I enter a new bathroom I find a new function on the toilets. An observation I noticed about the toilets: the fancier the place you are, the fancier the toilets. In a lot of toilets, especially in ones at home, there's a sink on top of the toilet which runs all of the unused water from the toilet so you can wash your hands right there. It's very convenient, and environmentally friendly!

After showering and getting dressed, I eat 朝ご飯 (asagohan--breakfast) with my host mom and little host brother. My host dad and older host brother don't eat breakfast, so my host dad typically does the dishes (I take over after breakfast and finish the last round of dishes while he gets ready) and my older host brother just plays video games. My breakfasts everyday in Japan have consisted of some kind of 魚 (sakaka--fish), 味噌 (miso--soybean paste; typically in soup form), ご飯 (gohan--rice), 卵 (tamago--egg) and 野菜 (yasai--vegetable). As a matter of fact, that's what every meal I've had in Japan consists of. Because Japan is 75%!m(MISSING)ountains and is an archipelago, there really isn't a lot of space to grow a bunch of fruit or raise cattle. The other day, my mom made me scrambled eggs and put ketchup on the side. I got super excited because that was my childhood breakfast (and what I still eat almost everyday at school), and when I told her this she was so happy and she made it for me the next day too. My favorite thing I've had for breakfast so far though was a traditional breakfast of 卵, ご飯, and 海苔 (nori--seaweed). You simply take a raw egg and crack it over a bowl of rice and mix it up with your お箸 (ohashi--chopsticks). Mix in some 海苔 and some 醤油 (shouyu--soy sauce) and you have yourself a delicious and nutritious breakfast!

電車に乗っている (Densha ni notteiru--Riding the Train)

After 朝ご飯, I finish getting ready and then head off to school. Every morning, I ride the 電車 (densha--train) to school. I LOVE the trains in Japan--they're so fast and convenient. They're definitely one of my favorite parts of Japan so far. However, the biggest downside to the trains is that they can be EXTREMELY CROWDED. Seriously, you're packed in there like a can of sardines. People will literally run into the train as the doors are closing just to make the train. Every morning, there are staff members standing at every other gate to stop people from doing this, and to manage crowd control. One of my Japanese friends here said that sometimes when the trains are that crowded, he just lifts his legs and basically floats while riding the train, just to give you an image of how crowded these trains are (for anyone who is reading this and plans on going to Japan/lives in Japan/will be riding a train in Japan in the near future, DON'T DO THIS).

Another convenient part about the train system is how you pay for the train. Of course, you can buy a ticket every time you ride, but this becomes very tedious and very expensive very quickly. What a lot of Japanese people use is a 定期券 (teikiken--commuter pass), SUICA card, or PASSMO card. The SUICA and PASSMO cards are prepaid cards where you put money on them and then you just put your wallet with the card inside on top of a scanner and it lets you through the gates. The only difference between the two cards is that their different companies and are through either the public or private train lines, which comes into effect when you want to get a 定期券. The difference between a 定期券 and a PASSMO/SUICA is that the 定期券 is a card where you pay up-front how much your daily commute cost. The best part: any stops on any of the lines you ride or buses you take you can get off and on as many times as you want for free, but only on the stops between where you get on the line and off the line. For example, if you live in Ikebukuro but work in Shinjuku, then you would take one train line. Your 定期券 would allow you get to get on an off at any of the stops between Ikebukuro and Shinjuku for free, but if you get on or off on any other lines/any other stops on that line which are not in your daily commute, you have to pay. The 定期券 can either last for 1 month, 3 months, or 6 months depending on how often you want to renew the card. Here's a really handy video which explains all of the fun stuff the PASSMO/SUICA cards can do (including buying stuff from the vending machines!!):

大学 (Daigaku--College)

