post-parent visit

what i never thought would happen has happened -- my parents have come to visit me! in tsushima!


after a week long tour between areas in tokyo to kyoto, my parents ended their trip with a weekend visit to my little island home. as mountains separate anything worth seeing here, after a weekend of driving all over the place, i'm thoroughly exhausted of being a motorist.

i think that being our parents, we make a lot of assumptions about them.... especially me regarding mine, as i'm not used to seeing them handle new situations. in fact, i'm used to them solely dealing with the home and matters pertaining to it.

this is why i figured, them going to a new country? with all the nitpicky things that japanese people do? oh, they're in for some culture shock.

surprisingly, my parents were pretty open-minded about trying new things. for example, i got a call one night from my mom while they were in a hot springs town (one of the most famous in the country). she told me how the previous night, some of the people on their tour tried out the hot springs, but she was too shy to get naked in front of other people. after telling her how it's not that big of a deal, and that when in rome, do as romans do. so that night, she ended up trying the public bath, and she actually enjoyed it. she claims it was nice and relaxing.

when they first arrived, what i feared would happen happened: issues with ordering food. here you have me, the japan inhabitant; my dad, the hearty meat eater and relatively open-minded; and my mom, the buddhist vegetarian with all types of food banned from her diet. now place us in a tiny restaurant overlooking the sea, with a menu only in japanese with no pictures, and me trying to relay back and forth between my parents what's on the menu, and asking the waitress what to leave out of the food they serve my mom. it was kind of an issue, and became and even bigger issue when we went to the best restaurant on the island their first night. after all that hassle, we figured that cooking ourselves would be easiest, so we did that instead the rest of their time here.

after just their first day here, i realized something about them that never occurred to me: they are really westernized. when i'm at home, they are pretty traditional chinese, which is contrasted easily by the western culture outside my home that i grew up in. but after seeing them in japan, i realize how much they are used to western luxuries like beds, chairs, keeping your shoes on, and warm water at all sinks. just seeing how they kept asking me, "why dont you ~~?" i realized how much they are used to their own lifestyle, and they tended to assume that certain luxuries were available, when in truth, the japanese norm is way different.

by far, my most surprisingly enjoyable moment was when i took them to the beach. god knows how long it's been since my mom has been to a real beach. the moment she smelled the salt in the air, she told me about her childhood memories of swimming at the beach with all her siblings and father. it was adorable when she started combing the beach with a random stick to find seashells buried beneath the sand, all with the intention of putting the shells in my fish tank at home.

there was even a moment when aaron came over for mom-cooked food one night, and my dad went into his story-telling mode (the kind that's about family history -- those are my favorites. lectures about how my pictures suck are the kind of storytelling i can't stand). as usual, entertaining. i miss those storytimes that i can only really get at home.

all in all, i'm very happy they came. it's a lonnng way, especially for them going home (they were in transit for 19 hours on the way back home.... they started in tsushima, which means transfers at fukuoka and narita before finally heading back to SF). granted, it was all paid for by my brother, but the fact that extensive traveling is hard on the body, especially at their age, made it especially impressive that they made the trip out here.

i know i tend to get short with them and really sarcastic, but i hope they know that i was very happy they were here. i guess everyone has their own way of showing affection for their parents. i feel like traditional asian families are a little more distanced emotionally than american-bred families (we dont talk about boyfriends, relationships, "love" or mushy stuff like that), but i think that at the end of the day, both sides have a mutual understanding of the other.

i know this sounds cocky, but i think after seeing my home and the insular lifestyle that i lead, they are proud that i've made it this far and this long. for the first time, i could hear a slight ring of pride in my mom's voice when she introduced herself as my mother. even though i've barely seen them in the last 2 years, i dont think they've completely forgotten or given up on me (even though both of them kept calling me by my sister's name.... my mom even called me my brother's name once...*sigh*). and despite my long absence from home, i was glad to see they were in good health, and the same as ever.

bottom line, i love my parents.... though i can never actually say that to their faces, cuz that's just too mushy for us f(^_^;;)

beginning of the end

it's been quite a while since i've written, but as usual, not much is new. my last two months can be summed up with 3 points:

1) I went to Taiwan with Aaron over Spring Break
2) First semester has started, which is the beginning of my JET end
3) Us ALTs had the wildest/longest day up north in Hitakatsu 2 weekends ago, and was by far, the most fun i've had all year

first off: Taiwan. after planning the packed trip that was Okinawa for me and 2 other people, i felt really adverse to the idea of planning yet another trip so soon afterwards. originally, aaron and i wanted to travel all over the place during spring break (singapore, manila, hong kong, and taiwan), but due to cathay pacific failing us again, we just decided to do taiwan only, and it actually worked out for the best.

we spent a week there, including 2 days in Tainan and 4.5 days in Taipei. since adam had gone to Tainan earlier in the year, we figured Tainan could offer us the non-metropolis view of taiwan, and all in all, it seemed like a pretty nice place to live. i think it's currently the 4th most populated city in Taiwan (i think the old capital of Taiwan if my memory serves me right), so there's a good balance of people, sightseeing, and places to go. we figured taipei would serve our shopping cravings, so we spent those two days in Tainan walking endlessly, seeing just about everything there was to see tourist-wise.

