No English, No Life

Every year, my college's E.S.S. and two other college's E.S.S. (Utsonomiya and Gunma Girls College) get together at a neutral location for a weekend to have All Kanto English Lecture, also known as AKEL. For those of you unfamiliar with Japanese geography, Kanto is the geographic region in which I live. Its like saying "I live in the southwest part of Honshu". :) The theme for this year was "No English, No Life....~This is Me~"

They take turns hosting it, and this year it was our turn to be the hosts, so we all woke up really early in order to meet at the train station on Saturday, and took a train to Tsukuba, either the largest or second largest city in Ibaraki prefecture (I've heard mixed things about whether or not its Mito or Tsukuba, so we'll leave it at that). However...if someone had not told me that prior to coming to Tsukuba, I never would have known, because the part of Tsukuba we were in was about as rural as I've ever seen, since we were staying in a Ryokan (Japanese Inn) at the base of their local mountain. And I do mean mountain as in the singular. It was very odd just seeing a singular mountain in the middle of a flat plain.

It was interesting to see how they put on conferences like this vs. in America. Everyone from the hosting university has to wear suits essentially all the time (I did what I could with a button down blouse and a black blazer vest) and professional looking name tags. I even got one too that they let me keep!...'Cept Yasu kinda messed it up...and ironically it was not my name he spelled wrong. Trust me when I say I am more than used to that. But no, according to the name tag he made me, I'm not a 'junior', I'm a 'junioir', which we made a running joke out of by calling me the resident 'june-oir'.

Not to surprisingly, they're very big on the whole group preparation thing. (We are talking about the country where the goal is to not stick out.) Everyone had a job to do, or something to do to help, which actually resulted in everything getting done very quickly and efficiently. Rinda, the executive director of AKEL for this year, is what I have come to realize is somewhat of a perfectionist (in the good, productive way), and darn if he didn't make sure things ran off without a hitch.I honestly don't remember a single hiccup in the whole thing...And he made sure the people always knew what was going on and what was expected of them. (well, except maybe me when language barriers occasionally got in my way, but that's another story) I don't ever recall cleaning up, setting up or preparing for stuff as fun as it this was this weekend, because there was just this intense feeling of camaraderie between all the Ibadaisei (slang for students from Ibadai, which is essentially like saying "Penn State" instead of "The Pennsylvania State University" for Ibaraki Daigaku), so that made the weekend surprisingly fun.

There were so many of us, we took up two floors of the hotel, and being as its a Ryokan (a traditional Japanese inn where you sleep on futons on a tatami floor), that meant anywhere from 4-8 people per room. So yeah, this thing was kind of big. When people first arrived we went into our discussion groups of 5-6 people...and there were 15 groups O_O. I was paired with one of the Sophomores, Yuuya, who was our discussion leader, two girls from Gunma, Rika and Ayumi, and Yusaku from Utsunomiya.

Considering that we had four consecutive hours to talk, and these were the same conversation topics that we had talked about in E.S.S. for the last four weeks as 'practice', I was convinced this part was going to be a little bit of a snooze fest, but Yuuya actually made it pretty interesting by going off on tangents, if they occurred (I secretly think he was just as sick of those topics as I was) and letting us take a break.

The topic of "How do you express your feelings" made them, predictably, uncomfortable, but it actually turned out to be an interesting conversation in which I discovered that Japanese people apparently all go through a stage of hating their father's for never being around due to work, and never really grow out of it, leaving them largely indifferent to their fathers as adults. It made me kind of sad, and they thought it was really weird when I said how close I am to my father. I then pointed out to Yuuya that his father was the one that was paying for his college education, his apartment and all of the trips to foreign countries he likes to take, so he shouldn't hate his father for working so much (though I will admit Japanese fathers do work a lot), because that could be the only way his father could possibly show him that he loves him. That's where the conversation took a break for all of them to sit there and re-evaluate how they view their fathers.

Dinner was largely uneventful, but yummy. I think the most interesting part was when the Ibadaisei were doing preparation and setting all the places at the table. I finished setting the glasses of water at all the places only to turn around and see Rinda following me and moving all the cups to what I deemed a very awkward spot to have a cup. I just stared at him and he asked me what exactly was I doing. He works at an Izakaya ( a Japanese pub) so he makes table settings like this all the time...and I guess I've eaten at a table setting like this before, but since I'd never had to set it up myself, I'd never thought of it before...but place settings in America versus Japan are very different. When I told him why I put the water there and described how we set a table in America, he told me that it was weird...to which I just laughed and asked him exactly how did he think I felt about a Japanese table setting? I love discovering little bits of cultural differences like this from friends.

