やった～～！！
By which I mean, I took the JLPT (for the non-Japan nerds out there, the Japanese Language Proficiency Test), not that I actually passed. I won’t know that until September, and by then I wonder if I’ll even remember I took the test.
So now I’m sitting here in Nagoya with not much to do. My host parents are out for the morning (my host dad went on an overnight golfing trip with his buddies and isn’t expected back until later this evening. My host mom expects him to come back fully lit up because he and the more committed members of his crowd will do a nomikai – drinking party – before he comes back), and my host mom is out getting a massage and then going to Curves (yes, they have those here). It feels pretty weird not to have a purpose; up until this point, my focus was on studying – and of course, procrastinating on studying – for the JLPT, and now I’m left with the very vague goal of finding a job. I say “vague” because I don’t know when it will happen or where it will be there, and so is therefore a lot harder to target. Every cover letter/resume package I send is like a shot in the dark.
But how did I wind up in Japan in the first place?
Well, the really simple answer is stupidity. I wasn’t supposed to leave for Japan until last Monday (June 27th), but yet I wound up in Tokyo a week early. How did that happen? It all came as a result of how UW fucked up my travel plans. I hadn’t intended to leave Japan until at least after the JLPT, and was leaving my options open depending on how my shuushoku (job search) efforts went in the 4th quarter. So in March, I still didn’t have a return ticket back the US. When the command came from the higher-ups in the UW administration for me to come back to campus, I had to scramble to find myself a way back. I don’t know why this is, but it is almost always cheaper to buy a round-trip than a one-way; so in March, I had just enough reason left that I hadn’t drunk into oblivion to get a ticket that if I so chose to come back to Japan and take the JLPT, I would have a means to do so. Hence, the return portion of my ticket took me from SeaTac to Narita left on June 27th.
At the time in March and then for the following weeks I debated whether or not I would go back to Japan (it was insanely expensive to leave on such short notice and UW offered me no assistance other than to send me a series of obnoxiously ignorant e-mails), but in one of my suitcases bound for the US I stored the JLPT application. The other thing worth noting here is that the JLPT is offered twice a year in December and July, but you can only take the July exam in Japan. Who knows how much Japanese I will forget in the next 6 months; I assume that my Japanese is pretty much at its best right now and therefore, this is my one chance to try to pass N1, the highest level on the JLPT. Therefore, I figured I would fill out the application and pay for the test (5,000 yen, which on the old exchange rate was about $50, but is now more like $500 or something) and still leave it open for myself to go back.
But since the exam is in Japan, the system for paying for the test wasn’t so simple as to just filling out credit card information. You needed to make a payment for the exam right into JEES’ (I forget what the acronym stands for – presumably the Japanese Examination blah blah blah - but think of them like the College Board) bank account via a Japanese ATM. Seeing as though I couldn’t actually do this myself short of buying yet another plane ticket out to Japan (that was yet to come), I enlisted Paul Speed’s help in getting this together for me. He had to use his own money, and at this point I felt obligated to come back. I have this thing about depending on people (a theme I may further expand upon in this post if it doesn’t go on for too long, or I will save it for another time), and once I had to inconvenience someone else, I felt pretty obligated in seeing the JLPT through to fruition.
The X-factor for me back in April was when and if I would ever start work. I have been consistently applying and interviewing for jobs since late April/May, but obviously I haven’t had much luck in that department as of yet. But I had no way of knowing that through May, and therefore hesitated on buying a return ticket back to the US until the last minute in case I needed to move to a new city and start work soon after the JLPT. So it probably wasn’t until the first week of June that I got around to buying myself the return portion of my ticket back to the US.
However, I had of course been checking out flight prices this entire time and they were pretty killer. A one-way was going to cost me upwards of $1100, and I kept trying out different combinations of dates for a return ticket, departing Narita in July and then I would just never use the inbound portion of that ticket for September/October/June 2012, etc. But those tickets were ALSO absurdly expensive. And then I had what I thought was a brilliant idea: why not buy a ticket that departs SeaTac before the 27th, and get a return flight for July 28th? Summer is a notoriously expensive time to travel in Japan because it’s both high foreign and domestic tourist season, and tickets after the 2nd or 3rd week in July are ridiculous. But if I got a ticket that left in June and then returned just before high travel season, then I’d be in the clear right?
