All My Dreams Come True

Ian! You have just been selected from a long list of alternates to become a CIR on the JET program. You will live and work in Japan's ancient capital of Kyoto. What are you going to do next?


I'm going to.... Oklahoma? Seriously?


That's right ladies and gentlemen, for a week and a half I will be removed from the heart of cultural Japan, and relocated to the heartland of the US of A. We are going to hit all the big names: Tulsa, Stillwater,and Norman.


Half of me wishes I was joking, but the other half realizes that it's much more funny as truth.


Let me explain: Kyoto prefecture has sister-city relations with many regions around the world. Part of the job of the International Affairs Division where I work is to coordinate activities with those regions. For example, the Edinburgh exhibition in October that I mentioned last post. The sister regions are: Shaanxi province in China, Yogyakarta in Indonesia, Leningrad Oblast in Russia, Edinburgh in Scotland, and, of course, Oklahoma, USA. Every year a delegation of college students visits the other's region, alternating between countries. This year, it is a group of Kyoto students that is visiting Oklahoma. Going with them were my supervisor and my section chief. The latter was going as coordinator of the whole exhibition while the former was to be the interpreter if things got rough (all of the students speak at least a little English, and some are pretty fluent, apparently). However, my supervisor has been sick recently, and they needed another English speaker. I don't know whether I was chosen because I am directly below my supervisor or if I am just the least necessary English speaker in the office. Either way, on Tuesday the 11th (flying on September 11th, security should be fun), nearly three weeks into my Japanese adventure, I am flying to Oklahoma through Detroit. I have never interpreted before, but it should mostly be ok because I will be dealing with students and day to day concerns. What does worry me, however, is that there will be a conference at OSU where the Japanese students will participate in a round table discussion with American students regarding global warming, greenhouse gas emissions, the Kyoto protocol, and cross-cultural understanding. (The Kyoto government is battling global warming like crazy. There is a wide scale campaign to prohibit drivers from idling for too long, and it is not uncommon to see signs on elevators that say the elevator has been disabled in order to stop global warming). It will be an open discussion, so anyone in the entire campus and surrounding community will be invited. If there are communication difficulties, I will be the one smoothing them out. I am apprehensive. I am, however, looking forward to seeing how the Japanese students interact with American students in a discussion on what is such a hot-button issue in America.


Besides the impending Oklahoma trip, everything else has been proceeding smoothly. The office had a welcome party for Sara, the other CIR, and me last week. I got to see a different side of the people in my office. For example, I couldn't for the life of me place this one character who was excitedly talking to me about anime and cosplay while pouring me beer. Then I realized that he is the guy who sits literally four feet away at the office, but rarely speaks. After drinks and dinner ten or so of us went to karaoke. Madness. After coming home, though, I didn't feel so good. I could tell it wasn't the alcohol I had imbibed because I hadn't had that much, and it wasn't just nausea, but chills and a general feeling of unwell-ness. I just did a translation that day for the International Center's website regarding food poisoning, and I tend to think it was that. I had bought a pretty shady lunch from a street vendor earlier in the day, and as I learned from doing my translation, food poisoning strikes about ten hours after eating (actually translation is my main source of information. Nobody really tells me what events etc. are going on in the prefecture, but I can get an idea from translating and native-checking letters and documents). Regardless, after a rough night, I awoke lethargic and nauseous. I had a meeting to go to at work so I couldn't call in sick (I also don't have a phone to call in sick with). I felt like passing out a couple times during the day, including the middle of the meeting, but with the help of a nap during my lunch hour I made it through the day. Everybody thought I was merely hungover, and didn't seem to believe me when I told them I wasn't. Ironically, however, my poor performance that day maybe more likely to be forgiven if alcohol is believed to be the culprit. (Japan is remarkably tolerant of drunken behavior. I heard that until relatively recently, Japan was extremely lax on prosecuting drunk driving, even to the point where alcohol could be used as grounds for leniency. Now, Japan has some of the toughest drunk driving laws in the world.)


In continuing my pattern of posting pictures completely unrelated to the rest of my post, here are some pictures of Nijo Castle; about a 30 minute walk from my apartment. On my first day in Kyoto I was walking around the neighorhood looking for an electronics store, when all of a sudden I was standing next to a four-hundred year-old castle. Today I finally paid admission and went inside.



Anyway, I should start studying vocabulary related to global warming and the Kyoto Protocol.