Much Ado About Tea

Japanese Word of the Day
English: I’ll do my best!
Japanese: がんばります

So this is off the timeline I’m talking about but I need to say it: Guys, the mosquitoes found me. It was terrible. I was lying in bed and I heard this slight buzzing by my ear and knew my old nemesis had returned. With careful timing I managed to slap the adversary down and went to sleep,  assuming myself the victor. I did not know he had friends. Seriously, I woke up to somewhere around 10 bites. Japanese mosquitoes are AWFUL. They’re faster than American ones and the bites become these massive red mounds. Guess who had her welcome ceremony in front of all the important people in town covered in giant red marks? My mosquito kill count is up to 5 (that I personally have booped to death).

Also as a fun fact, if you are in Japan and are being plagued by mosquitoes you may want to rethink mosquito repellant spray. My predecessor had left some that I quickly found and put on. Then for good measure I did a google search (actually I was looking for non-spray-on-me mosquito repelling options). Guess what had DEET? Luckily, DEET is easy to identify in the ingredients since it’s written デイート, which for ya’ll who don’t read Katakana reads “dēto”. For  those of you worried about my well being (like my mother) I found some DEET-free indoor spray to encourage the mosquitoes to go away. I do occasionally chase any who find their way inside with the deet spray though. It seems to slow them down enough for me to slap them. >: ] Yes, I literally gas mosquitoes. And if I hadn’t decided to limit cursing in this blog I’d call them something much worse. Seriously, 10 bites.

Ok, that was a fun non-sequitor. Back to… what was I talking about? Oh right, my second day in Ujitawara.

SO HAVE I MENTIONED TEA IS A BIG DEAL? Because it’s a really freaking big deal here. The second day started with a trip to visit the mayor and meet the people in that office. While there, I had to do my previously mentioned Japanese ‘speech’ 6 times (I had to do another in the main BoE office as well; total count, 8). With the mayor and with some of the others after mentioned I liked tonkatsu Inaho-sensei or someone else would remark about my dislike of cabbage and much giggling would ensue. I’m pretty sure I’m known as “the white girl who hates cabbage”. I’m sure I’ve had worse nicknames but still.

As for the actual mayor, he invited myself, Inaho-sensei and Namba-san into his office where general chatting ensued. After a minute or so a female office employee brought a tea pot, tea, and some cups. I mentioned her sex specifically because since arriving I haven’t seen a male serve tea unless there were no women around. Normally I’d scoff at this but considering how seriously this town takes tea I think it’s a mark of honor that women get to be the tea-bearers. Speaking of tea being serious. I think that was half of what the mayor talked about was tea. He also gave me a pamphlet about tea. It’s in English and Japanese so if I remember I’ll take some pictures so you all can be indoctrinated educated about tea as well.

Yup, that's some old dead people who made history all right.

Soylent tea is peeeeeoooople! Actually I should probably read how to brew green tea.

One entertaining thing was every time I said where I was from (North Carolina) people would try to figure out where that was. The answer usually given was “between Florida and New York”. Well, they aren’t wrong but… Actually today (8/6) Allen told me that he and Rebecca also had to look up where it was… and they’re Americans! Guess I need to education people about the greatness of the state first in flight.

After awkwardly trying to converse in broken Japanese with the mayor, explain where North Carolina is, and introduced myself all around the building we stopped by the front desk to get my gaijin card verified. As of sometime recently (I don’t have internet, I can’t check when) whenever you enter Japan with the intent and paperwork to stay more than 3 months you get a gaijin resident card. Within the first 2 weeks of arriving in your town you have to go by town hall and get it approved though. After my paperwork was done the town gave me a gift to welcome me to my new home. Can you guess what it was? If you guessed tea pot then you’d be correct. Serious. Business.

One really cool thing about working literally next to your office is that during the lunch hour I get to go home and eat and browse the internet (not anymore!). So far I’ve found that this is perfect for cooking 2 meals for dinner then reheating the leftovers for lunch to maximize free time since I always cut my lunch short. Japan is a country where being on time is late so I try to be 10-15 minutes early always. We’ll see how long that lasts.

After lunch Inaho-sensei and another man whose name I honestly don’t know drove me over to the nursery to meet the staff there. Guys, the nursery has a slide built in next to the stairs case so kids can slide down the stairs. That is the coolest thing I have ever seen. You can bet I’ll be on that slide at some point. Anywho, the head of the nursery showed me around to each of the class rooms. If I recall, she said the children ranged from 2 years old to 5. At each room I said hello to the children and the caretakers working (+7 half introductions; total count, 15). One of the caretakers was a younger man who spoke really good English. I mention this because often Japanese people will not speak English even if they are very good at it, so having someone actively engage me in English was really nice.

