The Misadventures of José Faxner

Don’t worry, I’m not dead or anything. Just a bit preoccupied with exams, writing assignments, and a little bit of this and that. The semester is almost over, and overall I have to say it feels damn good. It is in a way bittersweet, as some really good friends will be leaving AIU after Christmas, and more still are going to go away for the winter. The next couple of months are gonna be kinda lonely. But on the flipside, next spring semester (starting early April) is going to bring a slew of new people, both new Japanese students but also new international students. And among them, hopefully, many new friends. But I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. Before any of that I have to finish my last couple of assignments, live through a christmas without my family and my dad’s awesome christmas food, and make my way through the winter program here at AIU. So, one thing at a time, I guess.

Have a load of this:

So I cut my hair some time ago. This is what I look like now (or like, two weeks ago, anyway):

Judging from people’s reactions, I guess no-one in Japan has seen a mohawk before. Of course, I had expected the occasional double-take, and customary compliments - if you cut or dye your hair, wear new clothes, or, well, do anything to look different, it’s かっこいい (kakkoii, “cool”). However nothing could prepare me for the reactions that I would get - as I walked into the cafeteria, people… applauded. Like, seriously, shouting and wooing, and applauding. It was quite surreal. I mean, I like to think I’ve done a few applause-worthy things in my life but somehow this doesn’t seem like it’d be one of them. Apart from feeling somewhat awkard I sure didn’t mind it though… the whole thing just seemed pretty funny.

I like my new hairstyle though, and seemingly, so does other people. For what it’s worth, I suppose if being a freakishly tall foreigner didn’t make me stand out in a crowd, this at least will. Granted, Akita probably isn’t at the cutting edge as far as subcultures (or simply weird looking people) go, but I’m still amazed at how big a deal it seems to be. Whenever I meet someone for the first time, I’d say probably a good 70% start off with “so what’s up with the hair?” or some variant thereof (the other 30% being mostly even split up between “Why did you come to Japan” and “How tall are you” (185cm, for the record), and with a dash of “What kind of woman do you like”).

That last one might sound like a joke, but seemingly it’s considered perfectly normal introductory chit-chat in Japan; or at least when talking to foreigners. I really don’t know if they ask expecting to hear something absolutely outrageous, or if it’s just considered one of those things you have to know about someone before you know where you have them. Either way the question has a tendency to always just leave me completely stumped… And when asked by a group of Jr. high school girls (like it was today), the reply is gonna be awkward no matter what it is.

This week it was time for the annual AIU Festival. Pretty much all of the international students had been wondering exactly what the festival would entail, and how things would work… the information (the English information, anyway) had been rather limited as usual, but you definitely got the feeling that the festival was somewhat of a big deal. Apparently there was supposed to be a bunch of things going on; stage performances, contests, exhibits, selling of food… in short a whole lotta stuff.

Since this school is all international and stuff, naturally there’d be stands selling food and stuff from all kinds of countries. Team Sweden was entrusted to take care of one of these stands, and after some discussions it was decided we were going to sell smörgåstårta and chocolate balls. The smörgåstårta was cause for some concern - we did actually manage to get all the ingredients we needed, but after some initial calculations, it seemed very unlikely that we’d be able to make the whole thing profitable. However, after cutting back on some of the more expensive ingredients, and deciding to make the servings smaller, we eventually managed to make the economics work out.

Once the festival started, it started to become clear how things would work out. A stage had been put up, along with a long row of stalls for the various vendors; and with the aid of maps and pamphlets, you could walk around campus for all kinds of activities and exhibits. In one room you could see posters about all the different countries represented in the student body (I really hope I can dig up pictures of ours - they were totally awesome), in another you could watch a movie some students had made, in others some of the school’s clubs were introduced, and so on. Unfortunately us Swedes didn’t have all that much time to enjoy all this as we actually had to work quite a bit at our cake- and ball stand.

The food vending was actually pretty fun. We didn’t have insane amounts of traffic, and the Japanese people seemed incredibly skeptical - some wouldn’t give you more than a look that would make you think the people working were zombies or something (which actually at the end of the day might not have been that far off). Somehow we managed to do pretty decently though, on day one we actually managed to sell out, and after all was said and done we actually did turn a profit (albeit a modest one). I guess I should thank the Japanese people working with us who insisted that we should sell the cake and chocolate balls as a set, as I suspect the chocolate balls were infinitely more popular than the smörgåstårta. Most people who did dare try it seemed to like it though!

After two days of intense food-mongering, the end of the festival was drawing near. The festivities were wrapped up with a small ceremony - a few speeches, the announcement of winners of various contests, and the like. After all was said and done, we were treated to a film shot and edited by a few students before and during(!) the festival, showing some interview and other fun stuff. When they were shooting it I was really skeptical, but seeing the final result I really regretted not showing more interest - the film turned out great, and I would’ve loved to be in it. I really hope I’ll be able to get hold of the film eventually, as it’d really make for a great keepsake to remember the festival (and the school in general) from.

