Monday, August 27, 2001

Good evening all..
this is going to be quick as i am exhausted! I have still not recovered from all night karaoke on saturday night, the 12 til 5 shift is long, even with the joys of partying with Britney fans *shudder* I was out with the girl from Brunei and a couple of teh other ALTs from the chiba camp which was fun, and I sang lots of Alanis Morrisette and Sheryl Crow which I enjoyed...what will i do without quality karaoke when i get home?!
I had my 'photo shoot' today with the editor from Bennesse. Should be interesting, from the photos i appear to look like a fat white flavour free sushi so perhaps i will end up in the cooking section instead. Only time will tell. Oh I think i forgot to mention it isnt actually a magazine it is a text book for 15year old japanese students studying english. I will be educating 20 000 japanese students in Tokyo next year (hehehehe) and will be excited at the prospect of how many fangs, blacked in teeth, pirate eye patches, enormous pamela anderson fake boobs, and not so witty japanese speech bubbles that will no doubt be drawn on my round little volleyball of a noggin next year.
Oh i will never die! I will live on in the form of a fat toothless pirate with pamela anderson boobs in the text books of japan- I am simply moved to tears.
On to something more real than Pammies boobs I delivered my speech to the new exchange students on Saturday afternoon. They were so adorable. At first i was jealous that they get the chance to do this all over again, all the trials and little excitements and small victories, but then I came to my senses. As if I would ever want to live that first month again! iyada! (yucky) I am quite happy being able to go to the post office and bank without needing to take a paper bag to place over my head incase of 1.hyperventilation due to stress or 2. disguise incase of too many starering japanese munters, I quite like it this way! The students are all having their first meal with their host families tonight, poor things, I am sure they are flipping out! Oh I feel all clucky!
But it was great to see that i had actually learned something since i arrived, it was nice to be the sempai (elder) instead of the kowhai (protoge) for once! And delivering my speech was actually kind of fun, its nice when you have people who actually need to listen! makes a change from delivering oral presentations at school to an audience of students attempting to write their own speeches as opposed to listening to yours, or debating where they were only listening so they could rip your speech apart! But yeah it was cool.
There is a game show coming to Tokyo, a quiz of some description, and dammit I wanna be a tv star! Even though as miss swiss pointed out it is more than likely just a show designed to poke fun at the gaijin answering teh questions strangely, or simply not understanding the questions at all...but whatever! (sorry about that 'whatever,' I am still attempting to flush the Britney Spears from my brain cells.)
Oyasumi minna Good night everyone... sorry this was so uninspired...! Volley tomorrow, if i am bothered!
Love Kureya chan (my name)
posted by Claire English @ 11:06 PM

