Author: Iris

I don’t know why, but for the last week or so I have been terribly tired. The only thing I really want to do is to sleep – and when I wake up, I want to sleep some more. One of my housemates says he suffers the same, and blames it on the change of seasons. It is not too hot yet, mostly it’s one sunny day followed by an overcast one; also I don’t mind the heat. It does get light very early though, somewhere around 4 am, and there is one curtain missing in my room. My housemate says I may be waking up too early and not getting enough (REM) sleep, but just looking at my schedule, it does not appear to be the case; beside, I was always able to sleep at any time and any place. Anyway, I’ll have my routine blood test next week, so if there’s something physically wrong with me, I guess they’ll find out then.

Yesterday, I was up and out early because I wanted to check out another location where aikido training is held, near Kyoto station. The training started at 9 am, but because the bus did not go quite as far as I had expected, I had to walk farther than planned, and thus came a bit too late, which I found embarrassing… It was lovely watching the training though, and I think I will join this group; they all seem very nice (I have hardly ever met unpleasant people on the mat) and what I can judge from only watching, they are quite good as well. Interestingly, the whole atmosphere seems very relaxed, something I have never encountered in any of the Japanese dojo I visited before.

Anyway, after watching the training I walked around in the area. Toji temple is close by, a famous Buddhist temple sporting a large and famous pagoda, a bit south-west of Kyoto station. It is a large temple complex, with several large halls, the pagoda, an additional museum… One of the halls had an exhibition of large cloths painted (or dyed?) in dark blue – I think it was indigo, but I am not entirely sure. They were beautiful, and probably very expensive – there were some rather exquisite kimono to be seen, but none of them with a price tag. Other things were for sale, small fans and purses, for example, but I did not buy anything. Afterwards, I went to the station and, because I was looking for a Muji store in the nearby Aeon mall (which I did not find anyway), I had a belated lunch there – in a Korean restaurant. I enjoyed it very much; unfortunately the custom of serving unlimited side-dishes is observed in Korea only, which, given that my body cannot tolerate kimchi very well, was probably a good thing after all.

I then took a bus to City Hall, went to the Muji store there, did my shopping, and then walked home. After more than six hours on my feet, I was rather tired, but… we had a builder over to fix one of the rooms, which he did all afternoon yesterday, and all day today as well – and he did it rather noisily… I took some amazing pictures of the interior workings of the house and its roof by the way – I’ll share them with you in a few days, promised!

Yesterday I went to Kobe to visit some friends of mine – fellow Austrians. We did not do anything exciting, just strolling along the harbour a bit, dropping in to an exhibition of photographs taken by sailors all over the world (there was a stunning picture of a crescent sun rising over the ocean – we guessed it was taken during a solar eclipse, but we were not sure), and we looked at the city from the viewing platform of Kobe city hall, which is located on 24th floor.

I did not find the city very exciting, it’s rather typical modern Japanese. Kobe is a very old city, and its biggest attraction are some very old houses built in Western style, that form a small neighborhood close to the mountains. My friends said, however, that it would be interesting only for Japanese – apparently the whole city has a somewhat “Western” feeling to it, and the Japanese come here when they want to feel a bit exotic. As I said, to me it seems like an average Japanese city though…

We had dinner together – chili con carne – and we drank and talked and enjoyed the view from their 10th floor apartment… it was nice to speak in Austrian again. I left with the train shortly after 11 (one of the last ones) and when I arrived in Kyoto more than an hour later, I found out to my horror that the last buses in my direction also leave shortly after 11… By that time, the drizzle to which I had left Kyoto had stopped, so I walked home. I arrived around 1:30 – and consequently spent half of today in bed.

When I visited my soroban teacher the other day to finish the paperwork for my visa, a woman passed by and wanted information about the school because she was planning to enroll her children. She discussed matters with sensei, and after she had her questions answered to her satisfaction, she left – and we went back to our papers.

Before I left however, sensei told me that he was a bit annoyed with the woman. The very first thing she had said was – upon seeing me: “Oh, I thought this was a soroban school and not an English conversation class…” Sensei didn’t respond to that, but he told me that it seems that he was not allowed to have foreign friends, according to that woman.

There are lots of stereotypes around in Asia when it comes to Western foreigners:

1. You are a tourist who can’t speak the language. Mostly this is indeed the case, so I can’t blame them – as long as they don’t try to cheat you because of that (which has happened to me once or twice…) If they understand that you live here, then
2. You have to be (a really rich) American. Admittedly, I am exploiting this particular one to some extent, whenever I have a bad day and I’m not as polite as I could be – I claim to be American… Anyway, the one and only thing you can possibly do in Asia is
3. You are working as an English teacher. Once when I was walking down the street in Korea, a man cycling towards me stopped, quickly jumped down from his bike and almost yelled at me: “You’re English teacher?” “No”, I replied simply, moved further on my way – and left him seriously baffled.

A similar encounter went thus: “You’re a tourist?” – “NO.” – “Ah, you’re an English teacher?!” – “NO.” – “Ah, you are here with your husband!?” – “NO.” At which point the poor woman did not have any imagination left and chose to give up entirely.

I fully understand that stereotypes and prejudices can be useful, and that they are often correct: Most foreigners here are indeed American, most women my age indeed have a husband and children. But, if you keep on hearing the same silly questions and comments over and over again, and if people place a label on you without even trying otherwise, it does start to grate on your nerves sooner or later…