Wrong. But that’s exactly what I did. I could not have known at the time what a hassle it was going to be.
At the time, I assumed I would be able to call the airline company and tell them though I wasn’t going to be using the outbound ticket to Narita as I would be leaving a week later, I would most definitely need the ticket in July. So I sat pretty with this for awhile and didn’t think about it again until Sunday, July 19th, the day before that outbound flight was scheduled to leave. I call up Cheaptickets to ask them whether I can set this up through them or if I needed to call Alaska and Korean Air (the itinerary had a layover in LAX) directly and inform them. I get passed through 3 or 4 different operators before one of them informs me that what I thought was a matter of marking a database turned out to be a breach of contract.
Let this be a lesson to all who don’t already know this and wind up in a similar situation as I did: if you don’t use the outbound portion of your ticket, you are immediately marked as a no-show and your inbound ticket is invalid. Unless you have a flex ticket, there are no exceptions. Frankly, I find the rigidity of airline companies absurd since I paid for that ticket: who are you to tell me I can’t use it? But in the end, I blame my blinding ignorance of the situation for the predicament I was in. The operator explained I could cancel my current flight plan, and get a refund less a $200 cancellation feed, and then buy a one-way out of Narita for the same date. What was the cheapest ticket available at that time? $1500. So I would essentially be paying an extra $900 (the $200 cancellation fee plus the difference in ticket price between my round-trip and the one-way) to come back from Japan.
I told Cheaptickets to hold that thought and that I would call back if I needed to. So it’s around 2:30 the day before I have a flight that if I don’t take will cost me an extra $900. Mind you, I didn’t actually get up until 12:30 that day because I had been out all night drinking, singing karaoke, clubbing, and stuffing money into go-go boys’ underwear on Saturday (worth it), and now I am faced with the choice of trying to get myself together to leave the following day. Add to this the fact that the “lease” (I put this in quotes because I never in fact signed any lease) on my apartment was up on June 30th and I would also need to pack up all of my shit and put upon Kelly and Chuck a week earlier than planned so that I could get my ass on a plane at SIX AM the following morning.
Not knowing what else to do, I called Kelly who I knew was at work (yes, on a Sunday, though she doesn’t seem to mind that very much) and unable to answer. I left her message to call me back as soon as she could, and headed to the shower to try and clean up and also get my thoughts together because at this point I was slamming that PANIC button pretty hard. The shower didn’t help much, and just in case, I started picking things up around my room until I was finally able to get in touch with Kelly. She called me back, and after explaining the situation, the conversation went a little something like this:
Calm, sane person: We can do this, Mariko. It’s not a big deal. I can come over later to help pack you up and get you moved into our apartment.
INSANE, PANICKY PERSON: )(#@&%)#@(&t)@(#^)(#^%)(#@#@((#&(#&
I also apologized a million times for being such a pain in the ass (again, the dependence thing and feeling like I am putting someone out to serve my needs), but Kelly helped to get me calm enough to realize I needed to pack up my apartment in the space of 4 or 5 hours and be ready for her when she came over later that evening. Once I got off the phone, I tried to take a few deep breaths to get myself together, but ultimately I started hyperventilating like a crazy person while yelling at myself WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DOOOOO. I was pretty light-headed a few times there and was afraid I was going to faint, but fortunately I was able to stay upright and mobile.
The one advantage to living such a transient lifestyle (thanks UW!) was that I never bothered to unpack a lot of my stuff. I knew that I was only going to be staying in that Cap Hill apartment for 3 months and didn’t really see the point of settling in. So most of my clothes were still semi-packed in my suitcases, and I also had the 2 boxes I had sent from Japan to myself sitting mostly untouched. The actual process of packing wasn’t all that time consuming (the biggest project was trying to get myself together to leave for sweltering hot and humid Japan the next day… I had no idea what to put in my suitcase), though once Kelly came and helped me start moving stuff, I was once again reminded of the fact I am a terrible nomad. I have way too much shit to be effectively mobile. It took two trips to get me into Kelly and Chuck’s apartment (which I had only just helped them move into the day before. Must have been so exciting to have even more boxes!) and then I could take a little breather.
