Japan: a reflection

Ok, so I will not let this blog die, I will try to keep it at least 2 entires per week. This shouldn't be difficult this week as tomorrow Bus Trip #3 is coming up with hopefully a lot of pictures. Sunday I am visiting my "Homestay family", so its definitely a very busy weekend.

So after 2 months here, my Japanese language skills are steadily improving, but one thing that is improving more than that is how I understand myself, and others. As a matter of fact I am wondering if my biggest issue for many years was that I completely misunderstood myself and how I think? Some things I learned is that I am very much a "people" person, I don't get tired of people no matter how much time I spend with them. I get a lot more done if I am sitting next to someone and discussing it with them rather then sitting alone in my room, as a matter of fact I get very little done that way. Another thing is that when you look at personality tests a lot of them will compare a person that makes decisions carefully by logic vs. a person that makes decision on instincts and impulse. I always thought of myself as the first time but lately I think I follow a very middle ground between those two. There are times when I think I made a decision based on "logic" on to later realize that it was very impulsive and I actually thought very little about it. Still, I think its a good way to make decisions, logic can be very flawed and sometimes you might be reasoning about something and your instincts will tell you that something is not right. My instincts rarely lead me astray.

About people, I am definitely more social here then I ever was. Back at Stony it seems that I would feel embarassed and would look for reasons not talk to people. Here I started doing the complete opposite, having a feeling that a person might be interesting or just seeing somebody's face a too many times in a day (which happens here) might be a reason to introduce myself. A good place I found to just start talking to someone is on the bus or at the bus stop. The bus ride is about 15 minutes (to either the station or the mall), so if the person does feels uncomfortable or does not want to talk to me they don't have long to wait (I don't think that happened do). At this point I pretty much have two ice breaker phrases for the Japanese students, the first being "Where would like to Study Abroad?" or "Where did you study abroad?". The second one that I like is "What does "Otsukare" mean. "Otsukare" is a Japanese word that is impossible to translate into English, it is generally used as a "Good bye" but you would only use it in certain situations. If I had to interpet it, it would be something like "It was nice to work with you, you've worked hard, please rest". In other words you would use it with someone you've worked with and that person would be tired by now, so you're thanking them for putting so much energy into this.

About my appearence, this is something I admit I cared rather little about. In the morning I would take as shower, brush my teeth, sometimes shave, put on what's clean and go out. This has changed, I shower, while doing so I shave, wash my face, brush my teeth. When I'm done I put on after shave lotion, deodrant, cologne, comb my hair. I am seriously considering going cloth shopping, to wear something that I think looks good rather then any other reason, but perhaps I will hold up until I come back home. I also brough hair gel today because I got tired of seeing my hair being messy in all my pictures.