A Linguistic View of Japanese: My Morphology Paper on Japanese Compounding

Hiiii! See? I told you it wouldn't be long until my next post! :D It would have been sooner, but my morphology professor didn't have our grades out until just now, even though he was supposed to have graded mine by the time I turned in my final exam a week ago.
Anyway, the back story for this, is that for my morphology class I had to write a final paper about anything morphology-related, save for a few exceptions like English and Spanish. I chose to work with Japanese, since I was also in a Japanese Linguistics course at the time, so I had a nice textbook to work with (Tsujimura's An Introduction to Japanese Linguistics), and I chose compounding since it was the longest part of the morphology chapter which would help me meet my page requirements. I put so much effort into this paper, I can't believe he only gave me a 90%. I know that's not bad, but that was below the class average, meaning that he gave lots of people way higher scores, and even my friend who said she B.S.ed her paper got an 89. I worked so hard on thiiiiis T_T
Anyway, mind you, I wrote this paper with the expectation that the reader knows next to nothing about Japanese and only the basics (if any) linguistics. So anyone (who can read English XD) should be able to read it! This should be interesting to you whether or not you know Japanese!!!! Even if you are a native Japanese speaker, I implore you to read it- most people don't actually know or think about the intricacies of their own language, so maybe this will be enlightening! :D
I'm sorry, but I have to switch back to the smaller font just for this one. :P
EDIT: When I posted, I noticed not all of the formatting stayed the same as my paper, so things don't line up properly. Please bear with it, as formatting with this blog is...reeeally difficult? Sorry!

This paper is my own intellectual property save for where sources given. Do not reduplicate.

Japanese Compounding

Mary Gebbie

1. Introduction:

Japanese is a fascinating language rich in structure and vocabulary. Within this expansive vocabulary exist a variety of compound words, which is what I will cover in this short paper. First I will give a quick background of the Japanese language, as well as historical information regarding the influence of Chinese in regards to writing and pronunciation as this is pertinent when analyzing compounds. The subsequent section describes the morphological compounds, as well as the phonological rules and patterns that accompany compounding. Finally, I will cover certain syntactic and semantic constraints for the compounding rules that will be discussed.

2. Background:

Many people are familiar with Japanese enough to know that, like Chinese, the writing system includes many characters, called kanji, picture-like symbols which represent the meaning of the word as opposed to representing a phonological utterance. This is true, but there is more to the story than that.

Japanese, Ryukyuan, and Ainu, all of which are spoken on the islands of Japan, are somewhat a mystery regarding their origins. Japan in an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean near the North Eastern coast of the Asian continent. The original inhabitants of the island are considered to be the Yayoi- a people believed to have been of Mongoloid descent, leading some to consider Japanese a part of the Macro-Altaic language family (Inoue, 242). Although almost exclusively spoken in Japan (with only a few migrant communities in other countries, such as America and Brazil), with over 125 million speakers, it is the ninth most spoken language in the world (“Most Widely Spoken Languages”).

Prior to the influence from Chinese, the people of Japan had no writing system. It wasn't until “552 A.D., as it is officially dated, Buddhism was introduced to the Yamato court...thus initiating 300 years of active cultural exchange between China and Japan” (Inoue, 244). One of the most influential additions of this exchange for Japan was the introduction of the Chinese characters. Not only did the Japanese take the meanings of the characters and apply them to words they already had, but they also incorporated the Chinese pronunciation (although they have been altered to suit the Japanese phonetic constraints). It is for this reason that almost every single kanji has at least two ways of being pronounced- although there are often times more (Inoue, 244).

As the Chinese grammar structure is very simplistic, it is not unreasonable to use a series of a few characters to represent a sentence. However, Japanese is much more complicated in regard to the use of particles and verb and adjective conjugation. Over time, the Japanese scholars began simplifying the kanji that represented particles, then eventually simplifying one kanji to represent each sound in the phonetic inventory as a simple symbol, ultimately creating the Japanese alphabet, called hiragana (Inoue, 247). Since then, Japanese has been written using a combination of kanji and hiragana, kanji being used to represent nouns and the roots of verbs and adjectives, hiragana being used for certain adverbs, particles, and conjugation. There are two other writing systems in Japanese as well, katakana- another kanji based writing system used primarily for loan words and mimetics- and romaji- the roman alphabet, which is commonly used on public signs- but these systems are only important in the fact that they are not used in Japanese compounds with other writing systems.