After introductions all around we stopped by the front office to say goodbye. The school had a small display showing the days lunch for the kids and Inaho-sensei told me I could eat the school lunches. Then he noticed it had cabbage and began laughing and told the head of the nursery I disliked cabbage while I died of horror in the corner. Seriously, one throw away comment on the car ride into town was going to be all over town before my first week was over. Geez.

So we returned to the BoE main office and after a short period of pretending to be productive (seriously, I still barely have an idea what I’m supposed to be doing right now 8/6) Inaho-sensei interrupted my diligent study of the Japanese language. He told me there was a student led tea ceremony upstairs and asked if I’d like to see it. Uh, yes?!

For those unfamiliar, tea ceremony is a very serious thing (even in non-tea obsessed towns). It’s an art that is studied and performed with careful precision. Inaho-sensei and I came to the door to a traditional style Japanese room. I removed my shoes, as instructed by a kimono garbed woman. Then she tried to pantomime to me what I was supposed to do. It was probably hilarious watching us each wave our hands. To enter the room I had to sit seiza before the door and bow and then carefully slide it open and then bow a bit more to be allowed entry. Then I got to go to a spot across the room and bow and sit more seiza. For those wondering, seiza is a proper way of sitting on tatami mats and it hurts like hell. In seiza, your feet lay out flat behind you with the heels under each buttock. You very quickly lose circulation in your legs. More on that later.

The ceremony had two ‘stations’, for lack of a better word. I was sitting with Inaho-sensei and another girl in front of a probably upper middle school aged girl who was performing the ceremony. The other ‘station’ had a young boy who was substantially less well rehearsed, but bless him he was trying even if far more tea got on the tray than in the cups. The ceremony involved our tea girl carefully moving all the cups in a specific order, pouring water and tea, preparing it to be served, then cleaning the tray after we were served. The tea was put in small shot sized tea cups that were slid along on a tray to each of us to drink and then return. The tea server had the last cup and had to wait for it to circulate to each of us and back before she got hers, in true Japanese humble style. I was also given something that was akin to mochi to eat. I actually asked if it was mochi and was told it was something else but I can’t remember. I followed the steps of the girl next to me to eat it while everyone watched me very intently. It’s very hard to swallow a super chewy substance when your throat is dry and everyone is watching.

After the tea serving was concluded it was time to stand up. By then I had completely lost feeling in both legs which was actually a blessing because they burned the entire time they were losing feeling. Nevertheless, I knew standing up was going to be fun. When I studied abroad I took a class in a traditional tatami room and the very first day our professor warned us about sitting seiza and how she had a girl fall on her face trying to stand up. So everyone around me is standing and I’m sweating bullets but cocky Madeline goes “we got this, just take it slowly”. I swung out one leg to stand on and I swear my foot folded over in half like it was gelatin. With a bit of wiggling I got it going the right way. Mortified, I try to get my other leg up so I can use the two to steady myself… which incidentally made me even less stable. Inaho-sensei next to me offered me an arm to steady myself and instructed the girl on my other side to take my other arm. Of course everyone else was totally fine standing. So I’m standing there being supported by a 70 year old man and a middle schooler while my legs burn with blood rushing back into them and my face burns with humiliation. Everyone was super nice about it though and one of the women in kimono came over and showed me how you’re supposed to correctly sit seiza so you don’t look like a moron. I’ll call it a learning experience. I actually was given a picture of the event but sadly I can’t share it because it has a student in it. If I’m feeling creative later I’ll blur everybody out but me and post it.

My third day at work (also Friday) I was taken to the bank by Namba-san to set up an account (there was also a trip to the tax office but it was uneventful). At the bank I got to use my newly created hanko for the first time. In Japan, there is no cursive so you don’t sign your name on legal documents; you use a stamp called a hanko. For Japanese people, their hanko is their surname which is usually a few kanji. Since I’m a foreigner with 3 names (Japanese doesn’t do middle names, by the way) I got to pick which name I wanted to use and what language I wanted it in. I chose my first name in katakana, the set of symbols used for foreign words. So my hanko stamps “マデリン” or “Maderin” which is also what I go by in Japan.