Poor Kelly got me to the airport the following morning by 4am, and the rest is history. Syd was willing to let me come stay a week early on short notice (again, dependence...), and so on Tuesday, June 21st I was back in Tokyo. Before I proceed with anything that happened in Japan, can I say LAX is the absolute WORST airport I’ve ever been in. What a hell hole. I’ve heard as such, and my experience more than confirmed it. I took an Alaska flight down and walked circles around the domestic terminal trying to figure out how to get to international departures, and asked no less than 3 staff members how to get there. Each time they seemed to signal that I needed to leave the security area to get there, which didn’t seem to make any sense to me, so I went and asked the next person until finally someone bluntly told me I needed to go outside and back through security again to get to my departing gate. What. The. Fuck. After getting the pat down in SeaTac at 4:15 in the morning (the first time ever for that for me), I had to pass through one of those new body scanners in LAX; even though I thought I should feel violated in some way, I was too tired and stressed to really give a fuck. However my flight to Japan was fantastic. I was on Korean Air and Asian airlines are the best. I had bibimbap for lunch, all the refills on tea and water I wanted, and was surrounded by attractive flight attendants and fellow travelers alike (damn you, Korean boys). But my thought through all of this has been that whenever it is I next come to Japan (and it had better not take me 5 years again), I am going to do it in a calm, rational manner. The fact I had to leave and return in such a panic I am sure has shaved a few years off my lifespan.
My first week in Tokyo was a haze of jetlag and sweat. I am really not well-adapted to this kind of heat, and even New York summers have always been unbearable for me. Speed also talked me into going to the Tokyo Career Forum last Monday, which had me pretty stressed (it also wasn’t very fruitful since it seemed like they were looking for kids fresh out of college – the Japanese are very strict in their definitions of “entry-level” and “mid-career” and by their standards I am an old woman), and also to meet with someone from the recruiting firm he used to work for. I haven’t heard for them in awhile, and considering the tightness of my schedule at this point (2 weeks left), I am not sure how that will work out. We’ll have to see. I also finally made it out to Nichome with Wilson (see, what did I tell you about asking me about whether I want to go home and do work or go out and dance after I've had a couple?), and managed to find the few straight boys that hang out in Japanese gay clubs. I feel like I should walk around with a sign that says "I did not come here to dance with you." Blech, Wilson was able to rescue me from one of the sweatier customers at least.
At the time I had applied for the JLPT, I requested to take the test in Nagoya as I had every intention of spending most of my time here with my host parents rather than put upon my friends for an extended period. As it turned out, though, it was a good thing I came in a week earlier because I got to see KT once last time before she headed back to Ohio, and also Alex who was leaving the day after I arrived. Once the dust was settled from the mess I had created, being in Japan a week early was fantastic. It was just getting to that point that I think has given me a heart problem.
I departed Tokyo last Tuesday afternoon by bus (only 2000 yen! I’m still very proud of how cheap that ticket was and I can hopefully get another one of those for my trip back to Tokyo), and finally got to my host parents’ house around 9. My host mom made me soumen since I hadn’t really eaten dinner (only some random snacks I had bought at the rest stops along the way to Nagoya), and it was just like old times. My host dad almost immediately started talking about a new beer garden that opened up near Nagoya Station on top of a fish market that offers all-you-can-drink beer and all-you-can-eat fish for 2 hours, but realized it was better we went after I took the JLPT to actually enjoy myself. I’ve never had the heart to tell my host parents I really do not enjoy beer any more (they knew me back when I was starting to like the stuff, and long before my incident with it that made me never want to drink it again), so it’ll be interesting to see how much off the stuff I can put down. If this was all you can drink sours and scotch, I’d be all over it. The all-you-can-eat fish sounds fantastic, though.