Sunday, August 19, 2001

Awwww. Has everyone read Caitlins message in the guest book?Awwww warm and fuzzies all the way!
Hi Everyone and especially Ian who is coming to visit me in november!
I hope you have had a mindblowingly excellent week like I have.
I just got back from the most amazing 4 days of my time here in Japan. It was the international youth conference for 18 to 28 year old foreigners in Japan and it was so awesome. I have never been so interested in anything in my life. My brain aches from actually wanting to learn so much in such a short space of time.
You see the camp was created to promote international understanding so there were people from EVERYWHERE. Finnland, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Phillipines, Korea, China, American, Canada, France, Mongolia, Russia, UK, Brunei, Peru, India, and little old me amongst many others. There were only two exchange students; my Finnish friend Noora and I. The rest were people who were working or at University here. It was so great. I was so naeve about so many places, the girl from Brunei had some amazing stories to tell and was really fantastic. And my dream life was being lived by so many people there. They were MULTI LINGUAL! Can you believe that? Ugh I am so jealous. I was highly embarassed being stuck with only one and a quarter languages! But I am only 18!! I have heaps of time left! YAY!!
The greatest thing was we had all been in Japan for different amounts of time, and had different views on everything. Some had been in Japan for 6 years (the japanese had obviously been here longer!) and some had been here a week. It was so funny watching the girl from UK who had only been here a week. She said countless times ' I am not eating that! ' and it was so amusing because you know give her a few months and she absolutely will! We stayed up all night talking and playing stupid 'Have you ever' games. We played have you ever eaten and I have to say i was pretty good at this one considering i live with a fisherman father. The english girl was screetching the whole time 'NEVER! I WON'T EAT THAT!' But she will learn to love raw squid, slices of bulls tongue, natto (sticky beans that smell like -to be childish- poo poo), living fish, sweet eel, turtle, purple vinegary cucumber, raw egg etc, and if she doesnt love it she will tolerate it like the rest of us!
Another funny thing was the public baths. In the same hotel we were staying at there were a few girls high schools on camp. It was so funny walking in to the bath with my american and french friend. You see it seems (as i learned on volleyball camp) the japanese girls must think the words bikini wax involve rubbing honey in to your swimming togs because they certainly arent bringing it anywhere near the downstairs compartment (excuse the vulgarity!) and I had completely forgotten this thinking only that the camp was on the beach and that i would have to wear swimming togs and had gone a little brazillian if you get my drift. This was nothing compared to the American who had, *cough* peircings...and intersting nipple rings....and the French girl had an enormous tattoo all the way down her back. (Tatoos are are associated with the Mafia-yakuza- here) I have never seen 80 naked japanese highschool girls squeal and point before but it was certainly an experience. I dont know that the others will ever public bathe again... i laughed until I cried. And atleast the bath wasnt crowded.
I learned all about the different jobs that people have here too. Some work in embassies, some work as teachers with a program called JET, which sounds pretty awesome, and some of them just have normal jobs at restaurants and hotels and offices and such. Foreigners really do live normal lives here. Who would have guessed?!
What I loved about it too was that I was really understood. When i have a bad day here, I often ring or email home about it, but when i complain everyone says 'ooh thats horrible, the japanese are bad people' when that isnt it at all. Noone really understands that although i cant explain it I really love it here and not just because of the freedom it gives me. But yeah they all said that they really understood and some were back for the 5th or 6th time. It isnt just the money either, none of us could really touch on what it was. You don't hear about that many european exchange students who go back to live where they were for a year, but it happens ALL the time with japanese exchange students. Oh man I love it here. I was so lucky I got to go that camp, others just went to normal school camps which sounded (sorry Jess) kind of lame.
I have to go write a welcome speech for the new exchange students coming to japan soon so i better get going. I also have been asked to be in a japanese magazine explaining my culture shock etc. So I think its time to start speaking socially acceptable japaneses as opposed to gutter japanese. I will have to say 'amari ooishikunai' instead of 'chou umakuneeeh' which will be tough for me. I like using vulgar boys only japanese! And I guess if I am the one being volunteered for these things maybe I am not going as badly as i thought. Maybe I am actually doing this Japanese thing. I hope so.
Love you all and I will write again soon, I am off to Jessica's for a few days.
Glad your semi went well Ninny, I love you and will call soon!
Jya ne!

posted by Claire English @ 2:16 PM

Monday, August 13, 2001

Why is that the idea of telling you all that I am a fantastic volleyball player with no faults or poor fitness or struggles bears no appeal to me at all? Is it because i am a saddistic cynic who takes pleasure in whining to an undetermined number of people, or just because it would be a stinky lie that noone would believe anyway? Why is it that i will indeed take pleasure in telling you exactly what all of my failings are in exact detail?! I need help. Someone send me some Montecarlos immediately.
Yes Volleyball camp.
What can we say about volleyball camp...
In Japanese I personally would use words like YADA! or YABAI! or MURI! or MENDOKUSAI! But I am a nice polite girl so ofcourse I would put those in to polite form and not call my team savage, cruel, pain inflicting, or, lets be Australian, a bunch of bloody dunderheads. But they were! Oh I have no way of explaining the physical torture I was put through! *hand on forehead, swooning* It was about 200 times worse than Outward bound and outward bound involved filling holes full of others defecation so that says something. Every morning we got up while the first number on the clock was still a 5, no dont get me wrong I am a fighter, I am tough but i have my limits. It was dark, dark I tell you! And then after getting up we would go running. Not jogging, it was much faster than that. And ofcourse not on flat. Up mountains. The camp was situated in a valley. Surrounded by mountains. We had to climb one to get ANYWHERE. (But man i have good legs this week!) And the torture continued from 5:45am til 5:45pm. One hour for breakfast. One hour for lunch. that's it. We had HOURS of sprints everyday which almost killed me. I seriously thought i was going to die, and then it occurred to me it was much worse, i wasnt going to die, I was going to have to keep doing it! FIGHTOOOO! as they screamed. repeditively, in my ear. I am sure to have recurring nightmares with that word echoing through my skull!

