Don't Pocari Sweat the Small Stuff

Hello again folks!!! Today I write you from a hotel in Kanda, Chiyoda City, Tokyo.

It's pretty hot here so I've been drinking a lot of cool green tea and Pocari Sweat drinks to stave off dehydration (this is my weak edit to try to explain the title...also featured on my Instagram story...)

My second week was maybe even better than the first one. After an admittedly pretty rough start with my host family, I think I really warmed up to the new school, the students, and the members of my host family as they warmed up to me too. Leaving this school felt a lot harder than the first one for me actually, I really wanted to stay and get to know the students more. We were at an all-girls high school and the topic for this week was specifically focused on Women's Empowerment so we spent a lot of each day talking about gender inequality and gender discrimination in Japan. To be honest, it's really interesting to hear about these things from the students' perspective because there's definitely an image about gender equality in Japan pushed by Western media, but hearing about it from the students themselves shed a lot more light for me on what kinds of issues are actually important to girls growing up in Japan. It was interesting especially because one group I worked with had a lot of disagreement over what kinds of gender inequality existed in Japan and what fields were actually challenging for women to ascend to higher positions in. The issue's not so black and white, I think, just like in America. And honestly I have so much respect for how much these students are able to express about these ideas in a second language. Some of the topics we talk about are really challenging and I would struggle to talk about them if I were forced to discuss it all in Korean, and these students only have one more year of English studying than I have for Korean. One student talked about how "when a man holds a leadership position it's normal, but when a woman holds one it's called 'great'" which was such a succinct way of describing how, like, even if women achieve leadership positions it doesn't mean people think that they're actually equipped or ready to do the job. It's like "good for her" instead of, like, "she is a capable professional with the right experience so her leadership is just as natural as a man in this role would be." I can't stop thinking about that. Anyway enough of the curriculum though. I am really loving this program. Like, a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Like, it's kind of making me think more about what kinds of things I want to do in the future and I feel more sure of what lies ahead of me than I ever have before...so that's cool! To be honest, I haven't done something that has been this personally rewarding for me in a long time. I feel like in even just two weeks I've learned so much about myself and I've made so many great connections with people, even if many of them are fleeting. I told this to naoni last night, but even if the next two weeks of my life are not very good, I still think this will have been one of, if not the best, experience I've had in my life so far. I really loved the students I had this week. So many of them had such interesting hobbies and dreams and interests, like the girl in my group who wants to become a veterinarian despite being allergic to a lot of animals (she wants to work on helping people with animal allergies) or the other girl who said her favorite musicians were xxxtentacion and bhad bhabie (didn't think they'd be popular in Japan) or the girl who busted out the whole Stranger Things Season 1 recap rap from memory as her hidden talent. I had a lot of fun with these students and I'm really going to miss them. I also went to Disney sea this week! I don't have too many pictures unfortunately because we were only there for a few hours so we moved pretty quickly but it was really fun! There's a special train you take to get to the Tokyo Disney resorts and the hand grips are shaped like Mickey Mouse ears. And Disney was really cute! We got to ride the Tower of Terror and the Indiana Jones ride and the Aladdin Merry-Go-Round. And they also had a section which was Cape Cod themed, which I thought was pretty surprising and fun! All in all a good time :-)

Like I mentioned, this week I'm in a hotel. The other group leaders I've been working with are all at another high school but for some reason only I have been separated from this group and chosen to go to a different all-girls school. The program also doesn't start until Wednesday and our schedule makes it sound like there's only two group leaders this week so I'm very confused and not really sure what this week is going to be like! But hey! I'm getting better at going with the flow it seems! Today and tomorrow are free days for me, and it's a little weird having so much free time in a new city all by myself but I love exploring so I don't mind too much! Today I went to Harajuku and picked up this hat, got some kakigori/bingsu (shaved ice - with mango of course), and then went all the way to Kamakura about an hour by train to see the Giant Buddha (but...it was closed by the time I finally walked from the station 30 minutes to the temple...it was still nice to walk around the city of Kamakura though)

Tomorrow I'm going to meet Naoni for ramen and I'm not sure just what else I'll get up to yet but there's so much to see and explore! Maybe I'll finally be confident enough to go to a real restaurant by myself and order despite not being able to read anything (baby steps, baby steps) But yeah that's it for me! If I can be emo for a moment though, I really feel the happiest I've felt in a very long time. I feel really positively about myself as a person and about the people in my life and the future and the world in general. Usually when I feel happy like this I get nervous because I think it means something really bad is about to happen. And maybe there is something bad that's going to happen, but for once I feel like I'm strong enough and confident enough in myself to get through that bad stuff stronger each time. I don't know how to explain it quite, but I'm really happy to be alive and to be here and to know so many cool people and to meet cool new people so often.

Thank you to you guys for giving me a place to write this down, too.

Also at this shop in Harajuku they had a bunch of "American second-hand clothes" including boy scouts uniforms with the location patches and troop number and I found one for the Pioneer Valley!!