As if that wasn’t enough, once the film ended, we were treated to some really awesome fireworks. Apparently they’d spared no expense - this was undoubtedly the most amazing fireworks I’d ever seen, and this wasn’t even a real holiday or anything! Sadly I didn’t have my camera on me during the fireworks, but if someone managed to get any decent photos I guess it’s possible I could get hold of them and share them.

It was a lot of hard work, and I’m not entirely sure if I’ve fully recovered, 3-4 days later. But all things considered, the festival definitely turned out to be more fun than I’d expected. Not to the extend that I’d want to do something like this every week, maybe, but all in all it really wasn’t bad. And with a little luck, we might even have managed to open up some people’s eyes to Swedish cuisine. Or something.

See my photos from the festival HERE.

But I don’t really know what about. Kinda weird, really, since there shouldn’t be any kind of shortage of things to write about… but still, here I am, drawing blanks. I had walking class today though. I guess I could talk a little about that.

So yeah, Walking class. It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It’s a class where we go walking. I had to take 12 credits for the fall semester, and since the Japanese classes I’m taking only cover 10, I needed to fill the last two out with something else. I could’ve taken some global economy class or whatever, but since the credits won’t transfer when I get back to Sweden, I figured I could take something fun instead. At first I was going to take Shodou (書道, calligraphy), but since that class is held every Friday from 7PM to 8.40PM, I dropped it in favour of the aforementioned walking class, as well as Joudou (杖道, “the way of the stick”, a martial art where you use a 4 foot stick). Turns out it was a smart move; apparently the calligraphy class is absolutely horrible, and the teacher speaks in a way which someone described as “英語じゃない英語” (eigo janai eigo, “English which isn’t English”)… Neither the Japanese nor International students can understand anything she says, and on top of that the class seemed generally boring.

Luckily, my walking (and Joudou) teacher can speak English perfectly fine, the class is on Tuesday afternoon, and walking (unlike calligraphy apparently) is actually pretty fun. We’re a small class - the five of us from Sweden (Carl, Olof, Jonas, Thomas and myself), our friend Yi Chao from Singapore, and Mao, a Japanese girl who (I think) is doing her second year at AIU. Last week, we took a walk through the forest - though it was more like a crawl, because of the insane amounts of spider webs, all conveniently stretched face-height over the walking path - to a natural spring, where we got to taste the spring water, as well as have a short lecture on walking form. This week we continued to talk a bit about walking form, and took a 5 kilometer walk around the gargantuan sports complex right by the school. It was really nice; for once the weather wasn’t horrendously warm and/or humid, and I didn’t have to fear my impending, spider-caused death like I had in the forest the week before. It turned out to be a nice, hour-long stroll, definitely something I’ll want to repeat sometime when I have time off.

As I mentioned, yesterday, we went on a field trip with the school. All of the new international students, as well as some of the Japanese students went for a bus trip to a couple of interesting places in the vicinity of the school.
We were so many people (around 110 or so), so we had to take two buses. For the first (and last) destination of the trip, the buses split up; our group first went to a sake brewery. I’d expected some sort of big factory or something, but it turned out to be a rather inconspicuous, Japanese style house. Once we got inside, we were divided into two smaller groups, and while the others were given a tour of the premises, my group were treated to some of the apparently famous Akita sake. As any friend of mine could tell you, I’m not really a big fan of alcohol… but this actually wasn’t bad! The flavour kind of reminded me of white wine, but I definitely liked this better than most white wines I’ve ever tried. As we were drinking the sake, we had some time to look around a bit. There were a couple of these really cool classic Japanese style rooms with the tatami mats, low tables and sliding doors and everything. I don’t know what they’re used for, but they sure looked nice.

Eventually we were let into the actual brewery part of the building, for the grand tour. We were shown all these rooms, machines and other stuff, and were given explanations on how sake is made. In all honesty I hardly remember anything of what we we’re told, so if you’re dying to know how sake is made, go look it up on Wikipedia or something. The tour was fun though, as we got to see all kinds of neat stuff, as well as get yet another taste of Japanese hospitality; as we went into the brewery, we were asked to take off our shoes, and wear slippers. When we went to the second floor we had to put on another pair of slippers. Now, get this - during the two minutes we spent in the room on the second floor, someone actually went and turned all of our slippers around, so we could just step into them. Simply amazing. As Wei Wei put it: “If this was back in Germany, the shoes would’ve been stolen!”
After that impressive showing, we went to some kind of mall or something to have lunch. I was really hungry at this point, and was somewhat discouraged to see what we were being served: two onigiri (おにぎり, rice balls). Onigiri can be pretty nice, but these left a little to be desired. One of them had a salmon and sesame filling, which could’ve been really nice had it not been sitting in a bus for half a day. The other one though, had umeboshi (梅干, pickled plum), and can only be described as vile. The situation wasn’t improved by the fact that I had (perhaps naïvely) assumed the onigiri didn’t have any filling, only to take a big bite out of it and dig my teeth into this horrifyingly foul thing in the middle. I’d tried nattou, an infamously hard-to-appreciate Japanese food, earlier, and while I didn’t like it - the umeboshi was even worse. Still, I was starved, so I somehow endured and ate the whole thing.
After that pitiful excuse for a lunch, we went to Kanmanji Temple (蚶満寺). It was a really beautiful place, with all kinds of cool buildings, buddhas, wildlife, and a bunch of cute cats to boot. Some people even prayed, or made wishes or something, but I didn’t want to risk offending anyone by being the stupid gaijin who does it all wrong, so I just went around and took some photos instead.