There isn’t all that much else to do here than to study Japanese; the internet connection is slow and I feel bad sitting up in their computer room all day (they don’t have wireless and I don’t have an Ethernet cord for my laptop), so last week I spent most of my time either talking to my host parents, or sitting in the tatami room studying Japanese. I actually didn’t mind studying all that much since I was functioning with a purpose (to giri giri goukaku on the JLPT), and though a lot of what I studied didn’t show up on the exam, I still absorbed a lot. I just wonder how long it’s going to take me to lose all of it.
Apart from one really fantastic meal of sushi, sashimi and tempura as my “welcome home” dinner on Wednesday at a traditional restaurant, all of our meals have been eaten at home so as to allow me to go right back to studying. My host mom is a great cook, and you can rest easy (or hate me) in the fact that I am eating very well. However, I stupidly left my camera behind in Tokyo, so I can’t rub your face in it here.
Wow, it took me awhile to get the actual JLPT. I feel like I say this pretty much every blog post, but sometimes I just don’t stop writing. I’m actually typing this up on my laptop right now and will transfer it to the internet via my flashdrive since my host parents’ computer is really really old (even older than my laptop… it’s been here since before I came in 2005), and in Word, this blog post is now at about 5 and half pages single-spaced. So if you’ve made it this far, maybe you should ask yourself whether or not you should get a hobby.
But the JLPT. I was passing the practice exams I took before the test, which makes me hopeful I will be able to just barely pass the actual exam, but I don’t want to conjecture. There were definitely some parts of the test I thought were harder than the practice exam (particularly the quick-answer portion of the listening, and the whole fucking reading section – WHAT THE FUCK WAS GOING ON THERE? Someone was reading too much Foucault before they made this test; what was with all the passages questioning the nature of knowledge and our understanding of the world around us?), but there were others I thought I breezed through. Again, I won’t get the results until September, so it’ll be awhile before I know if my impressions were correct.
What I found more interesting, though, I were the other test-takers. It didn’t even occur to me until I made my 3rd transfer (the test location was a bit out of my way, but the nice thing was that the first 2 legs of my trip were the old way that I used to go to Nanzan University when I was a study abroad student in 2005) that I was actually on the train with other test-takers. I figured the majority of the other test-takers would be Asian, but I had no idea how great a majority it was going to be. Once I changed at Yagoto for the Tsurumai Line that becomes the Meitetsu out to Toyota City, I realized I was surrounded by people speaking either Mandarin or Korean. Then I saw a white dude reading his N1 prep book. It was still a bit early before the exam, but a good portion of my train got off at Kurozasa Station and there was a whole caravan of people walking up toward the Aichi Daigaku campus.
It seemed like everyone was there in packs; most anyone who seemed to be there by themselves were other Americans (or at least, I assumed they were based on the way they were dressed… we are really an unattractive bunch of people when we want to be). It was a good 15 minute walk up hill to the campus, and somehow the Asian girls were able to do in their giant heels and platforms. This isn’t to say they walked fast; in fact they were dragging their feet already at 11:30am, and since they were in groups, they blocked pretty much the entire sidewalk. I don’t know if the Chinese or Koreans are slower than Japanese, but yesterday morning I could have sworn I had never met a more pokey group of people in my life. I really wanted to push them all out of my way (hey, if they get to walk around speaking their home languages, then let me walk around like an American, OK?), but I dodged in and out of their groups and finally made it up to campus.
I had absolutely no idea how many people were going to be taking this test. As it turned out, there were at least 3 levels of classrooms full of people (I’m not sure if it everyone was doing N1 or not; they were likely also offering N2), and I quite accidentally found my classroom on my first try. I thought there was only going to one room, so I headed where I saw other people going. It took me forever to find my seat in the classroom (the map they put up made no sense to me), and I sat down to study a little more and wait for the exam. I kept expecting the groups of people in the room to try to speak to each other in Japanese, but conversation continued in either Korean or Chinese.
