How do you say "I'll be back" in Japanese?

This is a picture of typical "o-miyage" that you can find all over Japan. "O-miyage" is what you give to your colleagues when you return to work from a vacation or business trip or whatever. Buying a box of o-miyage usually means that you are buying a box of some sort of individually wrapped cookie or tiny cake. Whenever you return to work, you simply put the box in the designated area and let your colleagues dig in as they please. And since in Japan teachers constantly go out of town on business or whatever, nary a week goes by when there isn't at least one box of o-miyage. And since the idea is to bring back a product that is typical for the area you visited, you get to try all sorts of different goodies, depending on where people went. I've already had rather delicious junk food from Okinawa, Osaka, and Fukuoka, for instance.

What's funny about the o-miyage pictured here is that they all have a picture of "Chigi-san" on them. Chigi-san is the Arnold Schwarzenegger of Miyazaki prefecture. I don't know too much about the guy, except that he used to be a comedian on TV. And now he's the head of the prefecture! From what I understand, since he's taken over (early this year?), he's been doing one hell of a marketing job. Miyazaki is growing and growing in popularity, and people flock from all over Japan to Miyazaki to catch a glimpse of "Chigi-san." His caricature is is plastered on everything in these parts from the o-miyage pictured above (some of the cookies even have his likeness stamped on them!) to key chains, fans, and even piggy banks. Believe me, he's popular! And like I said, he's trying his darndest to popularize Miyazaki products, one of which is the mango.

He even welcomed us at our orientation a few weeks ago in Miyazaki city. As we waited quietly in this nice room in one of the prefectural administration buildings for him to appear, we suddenly heard a bunch of shrieks. Obviously, the man was on his way. He arrived seconds later and promptly proceeded to give his speech. He started off in English but eventually switched to Japanese. And before we knew it, he was gone (to more shrieks from the public waiting patiently out in the hallway).

In any case, when it was time for our lunch break, we, too left the room, just as Chigi-san had. And what do you know? There were about 100 people lined up on both sides of the grand stairway, cameras in hand, patiently waiting for Chigi-san, obviously. Well, thinking fast, I decided to put on a little show for the crowd. I pretended they were all waiting for me so I started waiving to them all. And then I pretended for a few seconds to give a speech, yelling out a few quick thank-yous, waving some more, and posing for pictures. The crowd seemed to like it, believe it or not. Then I went on down the stairs, waving some more, saying "Hi" and "Thank you" and whatnot and shaking some hands here and there. I felt a little ridiculous but still tried to enjoy the moment that really wasn't mine!

Shoes, shoes, and more shoes!

This photo shows the scene, usually around lunch time or whenever guests might be expected, at the entrance to the school where I work. You probably can't tell, but all those little brown slippers are the same size: [very] small (at least for me). And, from what I can gather, there are no "left" or "right" slippers. They are simply all for either foot. If you visit my school and have no slippers of your own, you are going to be the lucky one who gets to wear these rather attractive slippers. Luckily, we faculty members each have a little cubbyhole next to the entrance where we can store 1 or 2 pairs of indoor slippers, because personally, I am not a fan of these brown slippers. I do have the luxury of wearing them once a day, however, when I go to lunch. See, in Japan you constantly change from indoor shoes to outdoor shoes and eventually back to your outdoor shoes. (Then again, if you don't have indoor shoes, you sometimes go barefoot or walk around inside wearing your socks.) Yeah, so basically, shoes play a HUGE role in life in Japan. At least from me. One part of that means that I have started wearing them with the laces rather loose, sort of skater-style. Not so much because of having to take them off often but rather for ease of putting them on fast. Let me walk you through a typical work day, as regards shoes.

Just before leaving the apartment, I slip into my shoes (which, as I mentioned, are easy to slip into since I have loosened the laces considerably). When I get to work (school), I walk in the main entrance, stop at that carpet (which is also a step up) and step out of my shoes. (There is a proper way of completing that that little action [imagine that!], which basically means not using your feet to help get your shoes off, but so many people break that "rule" that I do, too.)

Then, I grab my outdoor shoes and walk them about 10 feet over to my little shoes cubbyhole, and without putting my outdoor shoes down, open the cubbyhole, take out my indoor shoes/slippers, put those on, and place my outdoor shoes in the cubbyhole.

