nipponDAZE

Notes from 2009: Hita Lacquerware

I buy the lacquerware vase I saw at the train station shop the first time I was in Hita and two other pieces besides. I love lacquerware. Just as Westerners call porcelain “china” because China is so well known for it, we used to refer to lacquerware as “japanware” or say that a laquered item was “japanned”.

The vase is made of a hollow section of bamboo.

My Japanese coworkers warned that lacquerware often did not survive in the US because it prefers a constant, high humidity. Certainly in a dry climate like California they would suffer. Or in an overly heated or air-conditioned American house. But I’ve never had any problems except in this one piec that was cracked when I shipped all my goods back to Austin. It cracked vertically.

1989-09-23 Saturday

Notes from 2009

Stationery

I found the notebooks on sale on the top floor of Parco. They were really cheap. Maybe it was a back-to-school sale. They were fairly plain notebooks by the standards of Japanese stationery. They came with aqua or pink covers which said.

Seduce Notebook: This notebook is well bound with automatic excellent machine by Bun’undo that is traditional since 1909.

Vape

Our un-air conditioned apartment was very open to the outdoors. We slept with the sliding glass doors to the balcony open and the screens did little to keep the mosquitoes out. Our dorm mother had brought over the modern equivalent of the mosquito coil, an electric diffuser for Vape mats. Each little mat had some sort of insect repellant. It smelled pretty bad and I wondered if they were carcinogenic so I was reluctant to use them. I couldn’t read the information on the Japanese packaging. But the mosquitoes were numerous, so I solved the immediate problem and tried to put my fears about long-term consequences out of my mind. Twenty years later, this is what I discovered about Vape, on the Internet.

Notes from 2009

Loaf of Bread

Even loaves of bread were different in Japan. Loaves of sliced white bread came wrapped in plastic bags, like in America. But the loaves, all the same size, could be bought in varying widths determined by the number of slices in the loaf; the more slices, the thinner the slice. I suppose the concept is comparable to “thin-sliced” or “sandwich slice” or “Texas toast” sliced bread. The loaves were smaller but they did not include any end pieces. End pieces were bagged separately for stuffing. I thought this was a marvelous innovation. No one was stuck with the crusty end piece.

Our usual breakfast was toast and coffee. We liked the 5-sliced loaves because it made toast which was deeply golden on the outside and slightly soft on the inside. Hmmm. I guess that would be Texas toast.

First Day of School

Although all sorts of classes and meetings had been going on at the school throughout August, this was the official first day of the second term of school. Summer vacation interrupts the Japanese school year which starts on April 1st. So classes and routines were already settled. The half days at work I’d been attending helped me (and everyone who had to interact with me) make a smoother transition into school life. I was the first JET participant to come to Beppu Joshi and so no one on either side really knew what to expect or what to do. I was really glad to “belong” to a school. I think I would have felt very disoriented and lonely if I had worked at the prefectural official and had been assigned only to school visits, as many JET participants were.

Notes from 2009

I’m pretty sure that the other teachers in this group were all 2nd year teachers, that is, home room teachers for the junior, ni-nen-sei, class. The P.E. teacher, Yasanami-sensei, was also in charge of the school’s tennis and badminton teams. Washizuka-sensei seemed to love tennis and played much better than I did even though he was nearly twice my age. I didn’t pay for anything on this outing. I don’t remember if it was treated as a guest or whether it came out of some special 2nd year teacher fund.

Notes from 2009

Kijima Korakuen, Kijima Gogen Amusement Park

Murakami-sensei and Tsuda-sensei took me and JQS to Kijima, an amusement park up in Kijima Heights west of Beppu. The only things I remember about it is that I really had fun driving the Skid Racer cars. I’ve missed driving a lot and I’m pretty good at controlling my skids. The little roller coaster looked so rickety and frail that I was afraid to ride on it.

Notes from 2009

I remember the difficulty I had trying to carry all these purchases home. The black garbage pail seemed huge. It took up lots of space on the train and it was awkward lugging it on the 20 minute walk home.

I brought both of those black garbage pails home. I used them as packing containers when I shipped my household goods back from Japan. I still use them 20 years later in the garden to collect rain water or hold gravel mulch. In Texas, they are tiny.

Notes from 2009

Inkan

Now that I’ve been paid, I have to repay several expenses that the school covered for me. My most important purchase is my inkan, the seal I affix to official documents (like bank withdrawals). Using my inkan makes me feel like I’ve stamped a royal decree. My inkan is rather unusual because it has romaji (roman letters) on it. Most inkan for foreigners have their names written in katakana script. My full name wouldn’t have fit, so Murakami-sensei had it made for “M Stevens”. As there is no katakana equivalent for the “M”, she gambled and had them put it in romaji. It’s perfect because I’ve always formally signed my name “M Sinclair Stevens” and informally, used just “M”.

I think Nakagawa-sensei provided the little case for my inkan, which I carry with me in my purse at all times.

I also get a rubber stamp of my name for use on school reports. Both the inkan and the rubber stamp have a little indentation so that you can tell which is right side up without looking.

The teachers all have their own rubber stamps and for each class there is a box of student rubber stamps. Whenever a teacher is making up reports (all done by hand), they use the rubber stamps so they don’t have to write each student’s name. They do have computers in this school but they are not used for the huge amounts of paperwork that the teachers generate.

Spelling My Name

Back in year 1, (1989 is Heisei 1–the first year of the new era which began on January 8, 1989), my family name, Stevens, was rendered スチーブンス, (pronounced SU CHEE BU N SU). Then in the 1990s, many katakana equivalents were changed including the spelling of my name, which is now スティーブンズ (pronounced SU TE-EE BU N ZU) so that when I went back to college to study Japanese I no longer knew how to spell my own name.