Phone/email

Hello everyone,

This post has 2 purposes:
1. New contact information in the form of phone/email.
2. Observations on reactions from Japanese in my attempts at Japanese language "Nihongo" (Nihon=Japan, go=language)

1. The number here in Japan is 080-5342-4979 or, if you don't like the way it looks, 0(805)342-4979 if that helps somewhat in remembering. Unfortunately, even with what I think of as an expensive phoneplan is one of their cheapest, so, unfortunately...I only have 62 minutes per month. International is 99 Yen per minute as well as taking those minutes. So, calling you all will not be a good option. Emailing me at that number, however, will work just fine for getting a hold of me much faster. Just remember: I am at work from about 8:30am until 6:20pm daily, so I might not respond right away. that means, for you in the Pacific, Mountain and Central timezones, that I work from somewhere between 10:30pm-8:20am Central time zone, and 12:30 pm-10:20 am Pacific time zone. So any calls during those hours will likely be met with delay. I will be obtaining, through one strategy or another, many pictures and sending them via email or blog to many or all of you depending on nature and convenience.

2. I have asked (In Japanese) many people for varification on my many guesses for directions in my dozens of miles of foot travel since I have arrived. It has been met with surprise, shock, crankiness, joy, amusement, and a host of other reactions, many of them emotionally charged. Today, I saw my first caucasian female since arriving, so, as you can imagine, Everyone I talk to outside of work is Japanese, full-blooded, and have not likely left the continent or even Japan in most cases. So I am a real rarity, so when I am spotted, and especially when I talk to people, I get about as strong as a reaction as one might get from, say, seeing some Gangsta rolling into Harrington blasting rap and bouncing down the road, looking for some honies, asking for directions. I am, to some degree, representative of a threat of westernization that has been slowly consuming their culture. It brings many good things, but, it also makes them realize how much they are losing their own culture, and how much closer they are to being like a country ruled by people like Bush. So not so good, generally. Today, I asked for directions in stuttering yet grammatical Japanese to a man that was hauling cut weeds out of his small patch of yard. He eagerly replied with a wide smile and excited arm gestures how to get to the Midorigaoka train station. He smiled at me and waved as I hurried off. It was a bit of a shock to me myself. He was thrilled to see me speak Japanese, however poorly it might have been. Earlier when I was getting directions to the same place from about 2 km away, it was a different reaction. The man I talked to didn't look all that happy that I was there in his neighborhood when I asked him how to get to the station. Still, he did not hesitate to give me clear, accurate directions to the station using what English he knew. I think that perhaps, like many people that I speak Japanese to, he was using it as an opportunity to practice speaking English, but he was not happy to see my foreign face in his neck of the woods. I didn't think about that possibility until it happened for some reason. It never directly crossed my mind that a person would be happy to talk to me but not to see me!

One last unfortunately long blurb.
I had a humorous experience with French, Fulansugo, if you will. I have seen two businesses with French signs, one was "Le Crabe' " and the other was "Ne c'est pas" Le Crabe' was obviously a bakery of some kind. I still have no idea what in the world "Ne c'est pas" (meaning "isn't") is, or rather isn't. What they do, I can't tell from the outside, and they seem to be a private business of some kind, so I don't want to go strolling in. With Le Crabe' however, I did go in to see what they had. I asked the woman at the counter, "Parlez vous Francais?" she replied with a tilted head. I asked her supervisor who appeared to be the owner or head cook or manager (and hopefully would speak French) the same thing. They both looked at eachother and then and me and said "Sorry" nearly simultaneously. Note that that was English. I'm not even sure if they knew what French sounds like. Oh well. That happens here. If you don't surf, as is the case with one of my students that defends that she DOES NOT like surfing, you may still wear a shirt that says "surfing goddess" because that sounds cool, even if you don't actually like surfing. The same goes for anyone else. They will wear what looks cool regardless of what they do. So, we might call the majority of youngsters in Japan "posers" if we didn't realize that there is no pose that they are modeling any behaviour off of others along with the clothes. It is just a duplication method. Clothes and behaviour are two very different subjects in most cases, unless you are talking about formality, in which case it is by this vague sense of "level" compared to your superiors and inferiors, not what style as much.