Cows of the Sea

I apologize, I have been absent for longer than I meant to be. Things were happening. Fortunately, that does mean that I now get to tell you about said things.

Firstly, there was the Happocho program trip. Happocho is a town (-cho is the suffix for town, so in English it would be Happo town) on the northern most border of Akita prefecture. A group of 8 of us took a bus there last Friday to help out in the English classes at the local middle and elementary schools. After school was out, we were each picked up by our host families for the night and retired to their households. I, along with another student named Natsuki, was placed with an older Japanese couple living in a huge, gorgeous, very Japanese-styled house with a view of the mountains right out the front door. They were very nice, well-humored people, and I enjoyed talking to them imensely. This was made possible largely by Natsuki's extremely helpful translations, as both the Okaasan and the Otoosan (Father and Mother, and what you may typically expect to call a host family's heads of household) spoke extremely strong Akitaben. Akitaben is the local dialect, and as I was to discover that night is significantly different from the standardized Japanese I've been learning in school. Sometimes even Natsuki couldn't understand them!

Me, with the host family, in front of their house. Okaasan held my hand when we took it, it was cute.

Natsuki, with the same. I love how ridiculously happy she looks here.

As it turns out, we actually got very lucky with out host family. Not only were they ridiculously nice and funny (and very patient when I was trying to explain myself or understand them in Japanese), but the host mother also use to be a professional chef for Japanese cuisine. Consequently, we had some of the finest meals I've eaten here yet for breakfast and dinner. They were fantastically amazing.

Breakfast. It was intense. Later they brought out rice and some oddly delicious individually-sized glass bottles of milk.

I did not get a picture of dinner, sadly, but it was equally as busy. Notable items were the small bowl of octopus tentacles we were served at the beginning (layed out nicely using the curve of the tentacle to make a pretty design, and served with parsley, soy sauce and wasabi) and the fish, which I believe was Hatahata. It's a local fish that has been served with almost every meal I've had in Happo, its actually quite tasty. While eating this one I discovered my hidden talent for de-boning fish with chopsticks- its a very specific skill, but one I remain quite proud of. You see, I was having some difficulty eating around the bones, but then I noticed the host father carefully pulling the spine out of his fish in once piece, leaving the rest of the fish intact. He did this all with just his chopsticks, held in the normal chopstick way, and without utilizing his other hand at all. I figured copying his technique was worth a shot, so I gave it one. And lo and behold, it worked! I got the whole spine out in one continuous string of bones, leaving the rest of my fish looking just as it did before the operation. Everyone seemed quite surprised and impressed. I don't think they even expected me to be able to use chopsticks when I first sat down.

They also kept serving me beer throughout the meal, to the point where I actually began to feel mildly tipsy. I'm not sure if I drank anything besides beer and green tea that evening. It was lovely.

Upon our departure, we were presented with several small gifts. Among them were chopsticks in fancy wrappers, a cat-shaped clip thing that attaches itself to curtains and hangs there for decoration, and a head of cabbage each. That's right. We just carried heads of cabbage with us for the rest of the day. I'm still not 100% sure why we got them. Natsuki seemed mildly confused as well, so at least it wasn't just me.

  

The cat thing, and what became of half of the head of cabbage (plus some noodles, carrots, tofu, avocado, and various seasonings. It was a good meal).

We didn't leave Happo right away that day. You see, the way this program works is that there is a teaching day, followed by a so-called "culture day." What this translates to is "a day where they pay you to have a good time and do fun stuff that you wouldn't otherwise be able to do." In this case, we went on a gorgeous hike to ring a bell halfway up the hill-mountain-thing, went sea-kayaking, and, in my case, played with the sea slugs (sea cows? Is that what they're called?)

That hike is where this picture comes from.

The bell was rung. 

... Yeah there's not much more I can say about that. It sounded like a bell.

Irina was very scared of the sea-kayaking. It was tons of fun though, I really enjoyed battling the waves once we got out of the rocked-off enclosure and into the open waters.

