The first week in Hikone

I’ve been stalling to start writing a journal until I did something truly noteworthy. Japan has been amazing thus far; there are so many little touches here in Hikone that are different from the States. The JCMU is right on Biwako (Lake Biwa), and I’m a minute walk from staring across the water at the hazy shoreline on the other side. Out my window I have a view of the parking lot and across the road the Hotel Ride, a love hotel where you can pay by the hour. I’ve biked daily along a road to downtown Hikone which runs right along the beach. The view is only marred by the tiny cars which race along the same road at speed which seem indecent at the least. Classes have been going very well. I’m taking the 100 level class which has not as of yet required much effort. My study time is spent working with the other 100 level students and that has proven helpful. The professors are very enthusiastic here; Aizawa-sensee and Ohasi-sensee both barely stop moving throughout the entire 50 minute class. The main challenge has been to respond with the speed I ought to be at right now. Sadly I have been eating a lot of American food. There is a restaurant attached to the JCMU which serves primarily American fare mixed in with various Asian dishes. The other favorite restaurant is a place called “Joyfull”, which also serves American food. The amount of English is surprising; the convenience store across the road from us is a Lawson, for instance. My breakfast food has been the pastry brand “A taste of the BREAD” which I do not know how I have gone twenty three years without.

Last night the JCMU students were invited to a party held by the students of the Shiga University, the local college in Hikone. For $10 we were given all the sushi we could eat and all the beer we could drink. I ate a lot of sushi, none of which I could identify but all of which was drastically different. The flavors are sweeter and tangier, while the texture is a bit rougher than back home. The students of Shiga University were incredibly friendly. Most of the students were very fluent and those that were not could usually make sense of my broken Japanese. The music was exclusively American hip-hop and rap, and everyone I asked claimed to love it. None of the students who were under 20, the legal drinking age in Japan, consumed any alcohol. Those who could drank copiously with the JCMU students. I was never without a beer, and when I had my fill they kept asking if they could get me something. By the end of the night, before the exceeding polite police asked us to leave, I had drunk straight from a liter bottle of sake surrounded by chanting Japanese. After the party was broken up, most of the students went to Yabs’ bar. I ended up with a group who were too drunk to ride their bicycles. The rest of the students riding outpaced us quickly and we ended up getting lost in the narrow residential streets. Just after we had turned back to go home we ran into another group of students who had left the party late. We ended up being directed by a Japanese student named Yuta, who led us on foot for over an hour to the bar.

Before we got to Yabs another group intercepted us and told us a few people had gone to a karaoke bar; which is how I ended up at my first Japanese karaoke parlor. The Japanese take their karaoke very, very seriously. We were shown into a small room with couch benches along the sides and a table in the center full of glasses of water and sake cocktails. The screen at the far end showed the music videos behind the scrolling song lyrics. One of the funniest things of the whole experience was that none of the English songs had a music video to accompany them; there was simply a film of the same scenery of Washington D.C., Rome, and San Francisco. The Japanese students there were unbelievably enthusiastic about singing every song, even the English ones. We kept it up for hours before we had to leave. The karaoke parlor experience ranks up there with the top parties I’ve ever been too, with so much mirth and drinking and thankfully we could all manage our bikes home.