3. Phonological and Morphological Features:

Since Japanese is an agglutinating language, seeing a word that is a mix of kanji and hiragana is a sign the word will be pronounced with the kanji's kun-reading, the reading of traditional Japanese pronunciation. However, when the word is part of a compound, the on-reading is most often used, which is the pronunciation based off the Chinese reading of the kanji. Figure 1 compares the two readings (although some examples many have more than the two readings shown). Kanji is in bold. Data is from my own knowledge of Japanese.

1. Kanji Kun and On Readings

Kanji	Kun-reading	Kun-reading example	On-reading	On-reading example
変 – change, strange, difficult	ka	変える – kaeru to change (v.)	hen	変化 – henka change (n.)
山 - mountain	yama	息吹山 – Ibuki yama Mt. Ibuki (name)	san	火山 – kazan volcano (n.)
楽 – comfort, ease, music	tano	楽しい – tanoshii fun (adj.)	raku	楽園 – rakuen paradise (n.)
急 - hurry, sudden, emergency	iso	急いで – isoide hurriedly (adv.)	kyuu	急に – kyuu ni suddenly (adv.)

Note that although the on-reading example for 急 does include the hiragana に(ni), this is realized separately from the kanji word, as it is a particle ending which indicates manner (ie. turning an adjective or nominal adjective into an adverb).

Rendaku

Rendaku, or sequential voicing, is a phonological phenomena that occurs when compounding in Japanese. In general native Japanese words tend to start with voiceless consonants, but when compounded, the second word of the compound changes from voiceless to voiced. This rule applies almost exclusively to native Japanese words, but there are prominent exceptions, such as san becoming kazan above in Figure 1 (Otsu 1980). A common explanation for Sino-Japanese and other loan words becoming exceptions to Rendaku is because they “occur frequently enough to be considered native words” (Tsujimura, 53). The following examples illustrate the use rendaku in Japanese words compared to non-Japanese native words, which include some data from Otsu (1980). Others are constructed examples.

2. Rendaku Application

1a. ato + kaki → atogaki

after writing → afterword (of a book); postscript

b. ato + kin → atokin

money → balance; left over money

2a. te + kami → tegami

hand paper → letter

b. te + sou → tesou

aspect → palm reading

3a. yasu + heya → yasubeya

cheap room → cheap room

b. yasu + hoteru → yasuhoteru

hotel → cheap hotel

In each a example, the second word of the compound is a native Japanese word, which undergoes rendaku, whereas in each b example, the second word is a Sino-Japanese word or other loan word. As for why heya of 3a becomes beya, historically, present day /h/ was originally the voiceless bilabial stop /p/, so in cases of sequential voicing, it changes to /b/ (Tsujimura, 51).

Besides not being applicable to non-Japanese native words, rendaku exhibits other constraints. One such constraint is Lyman's Law, which states that if the second part of a compound contains any voiced obstruents within it, ie. stops, fricatives, or affricates, rendaku is blocked (Tsujimura, 53). This law is illustrated in Figure 3 (Otsu 1980: 210).

3. Lyman's Law

1a. oo + kata → oogata

big size → big size

b. oo + kaze → ookaze

wind → big wind

2a. juzu + tama → juzudama

rosary beads → prayer beads

b. juzu + tsunagi → juzutsunagi

tie, fasten → roping together

There exist other constrains for the application of rendaku, however they are syntactic and semantic in nature, and will be addressed later.

N-V Compounds

Looking at the morphology of compounds, it is clear that there exist many types regarding different parts of speech and what types of words they are made up of. Noun-Verb compounds are one such type. In these compounds, the noun always proceeds the verb, however the part of speech is determined by the Right-Hand Head Rule; when the verb maintains the categorical status of a verb, the whole compound is a verb. If it is a deverbal noun, the compound is treated as a noun (Tsujimura, 165).

Verbs in Japanese are easily recognized in their dictionary form as they always end in the letter 'u'. The following is a list of N-V compounds that are verbs, and as such, can be conjugated:

4. Verb Noun-Verb Compounds (Tsujimura, 165)

Iro + color (n.)	Aseru → to fade (v.)	Iroaseru to discolor (v.)
Abura + grease, oil (n.)	Shimiru → to permiate, to soak in (v.)	Aburajimiru to become greasy, to be oil-stained (v.)
Tema + time, labor (n.)	Toru → to take (v.)	Temadoru to take time, to be delayed (v.)

As Japanese verbs use the kun-reading, rendaku takes affect in the latter two compounds.

