Today as usual the cicadas were making lots of noise as I walked to school. I can’t begin to describe how loud they can get. When you walk by a big tree full of them you can barely hear anything else. The pressure from the noise presses in on your eardrums, and you feel like just a little more noise would be enough to break them. Forget heavy metal concerts – it’s cicadas that Japanese youth will be blaming for hearing loss in the future.
I got a preview today of what the rest of this month and most of next month will be like. I came into work at the regular time, and about half the people that are usually there at that time were present. I settled in to study and was able to work without distraction until around noon.
I ate lunch (leftover yakiudon), and chatted with some graduates from last year who had come to visit the school. They joked around with me mostly in Japanese, and they sounded like they were really enjoying college life.
At around 1 p.m. I went over to Tsuji-san’s place to chat with her for about an hour. She told her father about her marriage last weekend, and so we talked about that. Her mom came in and served us ice coffee, and she sat in on the conversation for a while. Apparently, it didn’t go well.
Tsuji-san’s father is a pretty traditional guy. Tsuji-san told me that upon meeting her previous boyfriend, her father “hated” him. Yikes. Based on that reaction, it was only natural to keep her current guy a secret. Anyway, her father didn’t have a clue that she was even dating anyone, and so when she told him they were planning on getting married he said it was like finding out she had cancer – a sudden realization that nothing will ever be the same. I said that a comparison with cancer was probably not a very good analogy to make, but she said that’s what she expected from him.
Her mother is taking the brunt of it – her father is retired and spends all day thinking about this, tossing and turning at night, and complaining to her mom. Tsuji-san is going to wait a while to bring her fiancee over. It might be a long while judging from her dad’s reaction.
Her father wanted to be consulted on whether or not they should get married, so that’s why he is so unhappy about it. This comes from a time in Japan when most marriages were arranged. Arranged marriages sound pretty old fashioned to me, but they still happen here. There is such a large population of older people in Japan that the traditions they are used to are dying very, very slowly.
Yesterday was Tsuji-san’s birthday, so I gave her an American birthday card and a container of cheese balls that I found over at Ito Yokado. I know she likes junk food, so they should be a big hit.
I went back to the school after chatting with Tsuji-san – her house is literally right across the street. Nobody noticed that I was gone, and since I had left all my books, dictionaries, and flashcards on my desk everyone just figured I was playing ping pong or something. Not two minutes after I walked back in the vice principal came by and told me that I could leave anytime I liked, so at 2 p.m. I was out the door and off to the train station. This is a schedule I can deal with – I got in 4-5 hours of studying, and I got home at a decent hour.
I resisted the urge to take a nap and spent time cleaning out a closet or two. I still have lots of junk, so I’m going to have to work together with Kuniko to make space for her stuff. We’ll have to go shopping and buy some new shelves and storage, but it shouldn’t be too much stuff. We’re only going to be here for a year and then we’re moving to parts unknown – no reason to go nuts buying stuff now.
I’m doing fishsticks for dinner, and then all the shaved ice I can eat. I broke out Kuniko’s shaved ice machine and I’ve been using it a lot. Today on the way home I bought some “adult” shaved ice. Shaved ice here is flavored very sweet and marketed mainly to kids, although adults eat it too. For the first time today I saw they had two “upscale” shaved ice flavors. At twice the price of regular shaved ice I bought one that was honey flavored with bits of fruit rind blended in – it was not as sweet as the regular ones – quite good. The other one was labelled in English as Deep Blue Sea flavor, which sounded a little too salty for me. I’ll save that for later.