Next stop was Mt. Chokai (鳥海山). Supposedly the view is great, but due to the weather, we didn’t really get to see that much at all. That didn’t stop us from having a good time, though. The souvenir shop had these awful, gaudy - and of course hilarous - tourist t-shirts… Naturally we had to get some. I was unfortunately unable to change on the spot, but you can see Carl’s awesome “KISAKATA TRIATHRON IN AKITA” t-shirt, at least. The greatness didn’t end there, though, as the place had some wicked vintage arcade machines as well. Sadly none of them were running (whether they were not working or simply disconnected I’m not really sure), but they were still really cool to see.

The journey continued as we went to the coast of the Japan Sea, to the place of “16 Buddhas”, where some priest had a bunch of Buddha sculptures carved into the cliffside a 150 or so years ago. The place was really cool, and I actually really enjoyed the smell of the ocean. It’s something I haven’t experienced in a long time, so it was really nice. Somehow the smell of ocean just feels like “summer” to me.
After taking a bunch of photos and generally just messing around by the Buddhas for a while, we departed for the final destination for the trip; Shirase Kinenkan (白瀬記念館), a memorial hall and museum dedicated to Shirase Nobu and the Japanese Antarctic Expedition of 1911-12. We started off with a movie about the history of antarctica (entierly in Japanese, of course), of which I couldn’t really understand anything. That was followed up with another film showing auroras. It would’ve been nice, if it weren’t for the fact that it was projected onto the ceiling, and I was sitting in the front row, meaning I had to bend over backwards to see anything. Once the film finished, we were free to wander about the museum for about half an hour… but in all honesty it was really neither that big or interesting. One thing that was really fun though, was that we found a display telling about a member of the expedition called Tsuchiya Tomoji (土屋 友治)… who almost shares his name with my friend Tsuchiya Tomomi (土屋 友美)! Turns out they’re both from Yamagata prefecture as well. Tomomi seemed a little spooked by it, but I think she managed to see the fun in it like the rest of us.

About an hour’s bus ride later, we were finally back to campus, to have some long awaited dinner. It’d been a very long and tiring day (possibly not too much unlike this post), but of course a very fun and interesting one as well. I really hope I’ll be able to back to Mt. Chokai later in the fall, as it’s supposed to be very beautiful once the leaves start turning red.

In case you missed the previous entry, you can check out all of my photos from my field trip HERE.

So, today we went on a field trip, to all kinds of places near the school. A sake brewery, the coast of the Japan Sea, an Antarctica Museum, and a few other locations. I’m waay too tired to actually write anything about it now though, so I’ll just give you a link to my photos (temporarily hosted on Photobucket until I get my own gallery working on this site). I’ll try to write a proper report on the day tomorrow.
Check out photos HERE.

So, here we are. After a bunch of dilly-dallying, my blog is finally up for everyone to see. Granted, there’s really not much to see at this point, but at least you all know that I’m alive. I figured I’d write some sort of summary of the last couple of weeks before starting to blog proper… but I probably won’t, for the exact same reason I put it off in the first place - there’s just been too much stuff going on to describe it all without going nuts in the process. So I guess I’ll just sort of make a few comments on what’s happened so far in passing, or something. We’ll see, I suppose. Really, I’m already writing more now than I thought I would, so, um, I might as well keep going and briefly tell you a little about my current situation.

If anyone had managed to miss it, I’m currently in Akita, Japan, to spend a year at Akita International University, studying Japanese. I arrived here at the 28th of August, and after an arduous week of orientation, picking classes and learning how to find my way around campus, classes started at September 4th. I’m having a really good time so far; the campus is beautiful, people are really nice and the food is delicious (although the size of the servings are pitiful at times). I’ve already made a lot of friends (arguably more than I ever did during my two years in Gothenburg), and somehow I just feel really at home at the school. I really haven’t gotten into the whole “getting up before noon” thing (or the “studying” one, for that matter), and having rice three times a day does take some getting used to, but all things considered I’m really enjoying my stay so far, and I really look forward to spending my next year at this place.

In closing, just a small technical note: The structure for the blog isn’t really finished at this point - it’s supposed to be completely bilingual (the interface as well as however many posts I can be bothered to translate), but I haven’t completely figured out how it works yet. I guess there’s some other functionality that’s going to be added as well, but I’m really clueless about the technical side of things, so I pretty much just leave it all to my brother to fix. But it’ll all get straightened out eventually.