I know I talked about college life in Japan in my last blog post, but here I thought I would expand a little bit more on my own personal experiences with classes so far. A quick run-down of classes at Waseda: there are five periods per day and each period lasts for 90 minutes, and there is a 50 minute lunch break in the middle of the day. Classes start at 9:00am and end at 6:00pm (yes, you read that right). After that, there are generally club meetings and other events happening on campus which students go to. Most classes run for only one period, but there are a fair amount that go run through two periods (meaning that they're three hours long--yay!!). The classes that run through two periods have a twenty minute break built in, because nobody (even the professor) wants to be in class for three hours straight. This gives everybody enough time to stretch, talk, go to the bathroom, and even go to the konbini and get a snack and drink. This semester, I happen to have three out of my five classes be for three hours long each (JOY): History of Japanese Political History, Comprehensive Japanese 3, and Movements in Japanese Intellectual History. The good news about the three hour classes though is that they only meet once a week because they're so long, with the exception of Japanese. My Japanese class meets three times a week: Mondays and Wednesdays for three hours each and then on Saturday morning for 90 minutes (even though it's only for 90 minutes, I'm reeeeaaaaalllllllly not a fan of the Saturday morning classes, and neither are any of the other American students in my group). My other two classes this semester are History of Modern Japan and Kanji 2 (I took level 2 instead of level 3 because there's a TON of kanji at level 2 which I do not know and need to know, and we learn about the different radicals which are crucial).

I have got to say that I'm really not a fan so far of two of my professors--they're SO. BORING. I've already resorted to drinking coffee during those classes just to stay awake, and it's only been two weeks. It sucks because the material for the classes is interesting, but they just aren't engaging at all--they just talk at as for the entire class period. My favorite professor so far is my professor for Japanese Intellectual History professor--he's absolutely brilliant (also, he's British). There are about 60 of us in the class, and he does a fantastic job of engaging all of the students and leading discussion with each other and with him, which is not an easy task. Also, he's the Dean of SILS (School of International Liberal Studies), the school I'm currently enrolled in.

The Japanese classes are really bizarre. There are at least ten sections of each level, and each section has about 10-18 students. There are a bunch of different teachers, and there is a different teacher for each day you meet (so for me, I have a Monday Japanese professor, a Wednesday Japanese professor, and a Saturday Japanese professor). Oh, and you meet in different locations every single time, just to make it more fun. I really like my Wednesday professor--he's really nice and funny, and so far has the best teaching style. All of the classes are primarily taught by native Japanese speakers (although my Saturday professor is Korean and she speaks Japanese fluently), and are taught completely in Japanese. This is mainly because (no duh) the best way to learn a language is to be totally immersed in it, but also because the classes are full of international students, so everybody has a different native language. My text book is also in all Japanese, except there are short grammar explanations and vocabulary definitions in English, Chinese, and Korean.

夕方 (Yuugata--Evening)

After all of my classes end, I head home on the 電車 and then eat dinner with my family. As mentioned in my last post, my host dad loves to go out to eat, so that's what we typically do. Evenings with my host family are pretty low-key during the week: my host mom and dad come home from work, my little host brother comes home from either soccer practice or English school, and I come home from either university or hanging out with my friends after class (depending on when my classes end). Depending on when I get home, I typically will study for a little bit (I try to study as much as possible while I'm at school though so I don't have to do as much later) and then eat dinner. After dinner though, I generally study for a couple hours and hang out with my host family, whether that's watching tv, doing chores, or just hanging out and talking. My host mom and dad and little host brother go to bed before I do, but I'm normally still studying when that happens. Since my older host brother is a businessman, he's always out till super late, so I'm never awake when he comes home; I only see him in the mornings and on weekends.



So that's what my daily life is like! As usual, this post is getting long so I'm going to cut it off here (also, it's midnight in Tokyo right now and I have class in 9 hours). まったね！😊

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Comments

[Valerie WALCH]

Love your posts!
Keep them coming! Love you, too!

[Aunt G]

So Cool
Love reading these Sabbie, such rich details which really paint a picture of what your life is like now. So awesome, and so glad you are comfortable and enjoying it!