I woke up on Saturday morning around 5 am, still dizzy, drunk with the stench of vomit in a room that is not my host family’s. I was sleeping directly on the cold floor with a cover over me and my sweatshirt off. On my left side was Cody sleeping sound in his futon and on my right a completely empty futon just calling me to bed. With the little consciousness I had at that time, I managed to pull myself into bed and return to lala land. When I wake up again there is a French guy and a Norwegian looking down at me asking if I am alright… (what a dumb question). All they can see is someone in a futon that barely can turn around to say “no” and a garbage can standing beside for obvious reasons. They leave with Cody to Kyoto and I cannot manage to leave with them so I am left alone in this foreign house with people I don’t know. I fall asleep again.
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When I wake up around 2 pm I try to recollect what has been going on in the past 24 hours. Slowly it comes back: Around dinner time I joined two American exchange student friends and a couple of Japanese students in a “Gaijin” Vs “Nihonjin” bowling match. The first game the Japanese win by 30 pts and the second match we win by at least 100 pts. Certainly not due to me, I can barely make 100 pts in both games. Bowling is really not my sport, if you can call it a sport. Before we leave I remember I need to take a purikura picture ( I cannot really explain what it is, but when I have some, I will post them). And there are many outlets for this here. However, it is customary to take that kind of picture with girls, never two guys together or a guy alone. So, with the confidence of being with a bunch of guy friends, I go up to a group of girls and ask them if I can take a purikura with one of them. The reaction is 2 minutes of awkward and uncomfortable “humm” “aaa” “ano…” indecisiveness… they all take look at each other not knowing what to say or do next and there is some extreme group think going on. Boy, have I ever disturbed their world. After 2 minutes I give up and say not to mind. I leave feeling like an idiot and certainly having tarnished the image of gaijins even more.
Next we went to a famous Chinese restaurant called Oosho that is everywhere in Kansai (it seems). There is only one Japanese girl accompanying us and there is no single table that can contain all of us and she is indecisive as whether she should sit with the gaijin or the Japanese guys. I invite her to sit in for half of the meal on our side and the other half the other side, which she accepts and seats next to me. The whole meal conversation is centered on the clumsiness of gaijins and we even reenact our misdeeds, pretending to be at our host family’s dinner table. I reenact the moment when there was only one croquette left and the host mother asked me if I wanted it and I just took it out of the plate and ate like an animal… The custom here is always “enryo” or hesitate… hesitate to ask questions, to answer questions, to show your knowledge, to react, and when it comes to food, you have to ask if it is ok even if they ask you if you want it. It’s only a question of “good manners”. Of course being a foreigner we are not expected to act that way, but if we do, it certainly impresses them (in a good way at least).
I show off my Japanese by reading menu items and practicing my kansai ben and at the end of the meal, for a measly 6$ CDN we had a very good meal. Oosho is the best.
The Americans and I are very set to go drink so we set foot to a local bar called “Daddy’s Shoes” mainly operated by foreigners and a majority of foreign customers (how surprising). Some university Profs have even been spotted there enjoying a few drinks. This seemed like a good idea at first but now I regret having gone there. As we go in they are preparing to play this drink game called “raise the bar”. As all drinking games the rules are very simple, well there is always one prominent rule: drink as much as you can… nomihodai. The goal is to start with a set amount of shooters and when it goes to the next person you have to drink the same amount of shooters or raise the bar to any number you want. The first round I drink 3. The second round I drink 6 and the last round I drink 11. That’s 19 shooters in 30 minutes. Not realizing what lies ahead of me, I go on and drink half a glass of Guiness beer and two Coronas with a mix of liquor in it that makes it even easier to go down. Before long one of my friends, Cody, tells me it’s time to head back and then from there I only remember bits and pieces. I remember sending a message to my host mother telling her I will not be coming back tonight and I still don’t understand how I managed to write this much with the Japanese interface: finally, friend at stay…. And she replied saying that she understood and it was ok. I probably started throwing up at the same time (yes, on the train) because my cellphone was filthy. I also remember a train employee helping me to do a fare adjustment and then all I remember is Cody endlessly excusing himself to his host father while I am semi-unconscious in his bed being very sick. How bad I felt…
*****
Once I remember what has led me to be here in this condition, I make an assessment of the damages and try to figure out how will I present myself to Cody’s host family without feeling awkward. I really have to go to the bathroom and I can’t stay in this room all day so I eventually go out and down the stairs and follow the heat (the kitchen is always the warm place in a Japanese home during winter, and is usually connected to the living room so it becomes a gathering place for the family to spend time together and keep warm). At the bottom of the stairs I find myself in a narrow hallway with identical doors aligned on every side. Behind one of the doors I hear people conversing and watching TV – that must be it. I hesitate before I open the door, and finally the door opens by itself and reveals Cody’s okaasan. Of course she jumps and says oh! You surprised me… so much for avoiding an awkward presentation. Okaasan goes right to business by asking me if I am hungry, and I respond by telling her I drank too much last night and therefore am sick. (She probably already knew that much). I tell her