9/7: Friday
9/8: Saturday
9/9: Sunday
9/10: Monday
9/11: Tuesday
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Found a neat little pool hall right down the road from Richard's homestay family. There's sort of an isolated "downtownish" area there. Lauren, Alison and I went to a Yakitori restaurant (yaki = grilled, tori = chicken) which was fabulous and not very expensive. I got something whose English equivalent was: "chicken with the taste of charcoal". But it was very very good. :)
Afterwards, we three went to an arcade (warning: they use 100yen coins as quarters here, so it's like spending a dollar on every game). We mainly played Dance Dance Revolution, happily, and for a long time. It was the fifth mix, while apparently the third mix is still brand new in the US. Nyah. I also won a Hello Kitty fan and a cheap Neon Genesis Evangelion mirror with Rei on it. :)
Then we played pool.. not a lot to report there.
Our INTENTION was to go check out several Kyoto shrines today, and attend the free concert. But time got the better of us and we just hung around part of downtown Kyoto before we had to go back, since Lauren needed to get home for dinner (to her homestay) and Ursula was expecting a call. Plenty of time remains for me to check out Kyoto shrines.
Okay, went to Osaka Castle Park AND Osaka Castle today. First, let me inform you of the sadistic usage of stairs. SO MANY STAIRS!! Regardless, the castle was gorgeous (got lots of pics, they'll be up sometime), with all of the gold accents you will see on the building being actual gold foil. Amazing. We were not allowed to take pictures inside the castle, since it was a museum, but there were pieces of samurai armour, swords, horse barding (some made the horse look like a dragon, very neat), letters from the emperors of various eras, etc. It was very neat. However, we were able to take pictures from the observation deck, at the top of the castle. Most of my pictures are simply "pretty" pictures of Osaka, but in one you can see the Glico building, which is where most Pocky is made. :)
I don't remember. It was a Monday. Woo!!
Classes went without a hitch; I enjoy both the content and my instructors.
Of course, the big news today happened at around 11:00PM our time. Someone came running down the hall knocking on all the doors, shouting that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Within a few minutes, every resident of the dorms and a couple of professors were huddled around the TV, watching CNN. We saw the second plane hit, live, and, again live, both buildings collapse, and immediately heard about the Pentagon crash and the crash in Pennsylvania. There is no expressing the feelings of horror that saturated the room.
Most of us sat through the night, watching to see if anything else would happen. We were devastated, even those not from the United States, that someone could perpetrate such horror on innocent people. We were also frightened by the implications: most of us had the distinct feeling that we were witnessing, live, the eve of World War III. Our generation knows little of "war." The Gulf Conflict was "war" to us, with a smattering of casualties and limited risk. But now with this looming large, we fear that our definition of "war" is going to change dramatically. Scenes of Palestinians cheering the tragedy in the streets and passing out candy enraged us, but at the same time we feared for Americans of Middle Eastern descent and the inevitable racism they would experience in the coming months. The news media kept drawing parallels between these attacks and Pearl Harbor (a scant comfort to those in Japan), and I hope that a resurgence of the Japanese-American camps will not occur, this time for Arab-Americans amidst McCarthyism, not for witches or communists but for terrorists. It scares me that many people may not draw the line between Muslims following the good teachings of Islam, and so-called "Islamic fundamentalists," those extremists who will stop at nothing to bring down the "devils of the West." At the same time, I am confounded (as an international relations major) at what the US can do. In the past, war has conveniently fit into the framework of nation-state vs. nation-state, a framework that we seem desperate to maintain, through President Bush's allegations that each country that harbours these terrorists will be treated as enemies of America. But these movements that are apparently responsible are invisible, underground creatures with no necessarily specific allegiance to any single nation-state. War seems inevitable, but against whom?
As one might expect, students here have been glued to the internet or the tele for continued updates. Being so far away from the epicenter of disaster, we feel deprived of information, and also of any way to help. We cannot even donate blood. Combined with the pervasive feeling of ineffectuality, is the fear of what will happen next. If our country does declare war, and it becomes a drawn out campaign (as Secretary of State Colin Powell has indicated that he expects it might be) is there a possibility of being stranded here, in a foreign country? Even if this is not the most logical of worries, it has found many a voice at this college. Some parents want their children to come home. Other fear for our safety, as highly-visible international students. I don't share those fears as explicitly, but I have heeded our embassy's directions to maintain a lower profile than we normally would. On laundry day, I grabbed my Old Navy Flag T-shirt, with the American flag emblazoned across it, and suddenly, for the first time ever, wondered if it was safe to wear. How horrible is THAT?? That we would be afraid to parade our national symbols? I hope this is not a permanent end to our previous feelings of security, even invulnerability, as citizens of the greatest and strongest nation of the world.
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