When verbs in Japanese are deverbalized into nouns, they will end in either [ i ] or [ e ], depending on how it is conjugated. The following figure contains N-V compounds that are nouns:

5. Noun Noun-Verb Compounds (Tsujimura, 165)

Kan can (n.)	Kiru → kiri → to cut (v.) → (n.)	Kankiri can opener (n.)
Sake alcohol (n.)	Nomu → nomi → to drink (v.) → (n.)	Sakenomi heavy drinker (n.)
Futsuka second day (n.)	You → yoi → to become intoxicated (v.) → (n.)	Futsukayoi hangover (n.)
Hi sun (n.)	Yaku → yake → to grill, to burn (v.) → (n.)	Hiyake sunburn (n.)

These type of N-V compounds are much more common. Also, for syntactic/semantic reasons, the second word in the compound does not undergo rendaku, as seen in the kankiri example.

V-V Compounds (pg. 169 in Tsujimura)

Verb-verb compounds in Japanese are extremely extensive in not only number, but also syntactic and semantic constraints. However, they are relatively easy to create.

Tsujimura explains V-V compounds are rather common in Japanese, and can serve several functions. Syntactic compounds express aspectual meaning, such as such as the start, stop, or continuation of an action. Lexical compounds showing semantic function can be an action that would normally be two verbs in English, such as kake-agaru, literally meaning “run-go up”, to describe running uphill. Another function of lexical compounds is what in English would be a resultative expression, such as “shake someone awake”, yuri-okosu (shake-wake someone), or “cut [a tree] down”, kiri-taosu (cut-fell something) (169). Because the list of V-V compounds and their semantic and syntactic constraints is so vast, I will only cover the morphological aspects of their formation.

For all verb-verb compounds, the stem form of the first verb is used- which looks like the polite form of the verb minus an inflected ending. This is attached to a complete form (as opposed to stem form) of the second verb, which can be conjugated and inflected accordingly. I am using the word stem and not root, since in the majority of cases, it is not simply the root of the verb that is used. The stem form of verb roots that end in a consonant include an epenthetic vowel. For example, the verb kaku, to write, is the root kak, and the present tense inflection u. The stem form, however, is kaki, which comes from kakimasu; kak, the root, mas being the polite ending, u again inflecting present tense. The i between the root and the polite ending does not carry meaning; it is presumably added for ease of articulation, as Japanese is a mora based language and has certain constraints regarding consonant clusters.

Syntactic compounds are very productive, and their meaning is predictable based on their components (Martin 1987: 438). Their productivity comes from the fact that the second word of the compound must be a verb from a finite group of words that expresses aspectual meaning, while the meaning of the main verb remains unaltered. The following are examples of syntactic v-v compounds.

6. Syntactic V-V Compounds (Tsujimura 170)

Main Verb	Aspectual Verb	Compound
Kaku – to write	Hajimeru – to begin	Kaki-hajimeru – to begin writing
Kaku – to write	Owaru – to finish	Kaki-owaru – to finish writing
Kaku – to write	Tsuzukeru – to continue	Kaki-tsuzukeru – to continue writing
Kaku – to write	Naosu – to correct	Kaki-naosu – to re-write
Kaku – to write	Sugiru – to exceed	Kaki-sugiru – to write too much

Seemingly, in lexical verb-verb compounds, instead of the first verb being the main verb, the first verb acts as a description of manner, such as in the previously given example, Kiri-taosu (“to cut down”, lit. cut-fell something). If we consider the second verb the main verb, this theory makes sense since it is a resultative expression; If you explain that you felled a tree by cutting it, the fact that you felled the tree is overall more important, the fact you did so by cutting it is only extra information. The following are more examples of lexical V-V compounds. In regard to the first example, note that /ts/ and /ch/ are allophones for [t] when before [u] and [i] respectively.

7. Lexical V-V Compounds (ex. 1-3 from Tsujimura 170-171)

Verb 1	Verb 2	Compound
Utsu – to shoot	Korosu – to kill	Uchi-korosu – to shoot to death
Taberu- to eat	Aruku – to walk	Tabe-aruku – to go and try food at various venues
Ukeru – to receive	Toru – to take	Uke-toru – to accept
Miru – to see	Suteru – to throw away	Mi-suteru – to abandon, to desert
Hiku – to pull	Tomeru – to stop	Hiki-tomeru – to hold back, to restrain

The manner-action order seems to work for all of the above examples, albeit obscurely for some, as the meaning of the compound is not always clear based on its components. For instance, to accept something means not just that you are taking something, but that you are doing so willingly, that you are receiving it, and to abandon something implies there was volition behind the act of not returning to it, which is shown in Japanese by the fact that you throw something away even though you can see it. This sort of pattern works for all lexical verb-verb compounds, regardless if their English representation is a two-verb action or a resultative expression.

