Rice and Ramen

Hello everyone! It's Claire again, here to revive (for much longer than a summer this time) this Japan-focused blog. Since the last time I've written there have been several major updates to my life: 1. I finished my thesis! Those of you who have followed me for some time might recall that in the summer of 2017 I spent six weeks in Japan researching coffee--the end result was a 65-page monstrosity about history, modernity, gender, and generations. 2. I graduated from Yale! It hasn't quite sunk in that I'm actually done: that probably won't hit me until the end of the summer when I don't fly back to New Haven and move myself, yet again, into a dorm room. 3. Perhaps most importantly, I got a job at Nitori, a Japanese furniture, home-goods, and logistics company. For those of you interested in the company overall, I'm providing a link to their English-language website  HERE. So. I'm moving to Tokyo. Tomorrow, in fact--surprise! I've packed my l...

For those readers who aren't already aware, tomorrow I'm flying back to Japan. This past spring I applied for and was awarded the Robert C Bates Fellowship for Summer Research from Yale, and I'll be using the next six weeks to conduct anthropological research for my senior thesis in East Asian Studies. Explaining that I'm conducting research is the simple part. The more difficult part is my attempt to explain exactly what I'm researching. The short answer is that I'm going to be studying independent coffee shops and the role they play as a "third space" in the lives of their customers. Do people use them as social escapes? Or social spaces? Do people prefer to come in groups, or by themselves?How are coffee shops different than other "third spaces"? More specifically, I want to see if men view and use coffee shops differently than women do. (And given the rather distinct divides in social expectations for men and women contrasted with the c...

Dear Readers: For any of you that still get notifications or such when this blog updates, I'm sorry this wrap-up post is essentially a month late. I, of course, meant to write it earlier, but packing to return home, unpacking at home, and packing AGAIN to head off to my Junior year of college quite stole my time and attention away. The last week at the newspaper passed quite quickly. I had many long pieces that were simply waiting for enough space to print, so in the last week I had a piece published every day. It's hard to not feel like quite the celebrity! And even though I had a "welcome party" the previous week, at 11pm on a Thursday the society section threw me a "goodbye party" where everyone I worked with, including camera men, came to eat and drink. One of the members used to compete in university-level sumo wrestling, and at the urging of our society chief he, ah, took off his pants to demonstrate... Then I took another night bus from Kanazawa ...

Hello readers old, new and in between: welcome to the beginning of the third installment of this blog. I'm writing to you from Tokyo, where I'll be staying at an Air bnb apartment for two nights with one of my friends, Zoey, who is also in Kanazawa for the summer. I set off bright and early today (well, it feels like today for me--date-wise it was yesterday) on my direct flight from Chicago to Tokyo. No problem. I then successfully navigated the rest of customs, Narita, and the train that would take me from the airport to Shinjuku station where I would meet up with Zoey. Again, no problem. Normally I don't write about my travel days...as you've probably guessed the reason I am today is because, yes, I DID run into some problems. Let me begin with Shinjuku station. It is large, crowded, multi-storied and multi-basemented and has what appears to be ten different train lines that intersect there. Attempting to meet up with a friend while navigating said station to f...

Well. It's official. I have graduated from PII and this very evening I shall head via night bus to Tokyo to catch my flight to Chicago tomorrow afternoon. It seems rather surreal--it's hard for me to believe that I"m really leaving (yet at the same time part of me just wants to hurry up and leave already, it's a very confusing dichotomy). After finishing up the final exam yesterday, I took myself out for a treat. That, my friends, is a medium fries, hot apple pie, and Japan-exclusive McDonald's menu item: teriyaki burger! (Which was surprisingly delicious...that teriyaki sauce made the usually dry burger quite tender and juicy). I don't think I've allowed myself this much McDonald's in a long while, but after these eight weeks I feel like I'm forgiven. Then, today, was the PII graduation ceremony and farewell party. We all assembled at RIFARE in the morning and were called up one by one to receive a snazzy, and very official, graduation cer...

This is it. It's Friday, February 3rd and in less than 24 hours I will leave this house for Tokyo train station, which will take me to the airport, which will take me...home. Most of this week has been taken up with goodbyes: to schoolmates and teachers, and later, close friends. There were tears involved. I think the photos will do it a lot more justice than I could: Kohei, from tennis group. All the tennis people got together for dinner at an okonomiyaki (think cabbage pancake, with yummy stuff like shrimp in it) but first we went to a boardwalk which had nighttime light shows. Top: Anime Club. They threw a small party for me, where we ate lots of food and watched (what else) anime and talked. Bottom: one of my English classes. They asked me to teach them an American game for the last day, so I taught everyone how to play Heads-Up 7-Up. They were pretty good at it. The other exchange student, Nom, and my Japanese teacher. The last view of school: the walk leading u...

Sunday was part 2/2 of this weekend's series of AFS events. This one was more personal, since it was the goodbye party for my chapter, Tokyo Nerima. Relatively earlier than I'd like for a Sunday morning my family and I (as well as one of Ryo's friends, who had stayed over the night before) took the train over to the ShakujiKoen Center where the event was held. It was also the same place that the chapter welcome party was held all those months ago. The first part of it was, for most purposes, uninteresting. Lots of speeches, including one of the three I had to write. So I can check one of those off the list! WHOO! It didn't go too badly, if may say so myself. Even though it was only in front of host families and AFS volunteers, I was more nervous than I needed to be. But I was confident in the Japanese I had written, and everyone said they understood it clearly, so that's all good. Huang, the other AFSer in my chapter also gave a speech. Then we both recieved sm...

こんばんわみんな三！(Good evening everyone!) This will be my last internet opportunity for a while since I depart from LAX tomorrow morning and won't have any internet until after the Japanese orientation once we arrive. (Which apparently is supposed to be 1-2 days. I can't believe they have that much to orient us on, but I'm quite sure I'll be proven wrong.) Today has been pretty dull, all things considered. Long flight delays, introductions, and general waiting made for a pretty SNAFU. The orientation today was definitely the most interesting thing. The two groups that are leaving out of LAX are AFS China and Japan, and of the group that is here probably 17 of us are going to Japan. Everyone is very nice--and very quirky! I met someone who would be staying in my prefecture, as well as some people I remembered from the facebook group. Everyone seemed to get along pretty well, though I'm alone in the room I'm sharing right now since most people went to Walgreens or som...

Here I am, sitting at my computer, and typing away my thoughts before I have to crack down and finish some last minute summer homework. You could consider this my procrastination. Almost everything is done; I just have a few loose ends to tie up and then my life will have been compressed into one 27" suitcase, one carryon, and one backpack. My life is now portable! A lot of people have been asking me if I'm excited and the answer to that is yes. People have asked me if I'm nervous and the answer is yes. Scared, worried, happy...yes, yes, yes. I've got a little bit of everything inside right now. I've also been asked a lot where I'm staying, so here are the facts: I'm staying in Sayama-shi in the Saitama prefecture, which is just northwest of Tokyo (yes! weekends in Tokyo!). I'm attending Musashino Joshi Gakuin Buddhist school, which is an all-girl's school that goes from kindergarden to college. My host sister, who is 18, is attending their coll...