I prefer to wait a bit before I eat but would enjoy a glass of water. Okaasan reacts like nothing peculiar happened and that we have always known each other. I certainly feel comfortable here. The next few minutes are punctuated by me half falling asleep while sitting at the kitchen table and darting to the bathroom saying: I’m not feeling so good. After a while I say that I think I should sleep a bit more, and Okaasan invites me to lie on the couch for a while, she brings a pillow for my head and at the same time I can watch TV. An old, catholic, black and white French flick is playing, with Japanese subtitles of course. Okaasan’s daughter is also there with her grand-daughter sleeping tight in her arms. I’m not exactly sure how to say that in Japanese: thank you for taking care of me, but I say osewa arigatou gozaimasu… and I guess they understand. I lie there and just relax for a while and wait for the hangover to seep away. Soon Okaasan brings chopped apples and invites me to have some. I manage to eat more and she asks me at what time I want to have dinner. I compare this environment, to the cold transactional relationship I am having with my host family and I am quite disappointed. This family clearly has an interest in foreign students and wants to take care of them. In my case, I feel that it’s OK if I am in my host family as long as I don’t make a difference; that is: I don’t make a difference in the order of things, in the bills and the cleanliness and all those little details that seem supremely important to my host mother. Whether I am ok or not is of little importance… maybe I have a totally wrong impression but I have been talking about it to many peers and friends back home and the reactions range from move out of there to that is unfortunate this spectrum makes it pretty clear that something is not going right…
Back at Cody’s host family, over dinner we watch a classic American movie and okaasan brings the dinner in the living room and I eat next to Otousan. He too, does not speak that much but after having seeing me being sick like I was the night before, I would expect him to be somewhat discouraged but he actually offers me a shot of home-made brandy!! Unbelievable! That is something I cannot refuse but I know I will drink it veeerrry slowly because I just destroyed my liver with alcohol. I also feel strange about all this because Cody is not even there during the whole time, I am just a stranger happening to be in there house…
After dinner I clean up the room, clean up my mess fold up the futon and place it in the Oshiire. Cody comes back from Kyoto surprised to see that I am still there. Okaasan serves us two types of grapefruit, hot cake and tea. When it is bath time, I go after Cody and for the first time in my life I take a bath Japanese style. After showering and rinsing off I soak in the 42 degrees celcius water and it feels really good. After everything that had happened in the past 2 days, it occurred to me that a hot bath would feel good. I also wonder why I had never indulged in Japanese bathing in my own host family when I have the opportunity every night. Maybe I just don’t feel as comfortable in my host family…
We end the night by watching an old Hollywood style musical and I stay over another night because my coat is still wet from being cleaned. (It also was a victim of my drunkenness). I could have returned that night even if my coat was wet, but at the same time I was not ready to return to my cold room in a cold family.
****
This morning Cody wakes up at 5 to 10 and he said he would wake up at 10. No alarms needed. I am very impressed; I wish I had that ability. I did not have such a good night’s sleep because I had allergies because of the dog. Not having planned to stay over at another place, I was not equipped with my allergy medicine and my asthma pump so I tried to go in the washroom and open the window to get some fresh air to alleviate the symptoms but to no avail: I pretty much coughed and wheezed all night. As planned we have pineapple and chicken sandwiches for breakfast. We talk for a while with Okaasan and we tell her that she should visit America and she could accomplish one of her dream which is to improve her English. She is pretty good, especially considering that she has only learnt from watching movies. There are movies playing all day at this place… it is like a 24 hour theater… that is also great. She has been hosting people for a while now. She starting by hosting Singaporeans sponsored by Matsushita (large Japanese electronic firm) to learn Japanese language and work methods and bring them back to Singapore. Unfortunately the project was a failure since most participants changed job when they returned to Singapore and thus made the Matsuhita’s investment worth nothing. Then she started hosting foreign students and another dream of hers is to help increase the number of host families in Japan. She is a very passionate and energetic woman for her age and she also has her share of brandy at night with her husband.
She asks if we want to watch a movie, and at that point I answer that I’d better get going or else I will stay there all day. She doesn’t catch my sentence in English and does not react, but when she sees me putting my coat on, she seems puzzled and I repeat in Japanese that I am leaving and have to study. She proposes that both Cody and I study together at her place, but I didn’t bring anything to study. Okaasan seems genuinely disappointed that I am leaving. I tell her that I will come back, and I hide the fact that I am also sad about leaving.
Cody walks me back to the train station (there is no way I could remember how to walk back) and tells me a few things that I did while I was drunk, that completely escaped my mind…
When I get back I tell my host mother how drunk I was on Friday so I had to stay at another place and she seems to find it very funny. (I’m glad she is laughing for once when I talk to her). The father is on the computer as always, redundantly checking it and performing various scans for viruses. He never seems to react to anything I say. After a while I go back to my room and start writing and soon it’s 3pm and I still didn’t open my grammar books. Time to study.
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