Hiromi’s Blog

I started living in Tokyo this week. Luckly the training starts at 10 am, so the train is not that crowded, but still there are so many peole in such a small space. I don’t get used to it yet. Living with Aki is really fun. She enjoys cooking and eating organic and healthy foods, so we eat the same things.

I don’t have much time to do anything but going to work/ taining now, so I haven’t explored Tokyo yet. Last night/ Monday night I thought I was going to get sick…Probably because the room that I was in was cold and I was really exhausted. The training is pretty intense, but I guess that is how a taining should be? Oh well…I will get it through. The group that I am in is pretty cool and interesting. The people are from different places—U.K., U.S.A, Australia, Canada, and Japan (me!) There are a few Japanese instructors too, which makes me feel ok to be here. Probably, I would be able to sympathize the clients’ problems pretty well since I have been though the process of learning English as a second language. Anyhow, so far, so good.

Tonight, I made vege-soup called Kenchin jiru. I put many root vegetables and ginger for my sickly body. My sinus is barely hanging on there….poor thing. I also made salmon with garlic and rosemarry from Aki’s mini garden. oh and green leaf (komatsuna) salad. yumm…I really wanted to eat a lot of vegetables, so I feel good!!

now I am getting ready to go to bed!!

so I’ve got a part-time job in tokyo, teaching English to Japanese people. This is the first job I applied. Well, I went to the orientation and ended up having an interview, and I got it a few days ago. The training starts on mon, so I am going to tokyo tomorrow, Sun. When I had an interview, I stayed at Aki’s place and we made so many yummy foods. She makes so many things out of scratch!! She showed me how to make bagels, soy yogurt, and basil paste. OMG…they were soooooo good. Since then, I have been making soy yogurt at my house. Oh she made a dessert with basil seeds and coconut milk…it looked like frog eggs, haha…kind of tapioka pearls, but less slimy..It sounds good, doesn’t it? everything was amazingly good and it was so much fun to hang out with her.

She did home stay in Thailand and speaks Thai and learning Thai. She is interested in minority groups in Thailand. She showed me many pictures of her home stay experiences. Isn’t she cool? I am going to stay at her place next week..it is very kind of her..I started looking for a place to live. I think I will do that tomorrow afternoon.

It happened so soon!! which is good, I guess. I could work either part-time or full-time, and the schedule is very flexible, so I can do some museum jobs or some other art related works…

I had a dinner with Kumi after I signed the contract. She told me that I should consider which area/ community I should live…The train doesn’t run 24 hours…it stops midnight or 1 am depending on a train line. No more 24 hour Blue line for me…..Aparently, cab is more expensive in tokyo. You know that tokyo is ranked the most expensive city to live in the world. Luckly, there are so many jobs… Kumi told me that there were some areas where jugglers and other creative people hang out…ummm…i am sure that there are many ’starving artists’ right? Where do they live? where is tokyo version of Logan sqr?

I talked to Marcia over the aol instant message. She is in Brazil and having a great time with her family. One of her cousin is into Japanese anime. I believe she is 14 or so. Time in Brazil is completely opposite from here, exactly 12 hours, so let’s say, now it is 5:06 pm in japan, and 5:06 am over there. pretty cool, ha?

Harper is thinking about visiting me in tokyo. He is not sure yet, but I am excited!!! My friends in Yamanashi are missing/ complaining?! me moving so soon. My parents were like ‘oh you got a job already?’ My dad told me that he would miss my cooking…nice..his friend gave us wild mushrooms and I made soup with them. It was really tastly.. the color of mushroom is bright orange and didn’t look edible to me, haha, but i am still alive..it is called ‘egg mushroom’ because when it is small, it is covered with white egg shell-like spongy? stuff. My dad showed me a picture of the mushroom. it did look like a egg shell. pretty funny. He is mushroom Otaku, haha…

I am thinking about coming back to my parents often since it is pretty close and I will definately need fresh air. Tokyo is pretty overwhelming as far as the density of people and buildings go. so claustrophobic…it is very ironic, because I am writing about claustrophobic Japanese women’s social status through artworks…i am going to live in it…but at the same time, i am sure it would be so much fun!! art community, artists, musicians, a lot of exciting stuff.