Dvandva Compounds

Another set of compounds in Japanese are known as “dvandva compounds”, a term meaning the two words are related semantically. Although these copulative compounds are always nouns, they may be formed using regular lexical nouns or deverbalized nouns. By nature, copulative compounds do not have a head, so dvandva compounds will not be subject to rendaku (and we will see why this is important in the syntactic section of this paper). This is not surprising for another reason, as it is the nature of compounds to use the Chinese on-reading, but even in the cases of the kun-reading being used (as in example a, e, and g-j), sequential voicing does not occur. The following list (of my own examples) provides some examples of dvandva compounds:

8. Dvandva Compounds

a. oya + ko → oyako

parent child parent and child

b. ten + chi → tenchi

heaven earth heaven and earth

c. dan + jo → danjo

male female boys and girls

d. nichi + ji → nichiji

day time date and time

e. te + ashi → teashi

hand leg arms and legs

f. anshin + anzen → anshinanzen

secure safe safe and secure

g. kachi + make → kachimake

win loss winning and losing

h. kashi + kari → kashikari

loan debt borrowing and lending

i. yomi + kaki → yomikaki

reading writing reading and writing

j. iki + ki → ikiki

going coming coming and going

Examples a-f of figure 6 above are made up of lexical nouns. These type are the more common of the two, and the list of possible combinations is most probably endless, as it seems to be possible to invent new compounds when the two nouns you are referring to are related in the discourse, as well as when new words are added to the Japanese lexicon via foreign language word borrowing. An example of the latter would be something like beekon-eggu, meaning bacon and eggs, or some words including the “and” of English, like pointo-ando-shuuto - yes, all one word-, meaning point and shoot. Examples g-j, however, are made up of deverbal nouns. Although compounds most often use the Chinese based on-reading for the kanji, since verbs use the native Japanese reading, their deverbalized counterparts do as well.

4. Syntacic and Semantic Issues:

As previously mentioned in section three, the phonological phenomenon rendaku exhibits some syntactic and semantic constraints as well as phonological ones. Just as in English, ambiguity may exist with Japanese words, for example, Tsujimura writes in her book about the ambiguity of a noun phrase like “lacquered chopsticks box” (p.53). There are two interpretations of this phrase:

a) a chopsticks box that is lacquered

b) a box for lacquered chopsticks

Essentially, this problem can be solved by looking at the use of rendaku. The Japanese pieces to make up the word are nuri + hashi + hako, meaning “lacquered chopsticks box” in that order. Rendaku will apply differently for each semantic interpretation of the compound.

9. Rendaku and Semantics

Lacquered chopsticks-box Lacquered-chopsticks box

a) a chopsticks box that is lacquered              b) a box for lacquered chopsticks

In sentence a, chopsticks-box is considered one unit, or constituent, so looking at the combination hashi + hako, we can see the hako, as the second unit in the compound, becomes voiced (recall that the “voiced” version of /h/ is /b/ for historical reasons). Now the next constituent is nuri + hashibako. This is where Lyman's Law comes into play, as now the second unit of the compound contains a voiced obstruent, so rendaku cannot apply.

In sentence b, we want lacquered-box to act as a constituent, which in Japanese, is nuri + hashi. In this case as well, rendaku is applied to the second unit of the compound, making hashi become bashi. Now, looking at nuribashi + hako, there is nothing to stop rendaku from applying to the second unit of the compound, so hako becomes voiced as well (Tsujimura, 55).

Another constraint had to be considered to account for any compounds that follow this previously stated pattern in ambiguous noun phrases, yet cannot be confined by Lyman's Law. One example would be nuri + kasa + ire, lacquered + umbrella + case, which can become nurigasaire or nurikasaire due its ambiguity, even though Lyman's Law should not stop rendaku from happening in the latter interpretation as kasaire contains no voiced obstruents (Tsujimura, 56). This final constraint is called The Right Branch Condition, and proposes that “rendaku applies only when a potential rendaku segment is in a right branch constituent” (Otsu 1980: 219). This not only explains the nurikasaire exception, but it explains how one could get both nurihashibako and nuribashibako from the example above. In tree form, that would look like this:

10. Right-Branch Condition (Tsujimura, 57)
    

5. Conclusion:

Although Japanese may be difficult for learners, as we can see through the different methods of compounding, there is a systematicity behind the formation of such words. Because of this, Japanese compounds are quite productive, which is quite convenient for learners such as myself, for if I am not sure of the correct way to say a word, I can explain what I mean with a made up compound, and odds are, I will be understood.

