{"id":7173,"date":"2009-12-23T08:04:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-23T00:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2009\/12\/23\/departed-with-memories-part-1\/"},"modified":"2018-07-17T13:21:13","modified_gmt":"2018-07-17T05:21:13","slug":"departed-with-memories-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2009\/12\/23\/departed-with-memories-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Kumamoto – Departed with Memories \u2013 Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt<\/a> and I were having an MSN chat the other day while I was still in Kumamoto, and one part of it went like this:<\/p>\n

Matt<\/span><\/a><\/em>: \u201cIt is a shame you won\u2019t get to see Nagasaki, though.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Me<\/em>: \u201cYeah. But Ling is now determined to visit Hokkaido. I think she feels it\u2019s crazily unfair I\u2019m in Japan and she\u2019s in Singapore.:)<\/span><\/p>\n

Matt<\/span><\/a><\/em>: \u201cHaha, you think? Duh! : ) Frankly, I think it\u2019s unfair you\u2019re in Japan and I\u2019m in the US!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The visit and exchange program to Kumamoto has been an incredibly enriching experience. It\u2019s not merely this whole thing about visiting another country and a culture you read about so much in media, and so pervasive among youth in Singapore even.<\/p>\n

Rather, living and teaching in Kumamoto for an intensive winter program has let me intently interact with my Japanese counterparts and students on their own home ground.<\/p>\n

Moreover, I\u2019m glad that my first visit to Japan has not been to a place like Tokyo or Hokkaido. Kumamoto isn\u2019t a tourist prefecture, with the number of tourist-y \u2018sights\u2019 amounting to less fingers than you\u2019ve got on one hand. And throughout my 9 day stay, the number of Caucasians I saw numbered about 2 \u2013 maybe \u2013 altogether.<\/p>\n

\"blog-2009-kumamoto-DSC_4896-train\"<\/p>\n

But what I saw and experienced I think is an accurate representation of what life in Japan is like for the average Japanese, or as much as I could experience from a 9 day stay. It\u2019s a taste of the country: not artificial and intended only for tourist consumption, as would be inevitably the case to some degree in the tourist-y cities of Japan. One of the most telling signs was the near absence of English translations everywhere: including restaurant menus, maps and street sign posts. Kumamoto City just isn\u2019t regarded as a city for travelers from outside Japan. Heck. Even English communication with their frontline reception staff in the hotel and embedded restaurants was crazily difficult. It just goes to show how unaccustomed was the city to non-Japanese travelers.<\/p>\n

And aside from the amazing business-class dinners I had everyday, I walked and commuted by train to work, returned during peak hour traffic, and walked some more back home (hotel) every night like the average Japanese Joe. If it wasn\u2019t for the fact that I was obviously under-dressed for winter with just thin long pants, a short-sleeved shirt and my Karri Valley Resort<\/a> windbreaker, I would have looked almost like a local \u2013 until I was spoken to in Japanese and my pathetic response would be \u201cI\u2019m so sorry but I don\u2019t understand!\u201d<\/p>\n

Continued in the next post!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matt and I were having an MSN chat the other day while I was still in Kumamoto, and one part of it went like this: Matt: \u201cIt is a shame you won\u2019t get to see Nagasaki, though.\u201d Me: \u201cYeah. But<\/p>\n

Read More Kumamoto – Departed with Memories \u2013 Part 1<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[463,237,593,619],"class_list":["post-7173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-traveling","tag-japan-2010","tag-kumamoto-2009","tag-reflections","tag-travel-retrospection","wpcat-17-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/blog-2009-kumamoto-DSC_5131-kkr-hotel-hdr-32.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}