I learned from it though. As pathetic as that sounds. I always went to volleyball to escape. I never thought about anything for the 3hours we practised because if you loose concentration you loose. But not thinking for 5 days does strange things to you. Things sneak up on you in your subconscience and all of a sudden on the third day when you have done 24 hours of volleyball in three days on five hours sleep a night you find yourself about ready to mentally collapse. Mentally because you wont allow yourself to physically collapse. On the second day I skipped warm down because i felt really ill, but i found out loosing the respect of the other players was a whole lot worse than putting yourself through an extra ten minutes of hell. So i pushed myself harder. But on the third day I just couldnt handle it, we had run up the mountain to the sports complex in the extreme heat we were about to do line sprints, followed by flat back jumpstart sprints, followed by net jump sprints, and i just about lost it! i had tears in my eyes and inside my head i was screaming 'GIVE IT UP! YOU CAN'T HANDLE IT! YOU CAN'T DO THIS ACCEPT IT YOU FAT SLOW UNFIT GAIJIN!' and I almost got up and left. But if i did that then any respect i had was gone. And i was so sure i was the only one struggling. I was the slowest, I was the outsider, I was the only one struggling. So from somewhere I found a small patch of energy and I was fine again.
The worst part was probably later that day when I looked at Sawako. Sawako is the queen of the first graders (16 year olds) she is the thinnest, the brightest, the strongest, the funniest. She is aiming to be number one at Tokyo University in a few years, and knowing her- she will get it. Anyway after my little mental break down that morning, I looked at Sawako and her eyes were full of tears, silent drops running down her face. She was struggling! Sawako was having trouble! How selfish had i been to think i was the only one feeling a bit lost! It really grounded me and i was quite angry at myself. In Japan hugging isnt really done. So i just grabbed her hands and was rubbing them and stroking her head trying to make her feel better and she started sobbing 'Kureya, (Claire) yasashii yo ne' (you are so kind) and I felt really angry because maybe i did seem kind but only because everyone else was too busy fighting their own inner battles to be bothered with her. Maybe they didnt want to embarass her I dont know, but it got to me. And thats when i realised how much you stop worrying about your own health whe you are worried about someone elses.
But yes that bit was cool. The rest was hard. Really hard. But you get that. You know, for a moment there I had my first bout of REALLY wanting to go home. Not to Nishi Kasai but back to Brisbane, home home. I always managed to fight that one but suddenly I needed comfort. Weird huh?
The funniest thing was that on teh last day i made everyone walk down so they could appreciate the mountain. It was stunning. Near Nikko so lots of trees and BLUE SKY! I know strange, blue not a weird grey-green colour! But when you are running you dont appreciate things. Why do you think my grandma and grandpa drive from Perth to Brisbane, so that they can stop along the way and see things. Why does it take Gran so long to get anywhere, okay yes because her legs are short and sometimes she doesnt know where she is going, but ALSO because she likes to look at things. It was very me to force people to dawdle. i made them do sit ups if they walked too fast. I got a report from my coach and captains before i came home. Apparently my dedication and strength made them want to cry. What a bunch of wusses. Try living in Japan for 10 months!! Weak Emotional Anorexic Nihonjins! just jokes...
Better go now. my host family are hear and I want to spend some time with them, volleycamp improved my japanese miraculously and i want to show off!
posted by Claire English @ 6:49 PM

Wednesday, August 01, 2001

Hello! once again my stupid thing refused to publish and left me thinking i posted the previous entry over a week ago *agression builiding* but such is life!!
The reason i am writing this one is because I am being sent to another hostfamily for a week, followed by a week of volleyball camp, followed by 'international awareness' camp. So it may be a while before i get to the internet again. Or I may have access tomorrow night, who knows...
I am my new host families 35th exchange student. i am very frightened and am imagining floor scrubbing, fish gutting, illegal workshop purse sewing and the like so if you never hear from me again you know i was captured by evil secret nike workshop slave drivers or something...
Anyways, apologies to everyone i have been a little agressive towards of late. Its a very normal thing for exchange students according to the manual. After settling in, you can begin to feel your life as an independant student is far superior to your life before you arrived. As a result of this its easy to slip in to the mindset that your lifestyle is superior to those from back home. Thus my 'your stupid, 'social obligations', petty, meaningless, unimportant, gossipy, rumoury, boring, average lives make me angry' attitude. I do apologise. Seriously, I don't think my life is superior to yours, its just different and its not necessarily harder or better or making me a better person than any of the things you are doing and excuse me if you thought I was under that impression!!
I have my goodbye party for all of the exchange students doing only 5 months in japan this weekend. We have all changed so much and i am sad to see them go. I dont know how they individually feel, some are glad to go home, but others know that to learn decent japanese 5 months just may not be enough. Anyway it will no doubt be a teary occasion for all!
I best be off. This is my last night with the Shigenos for a few weeks as they head off to the states for a while to visit Makis host family and thank them. Sometimes they are so polite its just sickening!
I will write about my 'international awareness' camp. I got the info today and it sounds amusingly lame. Lots of speeches on 'understanding the asian people' and 'my culture shock' amongst other things that we may actually have been able to make use of had we heard them 4 MONTHS ago! I am going as an 'international ambassador for my country and have to give a speech... hahahahah I will fail miserably and entertainingly just so i have something to write about!
Volleyball camp will be the death of me. 5 days of it all day will kill me. I am laughing at myself already.
Take care. Gommen minna for my agression again! (sorry all)
Claire the 'independant' student who speaks japanese gutter trash tokyo japanese! (majide chou baka dayo, sungeh dame na hito yo!)
posted by Claire English @ 10:21 PM