a history of me

Now that the Japanese students have formally begun their school year, the entire campus has transformed. The first three weeks of the semester, everything was oddly quiet. All of the foreign students study in one building so the other six or seven buildings just sat empty. The sports fields were silent save for an occasional practice and generally the entire property just felt empty. Now everyone is here and people are doing everything. It's better this way I think and I wonder why we spent so long here by ourselves. Was it intentional to allow us to adjust or is the just a consequence of trying to have our academic calendar resemble an American university's?

Today I finally met my "Speaking Partner." The university has this program in place where interested students can be introduced to other students so that they can chat and get to know one another. I signed up and first made contact with my speaking partner via e-mail in August and we had brief exchanges about religion, the Bible, and Fight Club. Yet just a day or two after I arrived in Japan, she left on a trip to Iceland. Yes, Iceland! So these last few weeks I've been watching everyone else talk to their speaking partners, hang out with them or visit their homes while I've just been on my own.

No matter, she's back from Iceland and we had lunch together today! Her name is Yui and she brought photographs from her trip which I appreciated. Iceland is a very beautiful place and apparently it's cold there right now. For some reason I though it was actually warm in the summer but I guess they call it "Iceland" for a reason: all the photos were of people bundled up in overcoats and fuzzy hoods. It reminded me of Alaska with scenic glaciers and huge tracts of undeveloped, natural scenery. Seems like a wonderful place to visit!

Anyway, Yui and I got along very well. She's a student of English so our conversation went much more smoothly than the meetings I had this past weekend. Both us would dip between Japanese and English when necessary, helping each other with new or unfamiliar words. She actually went and saw Fight Club after talking to me about it which was pretty cool; she wasn't into the fighting but she definitely enjoyed the story. Sounds like a "thumbs up" to me. She mentioned that she was eager to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because she "likes Johnny Depp" like every other Japanese girl I have ever met. Similarly, she was surprised to hear that this new movie is actually a remake of an old movie (itself based on an even older book). I guess the Gene Wilder version didn't get much play over here in Japan? Too bad, I still prefer the original.

As far as our "partnership" I don't know where exactly we go from here. I suppose we'll just try to make arrangements to meet up on campus every now and then. I know she lives in Kyoto so I hope we can meet up there sometime as I want to go back there real soon. I'm sure there's literally hundreds of things there I would enjoy seeing.

I think I'll keep things short tonight; with my busy weekend I'm actually starting to fall behind on my numerous e-mail contacts. Maintaining these "penpal" exchanges can be a struggle sometimes but considering how each one of them could potentially turn into a face-to-face meeting, I think it's worth the effort. Speaking of which, since e-mail has virtually replaced the written letter, do think we'll ever come up with a new word for "penpal?" Or will it live on in our lexicon despite the fact that few "penpals" actually involve pens? I guess we will always "dial" a phone number even though there are no more rotary phones.