As long as I stay inside the school, I wear my indoor slippers/shoes. In my case, those are Birkenstocks, but other teachers wear regular ol' flip-flops, all sorts of sandals, "normal" shoes, whatever.

Very often you have to walk outside to go from building to building, but usually that means walking all of 15 feet or so outside, and usually that means walking along wooden pallets. So there is no need to change shoes along the way.

But as I mentioned earlier, I walk over to the dorm's cafeteria to eat lunch every schoolday, and that means changing shoes several times. First, off with my indoor shoes and on with my outdoor shoes. Then, at the entrance to the dorm, off with the outdoor shoes on on with those silly little brown slippers. Reverse after lunch.

Before coming to Japan, I thought I would be deeply insulting the Japanese if I ever broke those "rules" about indoor and outdoor shoes. But believe it or not, the Japanese sometimes break the rules themselves! I recently watched as one teacher strolled into the school building after lunch without changing shoes! Wow! And another time, shortly after I first arrived at eh school, I was given a brief tour of the school grounds and at one point we went outside without changing shoes! Holy cow! How cool!

You sort of have to have shoes stashed everywhere to make it easier to avoid going to your cubbyhole if you need to go outside. For example, you can step outside directly from the teachers' room. The border before you need to switch to outdoor shoes seems to be the parking lot cement. The balcony is fair territory for your indoor shoes, even though you're outside when you're on the balcony.

Yeah, so I placed a pair of (giant) slippers that my predecessor left me right there by the sliding door closest to my desk and marked them with the Kanji for "yama" so everyone would know their mine. And, whenever I step outside via the sliding door for some air or whatever, I put them on like a respectful foreigner. Problem is, occasionally I get confused and think the "yama" slippers are indoor slippers, since they served my predecessor as just that. I distinctly remember one time when I came in through the sliding door and put them on and walked inside. Oops! See what I mean about having shoes stashed all over the place? You can't just have indoor or outdoor shoes stashed here and there; you have to have both at all locations. Ugh!

Oh, and guess what you do when you get to the gym? That's right, you take off your indoor shoes and put on your OTHER indoor shoes, your for-exclusive-use-in-the-gym-only indoor shoes! Since I didn't bring any of those for-exclusive-use-in-the-gym-only indoor shoes with me to Japan, I'm using for that purpose the shoes that I bought for coaching baseball, since I'm not coaching baseball. And, psst, don't tell anyone: I actually wore those shoes outdoors on several occasions in the U.S. and Japan before transforming them into my for-exclusive-use-in-the-gym-only indoor shoes...

Oh, and then there are the "toilet" shoes. Yes, that's right, "toilet" shoes. When you go into a restroom, you often find more of those undersized, plastic, cheesy looking slippers for exclusive use in the restroom. And, yes, one time I really did forget to take them off before leaving the bathroom. I caught myself after walking about 30 feet in them and then simply turned around as nonchalantly as possible and put them back... SHOES!

My first visit to an onsen

Sorry for having been gone for so long. In any case, I'm back, thanks to you, Dr. K... Well, I feel like talking about my first visit to an onsen. What's an onsen, you ask?

An onsen is a hot spring. There is actually one right here in little ol' Takachiho, believe it or not, and it's not too far from the ghetto where we live, as least by car (it's about a 30-minute walk). (More on the ghetto in another post...) Yeah, so it turns out our first night here there was no hot water in the apartment, since that little item did not get taken care of before our arrival. So the suggestion was made that we go to the onsen. So off we went. Courtney's supervisor took us there and got us started, but he then went home (and said he'd pick us up about an hour later).

What I mean by getting us started is: he showed us the ticket machine and helped us buy our ticket, for 500 yen (about USD 4.35), and then showed us which entrance was for the women and which one was for the men. And off he went. [But let me back-track a bit here. From what I remember, that onsen was the first place in Japan where I had to take my shoes off before entering. That was my little introduction to a major piece of Japanese culture. (I'll go into that in another post. There really is a lot to write about, but I can't do it all at once!)]