Too bad that I won’t be able to go to DOux cafe as often as now… it is a nice place and I feel like I run into my friends whenever I go there, pretty fun!!! I ran into Yurie the other day. She was having a little break, so she had to go back to work, but..oh I will miss her…well, Yamanashi is not far…i will come home a lot…don’t be sad….

Wish me luck in a new place….I will keep updating what is going on my life….

OMG I am exhausted and took a long nap so that my dad thought I got sick, haha. I helped my parents harvesting rice yesterday and today. I love their rice. It tastes great and doesn’t make me want to eat not so good rice any more. In fact, I can’t bear eating a bowl of rice at some restaurant, haha. I know I am spoiled or picky about food. Raising rice and vegetables seem a long process, but I felt good about at least using my own hands to gather my own food. I am sure that my parents enjoy doing this after their retirement. They were told that their rice and Daikon raddish from last year were so good that the same people to whom my parents gave those want their rice and raddish again. Actually, one of them asked my parents to make 100 daikon raddish for them. Wow…right? I am so not an outdoor person and was thinking why I was doing this yesterday while working on the rice field, but today after the long nap (hahaha) I am feeling very good.

We finished harvesting two rice fields by noon and had a nice lunch with a few glasses of alcohol. I should not have had a glass of Chu-hai (japanese vodka/shochu with a lemon juice), because I have been having very sinusy allergic reaction lately and alcohol is not good for that. Anyhow, it helped me sleep really deeply. I like how my dad uses alcohol as a reward or excuse of hardwork.

I am going to tokyo next week. I started looking for a job. I should find a place to live. It would be so much fun. If I need to relax, I can always come back here at my parents. It is not too far from tokyo and I can do one-day trip easily. I feel very secured when I think about my parents being physically close to me, but at the same time I know I want to move on. ohh I miss living in Chicago so much…please come visit me in tokyo!! guys!

sweet dreams!

I just started reading Haruki Murakami’s book titled “Sydney” which Tomoko lent to me I like it so far and am excited about being pulled in his world again. I am not an athletic person at all, I mean totally opposite, hahaha…but the book already makes me want to run or jog. The book is about Olympic level runners. I just want to feel how a runner goes through the process not only physcically, but also psychologically. It might be simmilar to writing as well. I just finished revising the special project. I was told that some of my sentences are unsophisticated…bam…a punch in my face, haha. It hurt and humiliated me, but at the end, I was very thankful. The comment pushed me further for sure.

I am not doing anything productive, except writing and reading for fun! I guess that is what I like to do, but the problem is that I am not good at writing…i mean not good enough to make a living… Here I am..in a ‘reading murakami’ phase. haha…you know what I am talking about…going inward and facing myself. I try not to go too deep…well if I get stuck in the world too long, please pull me out…haha…i don’t think it would happen for real.

Afrer the election, I started thinking that Japan is not so bad in terms of politics. More people started being interested in politics, and i hope a Japanese version of daily show would start some day. I love watching daily show online…but I wish I could do this on the couch at my old Chicago aptment with my roommates.

I am sucking in so much information through tv and books… I need to catch up with Japanese trends. soon I will be a stylish fashionable pretty Japanese woman, using a cool cellphone and typing a text message really fast, hahahaha….probably not… wait…there is a chance still…

It has been a while since I saw Tomoko, my friend from tv and radio station job. When I saw her last time which was almost 2 years ago, she told me that she was getting married, and she did!! I went to her and her husband’s new place. It was really nice and comfortable..very organized…I should organized my room…soon soon… I borrowed 2 books from her. One is Murakami’s and the other one is written by Kaori Ekuni. Murakami one is his version of Sydney Olympic observation?! which, I believe, is not translated into English. I am pretty excited!! Another one is a sort of love story, my friend said, but it is different. She doesn’t usually read love story, except hers…interesting…

She showed me the wedding and honey moon pictures, and I thought…ummm marriage might be fun…hahaha…my parents would be very happy to hear this, but I am not going to tell them, because I don’t want to give them a wrong idea, haha. They surfed in Hawaii and she told me that surfin is easier than snow boarding. She was with me when I tried snow board for the first time. I was horrible!! and got hurt every single day. It was a fun trip though.