There are no pictures of me with the sea cows, so here, have one of Natsuki with a crab.

After that we dried off and took the bus home again. I think we got back right in time for dinner, so that was rather nice. It was definitely a very extraordinary adventure, largely due to the somewhat surreal experience I had with my host family. I choose this adjective intentionally. Due to the language barrier, the further dialectical differences, the very traditional-looking nature of their household, my state of exhaustion upon arriving, and my continued state of mild inebriation once dinnertime struck, the household took on a slightly dream-like quality to me. It was wonderful, but a little odd at the same time. I kept feeling like surely I couldn't be there, that I would have to wake up soon and it would all go away. 

But it didn't go away, I made some truly fantastic memories, and I still have half a cabbage left to prove it.

Comics_01

My thought here is that I will somewhat regularly post groupings of comics that I have drawn in the last while with brief descriptions of their characters and origins. Since the comics I draw are almost entirely based on my life, I feel that I would be in the wrong to not share them on this blog. I plan to do this every several months or so, as that tends to be how long it takes  me to amass the required number of finished pieces.  Some of you, those who are friends with me on facebook, will have seen most things I upload to these types of posts previously. I apologize for that, but I believe I have enough people reading this who do not use facebook or do not have me added on it that it will be worth doing them despite the redundancy.

So, without further ado, let us begin!

The Dream

These first two are back from around my birthday. "The Dream" came out of a conversation, much as portrayed, in the Komachi lobby one evening. Suffice to say that Chris has rather odd life goals, and Stephanie's parents would likely not approve.

Maple Syrup

This one actually took place on my birthday itself. We were biking around Akita City in search of a place to eat dinner (we settled on a ramen shop) and passed the time with some interesting conversations.

Okay. Then there's these. They are fairly self explanatory, I think, but in case anyone was unaware, I have a small garden on my fire escape that I made using old bicycle baskets and a rice paddle. To get dirt to the rice baskets we put it in a large plastic bag and then Chase very generously hauled the entire load up to my room on the fourth floor. Twice.

Plants 1

Also, I would like to say that this may be the first time I've drawn a dress that's actually looked like, you know, a dress. I may be a little more proud of this than I really should be.

Plants 2

The amount of comments we've made regarding our "children" in the past month is getting rather out of hand.

Plants 3

Carrots are delicious.

And this shall conclude today's comic exposition. You may notice a distinct shift in styles from one image to the next- my basic drawings stay fairly consistent, but I have yet to settle on a coloring style and have a tendency to bounce around between several at any given time. If you particularly like how one looks, please tell me, I could use the feedback. Currently I think my favorite, both for enjoyment of application and the end product, is the watercolors. I'm glad I brought my set with me.

This Is Not About My Mother

When I was in 3rd grade, my mother came out as lesbian. I had known about homosexuality and bisexuality before this point, and by proxy was aware of the concept of homophobia, but it was not until then that I began to take note of it in the world around me. I remember the first time I noticed a classmate referring to their friend as a "faggot." I experienced a curious sense of disassociation, recognizing at once the indignation I felt on behalf of my mother and also the realization that I had never felt it before. It had taken someone dear to me, my own mother, coming out, for me to start caring enough to notice.

*   *

In eighth grade Spanish class I had a classmate who would always refer to things that displeased her as "gay." She was usually talking about the coursework.One day, I told her that it sort of bothered me (these were likely the exact words I used as well, I was not particularly brave at this point in my life).

"Why does it bother you?" she asked.

"Because I live with my mom and her girlfriend and there's nothing about that that should be an insult," I answered.

"Oh, that's okay then," she said. "As long as you have a personal reason for it. I hate it when people get upset about that and don't have any connection to it."

"Uh huh," I said, not quite sure how to respond. She wasn't mad at me though, so I decided to leave it alone. I didn't want to make anyone upset, and this sort of seemed like a compromise.

