Multitasking.

Written on Tuesday the 26th:

Today is the last day of classes of the first semester. That’s pretty hard to believe. And a little scary. I’ve been here very nearly four months now, which means that only six are left. Time is running out!

I took my last test today (Japanese), but I still have three papers (well, four, but one is not a final paper, just one more of the papers we write for every lecture for Uchino) to write before I’m really done.
…And, actually, though today is officially the last day of the semester, I actually have one more class. This is because Thursday and Friday are days set aside for make-up classes, and Uchino decided to use it and schedule normal class for that day (not as a make-up at all, but just because he’s Uchino).That I call him Uchino, and not Unchino-sensei is my tiny, silent form of rebellion and expression of my general distaste.
…So, considering the papers and that one remaining class, maybe it’s a little early to get retrospective about the semester. But, so far here in Japan, a lot of things have changed.
Some of them are semi-incidental.
For example, I've lived entirely on my own, without sometimes-cooking and grocery-shopping mother, roommate, or dining hall, for the first time. I experimented a lot with cooking, especially in the first two months or so. When I didn’t yet have my scholarship, those first three weeks, I cooked all the time. After I got it, I cooked perhaps four nights a week. By January, I cooked approximately .5 days a week. This was especially evidenced by my rice supply. The first bag of rice that I bought lasted, I think, about a month and a half. The second bag, purchased when the first bag ran out, is still going strong.
I’ve also been living in a new city for the first time. It was both very handy and kind of boring to go to uni in the same town I grew up in. Of course, moving to a city in Japan and moving to Chicago are two very different things. Chicago is perhaps somewhat foreign, but Tokyo presented in a much stronger way the question of whether or not I could get used to this new place, feel at home there, and feel a sense of home there. And in many ways, I think I have. I identify so much with Tokyo right now. I’m really attached to Tokyo. And I’ve reached that critical point where I’m not always particularly aware that I am in Tokyo. It’s normal and comfortable.

Not so incidentally, I think I can say now I’ve gotten used to living in another country. There was a time when I was quite aware of my own foreignness. Then there was a time when I got used to it enough that I could forget about it for several hours at a time. But recently, I suddenly realized on the train home from school one day that I was, as far as I could tell, the only non-Japanese person in my car. And I was kind of surprised. I’m sure this must have always been a commonplace occurrence, but I guess I’d lost my awareness of it over time. And for a few days afterward, I’ve been occasionally looking around on the train, and seeing that I usually am the only one. It has actually been kind of shocking. I mean, I know there are relatively few foreigners in Japan, even in Tokyo, but how long did it take me to get so used to that that I stopped noticing, and actually totally forgot?
And there are a lot of other changes as well, more to myself (that is, the myself that existed in some way before coming here, unlike the me who lives by myself, or the me who lives in a new city and new country).
I think I am more positive, more open, more humble, more adventurous, more brave… But beyond all of these, one change has definitely shocked me.
In my first week or so in Tokyo I was quite taken aback by the omnipresence of bicycles. Now, I knew that people in Japan use bicycles far more than people in the states. No shock. But that doesn’t mean I really understood what it looks like. And part of it is just that Tokyo is so very dense; there are a lot people. Which means that there are a lot of people on bicycles. It is difficult to go ten seconds, or even one second during the daytime, without seeing a person on a bicycle on major roads. Of course, this is another thing I’ve gotten used to, and which doesn’t stand out to me… It’s a little hard to remember exactly what it felt like at first, and usually these things don’t float up in my memory to mention anymore, because I can't see them the same way anymore.
But anyway, the presence of bicycles in people’s lives made quite an impression on me. Something that really intensified that was that, while I was still a little wobbly, not really having ridden much at all in years (also totally different now), I saw several people not just talking on their cell phones, but doing possibly the most Japanese thing imaginable, and actually texting (or rather, as is the case in Japan, sending email), while biking. If anything made me stare, and I was putting certain effort into not staring those first few days, it was that. How is it possible? To hold the phone, type in a message and be biking forward and not killing anyone. Because of the more free way that Japanese phonetic characters can combine, compared to Roman letters as used by English, as well as the limited number of sounds in Japanese that leads to endless homophones, I think, texting in Japanese is practically impossible without looking at the screen; the phone simply cannot predict well enough to allow you to write without you reading the options it gives you and selecting much more actively than when texting in English. And because this is Japan, if you do damage someone or something it’s going to be a big deal, and no one wears helmets. How is this possible? How do people actually find it in themselves to do this?
Fast forward to last week, as I’m biking home from the station after school. My phone, in my front right pocket vibrates. I'm right-handed, so if I'm going to let go of the handlebars with one hand, it's normally my left hand that does so. So, with my left hand I reach down, across to my right pocket, dig for and finally extract my phone, while still pedaling. Normally I might stop to do this, but I was actually behind a couple friends, and didn't want to hold them up, and didn't think they'd listen if I told them not to wait for me. So, still riding, I opened my phone, read the message (from Alden)... And typed a brief reply, in Japanese. I actually did it. That which was until recently unthinkable became reality.
...Can that be considered a benchmark of integration? Hm.

Written today:

I've also written a couple more short Japanese journal entries, which I'll perhaps translate into English tonight or tomorrow, and post when at school tomorrow. :)