then it was taipei. man, is food cheap in taiwan. i ate like a king for a week, and still didn't need to break into my emergency piggy bank fund. off the top of my head, i recall going to Taipei 101 (the tallest completed building in the world), the Shilin Night Market (which was insanely packed and huge), Maokong Gondola (takes you to the top of a mountain for a view of Taipei... and home of many tea farms), some electronics market (where i got the pimpest electronic dictionary ever), the and National Palace Museum (home to one of the largest collections of Chinese art in the world).

while i've come to expect a lot of walking on vacations by now, i didn't foresee just how much we'd be walking in taiwan. by far, our most ridiculous day was our first whole day in taipei. our hotel was the second to last stop on one of the metro lines, and from our hotel, we could see Taipei 101. so that morning, we figured we could walk 10 mins to the station, take the metro for 2 stops, then walk another 10 mins to Taipei 101, or we could just walk straight there. so being the foolish people we were, we walked about 45 mins from our hotel to Taipei 101... you know, it's deceivingly far... but i guess you'd have to expect that since it's the tallest building in the world and all. also, up close, Taipei 101 didn't feel that tall because all the surrounding buildings are short. i still recall visiting the Twin Towers in NY the summer before senior year and thinking, daaaaamn they're tall, but then again, all the neighboring buildings being tall to begin with kind of accentuated how tall i perceived the Twin Towers to be.

after taipei 101, we went to an electronics market because for years, i've wanted an electronic dictionary that can go from english to mandarin and cantonese. particularly, i want it to pronounce it out loud for me so i can speak better. after wandering the market for nearly 2 hours, i finally settled on one that had what i wanted, and had a good price. for only about US$170, my dictionary can not only do cantonese and mandarin, but it can also go from chinese <-> japanese, german, french, spanish, and italian. not to mention it has a study function where you can learn conversational phrases in languages like thai, vietnamese, russian, and god knows what else. it's pretty insane.

as if all this walking wasn't enough, that night, we decided to hit up one of the highlights of taipei: the Shilin Night Market. it's famous for it's specialty foods, and just having a giant market that sells everything from shoes, to knock-off DVDs, to clothes, to accessories..... you name it, they probably have it. fulfilling yet another dream of mine, i purchased a real mahjong set... it was a bit pricey, but for the future joys i'll indulge in with my very own joy luck club, i can't complain. despite the market being pretty huge, i'd still have to say the weekend market in Bangkok is the most impressive market i've ever seen. i mean, there's something like 10,000+ stalls there, and no one has ever been able to count them all. THAT'S lunacy.

so to sum up, in that one day, we probably walked about 7 or 8 hours total... which is why it was no surprise that we were shells of human beings in the successive days. we'd aim to do something that day, and by the time we finished it, we were like, screw it, let's go back to the hotel and nap. all in all, though, i had a great time, and it was due mainly to the company and to not having a strict plan of what we had to do every day... going with the flow definitely made it that much more relaxing.

after our vacation, it was school. so far, i'm finding that teachers who have been reassigned schools have managed to stay within my town, which means that at the end of the shuffle, i still get to see my favorite teachers in new environments, while at least 2 teachers i disliked have been moved out of my town to aaron's schools muahahaha (^ ^)v it's weird to think that i've spent a whole school year with all my students, and that now they've moved on to the next grade. it really doesn't feel like i've been here that long, much less that i've been here for over half of their school year when i got here, saw them through a whole school year, and now am beginning a 3 school year with them. at the end of this semester, that's it... i'm gone. i don't think it's really sunken in... the year is fresh for everyone around me -- teachers and students alike. since my schedule doesn't change, and since they all know me, my life is relatively stable. i'm the type of person where once i'm used to a certain lifestyle, i dont change unless i need to. which is why now that i'm set in this routine, it's going to be strange uprooting myself and moving back home.

finally, the 3rd exciting piece of news... the funnest day ever this year. 2 weekends ago, all of us got together up north for a day at the beach. for about 4 solid hours, we played volleyball, baseball, soccer, and frisbee. as if all that running around wasn't hard enough on our bodies, we followed that up with a night of drunken debauchery. we gathered at joey's to ultimately enjoy a bbq, beirut, and dancing. i can only imagine how loud we were. poor mike got completely trashed and passed out shirtless on joey's couch early in the night. so what does joey do? break out in the sharpies... mike said it took a few days to get all the sharpie mess out, and i dont blame him...

in short, i'm glad we had that bonding time. it was an insane day, but i had a great time, and i think everyone else would say the same.

it's back to work tomorrow, but at the end of the week, guess what i have to look forward to? showing my parents around Tsushima! that's right --- after allll this time, they've finally given in and decided to come to me (on my brother's tab =D). i'll have them for the weekend, and then it's only a few more months till i'm destined for home.

that's all the news for now. tah tah!