She is very elegant and pretty, but she is also funny, and I like the gap, haha…she loves drinking too…I wasn’t able to attend her wedding (shame on me, right?), so I wrote a letter for her. Apparently, the letter was read in the wedding. She liked it, and I am glad she did.

I brought Japanese sweet bean cakes (it was called Usagi…bunny-a bunny shape..so cute) and we had a cup of tea and chatted for a few hours. It was very fun! I told her what happened to me and why I came back here and about my friends and life in Chicago. It is very helpful for me to accept that I miss my friends and life in Chicago or that I am living in Japan now or both. I still get confused when I wake up in the morning “where am I? Where is Harper?”. Stupid transition…

Last night I hang out with Kaori for a little bit, and I remember we used to do this (chatting over a cup of coffee) a lot. When I told her I want to move to Tokyo soon, she was sad, because I just came back here and am already talking about moving. But for this time, it is much closer than Chicago.

Tomorrow is an election day. TV news are all about it. There are so many agendas I am interested in, like retirement plan/ social security, tax, population decreasing, and so on. Many people blame on foreigners for high crime rate. very stupid… I saw one politian was saying on tv that we should take advantage of ‘cheap’ laborers from southeast Asia to support Japan’s economy. He thinks he is very international, but I was very disappointed and worried about Japan. Where are we going in the future? Are we going to be isolated and ignorant? ummmm….many many thoughts and worries.

Anyhow, I am feeling a little bit energetic today..oh today is almost over..

Sayaka and Rob’s wedding was yesterday: the ceremony was at Tsurugaoka hachimangu (shinto shrine) and the reception was at Kamakura Prince Hotel. It was a nice and small, very intimate wedding, which I think, great. The location was very nice, and the ocean view was breathtaking for sure. Too bad that it started rainning in the night, luckly after the wedding reception.

I met Sayaka’s friend who used to live in Chicago and came back here several months ago. We stayed in the same room with Aki who went to Cornell College for one year at my junior year. We chatted until 2 a.m. We talked about so many different things–we didn’t talk about boys!!! haha…weird, huh? Aki works at NPO organization which helps foreigners living in Japan. There are so many problems around them, and their basic human rights are barely protected…I have to say—inhumaine… One illegal foreign worker lost his fingers while working at a factory, but couldn’t complain to anyone because he was afraid of losing the job and being deported. He got arrested due to his over-stay and told that he had to go back home and couldn’t come back to Japan for good…so he decided to complain about his finger accident… this is just one of thousands and thousand of stories…How horrible is that? Aki is helping many foreigners who cannot afford lawyers or health insurance or whatever basic neccessity as human beings. very sad… Once I was a foreigner who struggled with not only cultural differences, but also strict immigration laws, so I am very sympathetic…It was very nice to see Aki again! I will hang out with her again for sure.

Aya, Sayaka’s friend, and I shared so much thoughts last night, about being a foreigner, grad student, and Japanese woman. Many people from Japan who studied at Cornell had a hard time adjusting a new life after coming back to Japan. Sayaka’s mom who is a psychiatrist kindly suggested that I should take a long rest and not worry about a job or anything. She even said that it is ok to spend a few years to find a job, because I already worked a lot. oh…that was very very nice… no wonder why Sayaka is so great.

At the wedding reception, I sat with Cornell friends, Chiaki, Kayo, Yumiko, Toshiko, Aki, and Sayaka’s close friends—-so many pretty ladies!! They are all amazing as you can imagine. It was a reunion for us, and we all had a great time.

After this trip, I came home and checked email, Kumi, a good friend of mine from highschool told me about a cool restaurant/ gallery space in Tokyo. I think we are going to go there together some time soon! pretty exciting! I checked their website, which looked pretty cool and they do many workshop-like get together—watching movies, knitting together, sharing creative thoughts and business ideas, and writer’s workshops!

I am very excited!!! Harper said he might? come visit me soon!! Yey