Okay, so there I stood, in front of the entrance to the men's part of the onsen, not really knowing what was in store for me. It sure would have been cooler/easier had Courtney's supervisor gone with me to show me the ropes! But no, I was all alone to figure things out. So in I went, sliding the door open to see what I was in for. The first thing I saw was a changing area. In other words, you get naked, put your clothes in a basket in a cubbyhole, and move on to the "onsen" part of the onsen. Problem was, there was almost no one around and I had no clue through which door to go since everything was marked in Japanese of course! I really had no clue if that door over there was just a door to a closet or a door to a bathroom. And what was behind that door there? Hmmm... See, I didn't want to do anything wrong, not so much because I might have embarrassed myself, nope, but rather, because I was a bit afraid of offending someone culturally-wise, by doing the wrong thing.

Yeah, so there I was, naked except for the little towel I brought along, minding my own business, trying to act like I knew what was going on but really having no clue what to do next. Finally, an old(er) man came in and changed (i.e., undressed). So I stalled some more and got ready to follow him. But by that time I figured out that the door he was heading to was the bathroom. Hmmm. Not good. More stalling time. Then, someone opened a different door and came out. I quickly poked my head in to see what there was to see and I could tell that that it was through that door that I had to go! At last, I knew what direction to go in. But, what then???

Finally, someone came along and went it through that door so I went in with him. I probably should have had the balls to just go for it, but I felt really uncomfortable, as you can imagine. Anyway, the first thing this guy does is head for a pool of water just next to the entrance. He then puts his towel down in a dry place and grabs a bucket and dips it in the water. And then he squats down in this, well, Japanese way, if you know what I mean, and pours the water all over himself. He poured about three buckets of water all over himself and moved on. So guess what I did? I did exactly what he did, including the ridiculous(?) little squat (as if I were a naked catcher with invisible knee-savers, keeping my back as straight as can be!) and poured the water over myself... While doing so, I scoped out what there was in the "room." To the right, I noticed the "showers." So off I went in that direction.

I found myself a little cubbyhole semi-removed from everyone else, although that was rather easy, since there were probably about 30 cubbyholes but only maybe 5 were occupied. While walking past the other guys I tried my best to figure out the washing procedure. In any case, the first thing you do is sit down on this funny little stool. And then you have your choice of filling a bucket with water and dousing yourself some more or turning the shower on and getting yourself wet that way. And then you soap up and clean yourself off.

The soap is provided in two forms: a bar of soap (I found that out later!) and two dispensers. But I was so not sure of what was going on that I didn't notice the bar of soap that was there. Or maybe it wasn't. So I dispensed some of the soap in the first bottle onto my towel and lathered up. All the while I'm looking over my shoulder trying to check out how some of the other guys are doing it and wondering why they all had such an awesome lather going and why mine sucked! Anyway, eventually I moved on the the shampooing part of my sit-down shower. And just as I started to rub the shampoo into my hair, I noticed that the two dispensers (one with soap, the other with shampoo) were actually labeled in katakana, one of the three "alphabets" used in Japanese.

So I decided to take a stab at reading them. (I doubt if you can remember what it's like when you first started to read, but if you look at the Y.A.M.A. up top, for example, and take about 10 seconds instead of about 1/2 of a second to figure out that those four letters together spell "Yama," well, that's how dumb I felt (and still do!) reading those letters on the bottles. Anyway, lo and behold here's basically what I read on the first bottle: (no, not "Rat Poison" and no, not "Bleach"): S-h-a-m-p-o-o. And here's what I read on the other bottle: B-o-d-y W-a-s-h. Guess which one I was using on my hair! Yes, the body wash! Which means I washed my body with shampoo... How lovely! Do you think anyone else noticed? So that was certainly worth a good laugh.

The rest of the time, the actual sitting in the hot water time, wasn't as exciting, to tell you the truth. But yeah, the procedure is to first cleanse your body, and then go into the water. At least I didn't screw that part up. I had about 30 minutes left to sit in various pools of water at various temperatures and then I exited. I wasn't really sure if there was a set procedure for leaving, though. Do you take another shower? Do you just take a shower without the soap? Do you dunk more water on your head? I decided to go in reverse and dunk more water over my head at the location next to the door. And that's exactly what I did. This time with just a half-squat...