At the bank Namba-san and I had to wait a while because America just decided to start a new policy where foreign bank accounts have to be notified to the IRS. While that was being figured out I got a chance to talk to Namba-san a bit, who is usually a bit reserved with me and uses a lot of Japanese. Apparently he’s a computer nerd too (his own words, loosely translated to English) and we talked about computer specs for a bit. Who really needs 16GB of RAM though? He also asked if my family would come visit and hoped I would bring them by the office. I told him my mom and brother wanted to visit which prompted him to ask about my dad. I had actually asked Becca what a politely way to say ‘dead’ was in Japanese (“passed away” in English isn’t literal and is confusing) but I had forgotten and just had to say dead. It was probably a good way to deal with that though, since I have a feeling he’ll tell a few other people so they don’t bring it up.

The paperwork finally got finished up and my bank account was successfully opened. As a welcome gift I was given… no, nothing tea related this time. I got laundry detergent, toothpaste, a notepad, and a pack of travel tissues. Ok then! I like free stuff. After an hour of googling I still haven’t figured out if the detergent contains bleach though. Trial and error is fine for most things but not my business clothes.

If I didn't know better I'd think the town was worried about me.

That’s most of the initial first days stuff that happened to me in the order I can remember. There are a few more things of interest I’m just going to mention below not in any particular order. It’s already been a week since I came here, it’s hard to believe but stuff has slipped from me.

At one point when walking with Rebecca and Andrew, Becca was telling me a bit about the area and asked if I was afraid of bugs. I’ve read all about how Japan has bug problems and luckily bugs have never really bothered me. I’m actually letting some spiders rent space on my porch as long as they eat the filthy mosquitoes that try to get in. As for larger bugs, I saw a rogue cockroach my very first night and escorted him out of the building but I haven’t seen anything larger than a mosquito since. So I told her no, the only thing I really couldn’t handle were snakes. Becca made a concerned face and quickly assured me she never saw them up by the house. So Japan has snakes. A lot of snakes. A lot of poisonous snakes. Did I mention there’s a river running through the middle of town and right behind my house? There are charming “beware snakes” signs all along them. This is why we can’t have nice things.

Guess where I'm never going?

On one of my first mornings in the BoE office I was trying to be studious and do stuff and a woman came up next to me and introduced herself as Mamiko-san. She spoke in perfect English and told me she worked in the library next to my office and invited me to visit sometime. As soon as she introduced herself I knew who she was because Becca had mentioned her. Apparently, she helped out Becca’s predecessor a lot which in turn helped both Becca and myself. She stopped by another day and said hi to me as well. I packed several omiyage to give to the people who help me in Japan and I decided that I definitely wanted to give her one. She went out of her way more than once to seek me out and speak to me in a way that made me comfortable. So today I got to give her a homemade soap (provided by the wonderful Mona Flynn). After work I went to the library and she showed me where there were some English books as well as some children’s books in Japanese that I could use for practice. When I gave her the gift (which was wrapped so she didn’t know what it was) she asked if I could cook and offered to bring me some tomatoes from her father’s garden. I also got a form so I can get a library card. Technically omiyage are supposed to go to the highest ranking people (like my supervisor’s boss who I met once and never see) but I’d so much rather give it to people like Mamiko who are friendly and interact with me regularly.

I was told in advance that omiyage are rarely opened in front of the giver so I
translated the contents so Mamiko-san would know what it was.

Presentation is everything! That's my awesome desk chair, by the way. (Thanks Becca!)

I’ve heard many stereotypes about Asians being bad drivers and it is so many kinds of untrue. I cannot imagine how hard the Japanese driving test must be based on the driving skills I’ve seen displayed. Roads in Japan are quite small. Like really, really tight. Like, the side mirrors on cars fold in so cars can squeeze into tiny spots. Also everyone backs into parking spots. It’s really impressive.  At an event I’ll talk about in a later entry a woman was driving Becca, Andrew, and myself and came across a road with cars parked on either side leaving barely a car sized hole in the middle. Andrew got out to help guide her but with only inches on either side she successfully navigated the car through the opening. I am so glad to not have to drive in Japan.

Aghh, I don't seem to have many pictures for this one (and it's long) so here’s a picture of my kitchen while cooking curry! Why yes, that banana rack does have eyes. I needed something with googly eyes to feel a little more at home.

That made way too much curry by the way. I had to freeze like half.

Future posts! A neighborhood summer festival, my Welcome Ceremony, culture shock, my apartment, and food I’m cooking and eating with recipes! Also possibly an entry on all the adorable things Inaho-sensei has done.

Ja ne!