The proctors circled around the room helping people to find their seats, and the main guy sat up front facing us with a microphone to make announcements. Every time he reminded us that we could not use cellphones to keep track of the time and that there would be no 5 minute warning before the end of a section, I couldn’t help but think of Wink the Game Show Host (voiced by the always awesome George Takei) from the “30 Minutes Over Tokyo” episode of The Simpsons, who says:
Your game shows reward knowledge. Here, we punish ignorance.
I felt like the subtext was: if you didn’t read your test materials and think ahead before you got here, you’re fucked. I realize I already made this reference on Facebook, but I love that episode. I feel like my excuse if I do not pass N1 will be:
Don’t ask me! I don’t know anything! I am product of American education system. I also build poor quality cars and inferior-style electronics.
The test started on time, though it seemed like the proctors went through a lot of steps to get our test booklets and answer sheets out to us. The whole process took at least 10-15 minutes. Once the test started, I couldn’t see what was going on around me since I was in the second row, but from what I’m told, kids often flagrantly break the rules by opening their book before the exam starts, and obvious cheating is not rare. No one got kicked out of my exam as far as I know, but I swear I wanted to kill the guy in the front who was all stuffed up and kept snorting his phlegm every 30 seconds. I started to feel pretty sick after awhile.
After the first section of the test was through, there was a half-hour break. Despite the fact there were signs put in the hallways in Japanese, English, Korean and Chinese that said PLEASE BE QUIET, people were on their phones and yelling at each others in the hall. Aside from needing all the classroom space and volunteers, I wonder if they don’t choose Sunday for test day so that people don’t have to deal with loud foreigners all day. And my god, the LINES for the women’s room were insane. Once the half-hour was up, one of the proctors went out in the hall to tell all the women in line that they had to return to their classrooms for the start of the test… that must have been miserable if you really had to go. Honestly, that’s when you just say fuck it and use the men’s room.
Once the test was out, the mad crush of people headed to what is likely a rather quiet train station was unbearable. Some people were running down the hill to get there before everyone else, but since I was in flip-flops and I am constantly paranoid about my ankle, I just walked faster that everyone else. I managed to beat most people to the station, but just missed the train and had to wait for the next one. People piled into the station and the lines got longer and longer. Man, and some of those young people (GET OFF MY FUCKING YARD) pushed their way up to the front of the line, and I took please in pushing back. I got here first, bitch. Back off. I also wonder what the Japanese people were thinking when this crush of foreigners got onto the train with them; I’m sure they were expecting a quiet Sunday afternoon ride where they could sleep, but instead they had to deal with this loud group of foreigners are all yelling at each other and generally being rowdy.
I was able to get a seat on the train, but wound up next to this extremely obnoxious Korean couple. The guy was standing in front of us, but was hanging off the rings and kept hovering over his girlfriend and in the process, sticking out his gut not far from my face. The whole time I just imagined him beating his chest and howling, THIS MY WOMAN, I BIG MAN, HOO HOO HOO. It’s that kind of hypermasculinity that makes me want to kick boys in the shins and I was in good range to take out this guy’s. She kept scratching his stomach to get his attention, and overall I was thankful to finally get out. On my way out, I caught a sight of his back and realized it was the same T-shirt as the guy sitting in front of me during the exam. He wasn’t the guy with the cold, but I was still like “ugh, I’ve spent way too much time around you today.”
And so here I am, floating without much of a purpose. It’s still Sunday in America and therefore the job boards have gone dead for the weekend, so there are no new posts for me to respond to and more cover letters to slog through. I do feel like I need a break, but I can’t take much of one. Bitch has to get a job. I have a couple of interviews lined up in ol’ NY the week of June 25th, so anyone who is in the area that week should hit me up. We need to hang.
Ugh, I’ve had enough. I don’t have the energy to deeply analyze anything or get into any other themes. Maybe I can do that later since I’ll just be hanging around Nagoya this week without much else to do. And sorry for no pics to go along with this post; again, I do not have my camera. I’ll think of all of you when I’m stuffing my face.
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