For those of you who are not aware of Japanese bathing traditions, one of their favorite ways of relaxing is at an onsen, which is a public bath. And yes I did say public. Since it was hot and humid and we were absolutely disgusting from running around all day and wearing suits, Ka-chan convinced me to go to the Onsen with her. I was really nervous, but luckily we were the only two there and she actually made me feel really comfortable with it.

If you ever have the chance, and are up for the challenge, I highly recommend trying it; its an experience in of itself. When you go to an onsen, you go into a main room that has shelves lined with baskets on one wall to put your stuff in while you bathe, another wall with mirrors, sinks and blow dryers and then the other walls are glass doors that open out into the bathing area. In the bathing area, there will be a giant "pool" in the middle room, and usually a door leading to another one outside, but do not get into them until you've cleaned yourself at one of bathing stations lining the walls. To clean yourself, you sit on a little stool in front of a little shower type...thing, that has a mirror, a shower head and a row of shampoos, conditioners, face cleaners and body soap provided by the hotel. Sometimes the shower head is a dual one (like a faucet) and they give you a little bucket so you can through water over your back to clean yourself as well. After you clean yourself, you can than go into the pool, but be careful because they are really hot. It felt really good but Ka-chan and I eventually had to abandon ship because we were getting light headed from the heat.

After bathing, it was time for the evening's "entertainment", which consisted of skits put on by a group of students from every University (usually the freshman). And let me just say this. While they are very straight laced in general, when its established that "its for entertainment" and there are no rules, Japanese people go all out, and do things that even I would not do...for example...I walked into the room where our students were preparing for the skit to see this:
Indeed, those are two boys (Hikaru and Eijiro), and they are indeed putting on makeup. If you read beyond this point, it is at your own risk. Japanese entertainment is not for the faint hearted.

Rinda and Takami were the MCs for the night, and they were quite hysterical, especially when they put on a little comedic skit between the two of them that reminded me a bit of Abbot and Costello. I seriously had never seen either of them act that funny, considering that in my opinion, Rinda and Takami are about two of the most serious Japanese people I know. O-o;.

Our school went first with their skit...which was a love story gone horribly, horribly wrong. First Eijiro (in drag) and Keita were on a date, that ended with Keita deciding that he wanted to 'speed up the relationship', and Eijiro and Keita 'kissing' (aka facing away from the audience). Ryota then made an appearance and revealed that Eijiro was cheating on Keita with Ryota...then Hikaru (also in drag) showed up and revealed that not only was Ryota cheating on Eijiro with Hikaru, but Keita was also cheating on Eijiro with Hikaru (and by defacto Hikaru was cheating on Ryota with Keita). Or at least that's what I'm 90% sure what happened. UPDATE: Since I've been told this is somewhat, what we say in Japanese "Wakarinikui" (hard to understand. I have created a beautiful illustration with the help of Paint to help you visualize this lovely skit. (click to enlarge)

And then when they were done, some of the freshman girls, Takami and Rinda came out to do a recreation of apparently a very famous Japanese commercial...and...this happened...
Have I mentioned these weirdos are my friends? 'cause if I haven't, they are.

From watching other school's skits, I've come to the conclusion that it is not physically possible to have a Japanese entertainment skit without the following (though certainly not limited to)

1.) Some highly coordinated group dance, usually (though not always) based off a famous commercial, music video or movie

Case in point :

2.) Some epic, final, highly coordinated pose

Case in point:

3.) A boy (if not multiple) in drag, and yes that does include makeup, hair and sometimes, tights.

Case in point:

All in all it was quite fun. And afterwards, it was Nomikai time! :D And that is all I have to say about that.

Morning came much to quickly, and the Ibadaisei were back to work preparing for the day. Today was game day, so once we were done getting ready and everyone else woke up, we broke up into groups to play some games coordinated by Sat-chan and Eijiro. Not to surprisingly, the two teams with native English speakers in them (Utsonomiya has a grad student from Canada) took two of the top three spots. And we won cookies :) Ohm nom nom.

Since we were the hosts, we of course were the last to leave, and since everyone was so exhausted, hot and tired, we all pretty much passed out on the train...and then went home and passed out in our beds. This weekend was oh so tiring...but oh so fun. I love my E.S.S. besties :)