*   *

I didn't say much in high school. The friends I made were not the sort to use derogatory slurs in their colloquial communication, and I was too shy to speak out against anyone else. I justified it, asking myself what good it would really do when I knew they would just ignore me. It made me uncomfortable but it wasn't bad enough that I was willing to acknowledge it.

*   *

I grew up in Seattle, Washington, one of the most liberal cities in America (at least according to personal experience and a quick google search on the matter). When I was little my parents got divorced, and until college I split my time between their houses equally. My mother currently lives with her girlfriend and my adorable, adopted little brother, while my dad has a long distance girlfriend in Canada. When I left for college I moved but an hour and a half North to the lovely, quaint town of Bellingham, which felt largely as though someone had taken Seattle, shrunk it by a factor of 20, and put it back through a time machine 50 or so years. What I am getting at here is that I was spoiled rotten by liberal attitudes.

I had not realized what a bubble I was in until I left it.

Its not like the people I associate with here are all that much different. They don't hate people, they don't want to burn all of one sort of person or persecute the other. But they use words like "gay," and "fag," and "queer" and "retard" as insults as naturally as I use "silly," and "ridiculous," and I don't know how to feel about it. I've grown since high school. I do not stand idly by. I have mentioned, on several occasions, that it bothers me (well, my methods may not have changed, but I do employ them more often and with greater force of will). In response I've gotten a few blank looks, several instances of casual dismissal, and a rather interesting conversation.

"You know how you describe things as gay sometimes? That makes me rather uncomfortable."

"Hm. Why?"

"Because you're taking a term for a group of people and using it to describe something you dislike."

"Okay, that makes sense. I used to get that, but I think it changed because I had a gay friend once who would always describe things as being 'gay,' so then I didn't see it as a problem."

I did not know how to respond to this. Yes, they are all terms which are currently undergoing the process of reclamation by the target group, and therefore it is hotly debated what it is okay to use them for. I had someone correct me once on using the term "queer" to describe people of non-heterosexual persuasion and was utterly confused, until they explained that where they were from (the other side of the state) it was still a distinctly negative term used only as an insult. I grew up hearing my mother use it to describe herself and her friends, seeing it as an umbrella term in texts, and thinking it a generally benign piece of lexicon. Western Washington even has a Queer Studies department. Clearly there are some discrepancies afoot.

I didn't press my friend here any further, because I didn't know what to say. His point was somewhat valid, and yet it still offended me when he used the words the way he did. Did I have the right to be offended? Who does? Why was I at all, in the first place?

I thought about it further, and came to a conclusion, of sorts. Yes, I was offended. Not on behalf of my mother, although I would like for my baby brother to grow up without hearing his parents' sexuality used as an insult, whether it be against them or a piece of homework.

Not on my own behalf either, although one could argue that I would have the right to be, considering my somewhat present interest in girls and the relationship I had with one for six months in high school. But I would not want to use her like that.

And not even for all the many friends and acquaintances and coworkers I've had and known, who came out to me either directly or by nature of being open about their preferences. They can make their own decisions about what offends them.

I was offended for people. For humans. Not for a direct connection, I don't need to justify my displeasure by using my friends and family, my own sexuality, as a shield. I can be offended on behalf of human decency, and anyone could be, whether or not they like the same gender, whether or not they have ever met anyone who does. That's not the part that matters. What matters is how icky I feel when I hear them talk like that, and how wrong and out of place everything gets in my head. What matters is that this is my experience, not anyone else's. This is how I felt it. And that is not something I can or want to change.

I'm still not sure if I can say what he's doing is wrong. I don't know if I can tell him off, if I can explain it to him, if I should even try. But I know that it made me unhappy. And I am not going to shrug and compromise, not with my feelings, not this time. I was offended. And I will hold onto that feeling until something changes, because it is not the sort of thing I want to wipe away. Maybe its okay for someone else not to care, maybe its not, all I know is that I, personally, do.