Bibliography

Inoue, Kyoko. "Japanese: A Story of Language and People." Languages and Their Speakers. Ed. Timothy Shopen. Cambridge, MA: Winthrop, 1979. 241-300. Print.

Martin, Samuel E. "A Reference Grammar of Japanese." Journal of Linguistics (1987)

"Most Widely Spoken Languages." Ignatius.edu. N.p., 26 May 2012. Web. 14 Apr. 2013. <http://www2.ignatius.edu/FACULTY/TURNER/languages.htm>.

Otsu Y. “Some Aspects of Rendaku in Japanese and related problems.” (1980)

Tsujimura, Natsuko. An Introduction to Japanese Linguistics. 2nd ed. Cambridge, Mass,: Blackwell, 2007. Print.

Another スピーチ!

Hellooooo! I have a short video (even though it took a long time to make) video for you guys! Japanese with English subtitles.
At least once per semester, we always have a big presentation, and this time we had to do a research project, using data and stuff (I'll show a power point when I actually present). Anywhoodles, please enjoy this video, whether you chose to giggle at my gaijin-pronunciation of Japanese or chose to believe I sound really smart if my pronunciation doesn't make a difference.
EDIT: hahaha 私はもうこのビデオを見て、色々な間違えが見つけられます。しがつの代わりに、よんがつと言ったこととか　XD　そのうえ、英語で５月、６月を書きました。私はばかですね :P 私の日本語の能力が減ることの証明ですね。

And if you have any questions, please ask!
One thing, is that a few of my Japanese friends asked me what I mean by not learning anything in English class...you can ask any American, and they will tell you that in our schools, English class consists of reading literature and writing essays, but our foundation of English grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and general understanding of why we say what we do is really really awful. In elementary school and middle school we spend so much time preparing for standardized tests, they don't teach us the most fundamental aspects, what is supposed to be 基本.
Also, if you do not know, the SAT and the ACT are tests you take during high school to get into college, the better your score, the better college you can enter.
And at the part in the video where I speak English, I realize I used a lot of idiomatic expressions...to wing something, like a project, speech, etc, means to make it up as you are writing, no planing before. :P
For now, that's all I can really think of, but like I said, 質問があったら、絶対に聞いてください, I'm happy to answer any questions. 
Very soon I shall have another post! (Whether or not you find it interesting, that's an entirely different story XD)

Location: On my bed in my dorm
Mood: Tired...too much work to do! （´□｀川）
Listening to: Sunshine - Monkey Majik... you know you liked that song XD
Japanese for the day: Listen to the video again and listen for some of these vocab words!
無意味　むいみ muimi - pointless, meaningless
実は　じつは jitsu wa - actually, in reality
意外　いがい igai - unexpected, surprising
有名　ゆうめい yuumei - famous, well-known. cf. meisho - place of interest, meibutsu - things of interest eg. Shiga-ken no meisho wa nan desu ka? Meisho wa Biwako desu. - What is Shiga prefecture's place of interest? As for places of interest, it is Lake Biwa.

A new post!?! Japanese 401 Speech

Hiiii. Yeah, it's me. I've been neglecting this blog. You may have noticed, I still haven't written about the last several (very eventful) days in Japan. But I will! I will write about them. The thing is, as a junior, this is the time when I start taking all my tough major classes- I only have one class that isn't in the 400 level! So the little free time I have, I usually spend it on facebook, relaxing and being lazy. But I figured it was time to post something here, so I'll post my speech from my Japanese 401 class.
We had the choice of two topics, either talking about a controversial societal issue that is prevalent in America and possible solutions, or talking about something that is popular in America but not so much in Japan, and explain why. I did have a controversial topic in mind, but the character limit was 600 characters so that our speech wouldn't go too long. People who had started writing before me were having a tough time writing a good, detailed speech with such a tight limit, so I changed my mind at the last second and I ended up writing about cider mills. In Michigan, we have tons of these and I've always just taken them for granted, but earlier this fall some friends and I went to a cider mill. One friend who was from Ohio (our neighboring state to the south), we completely surprised by the cider mill. She said she had never even heard of one in Ohio (I'm sure there are some though, maybe just not as many as here). So I looked into it a bit, and I found out cider mills exist only in a bit over a dozen states here or so. Apple cider isn't solely an American thing, in Europe, historically cider has been popular, but cider mills as tourist destinations have sorta become an iconic thing in America.
I do have a video of the speech for you guys to see. Of course there are some mistakes, but I take pride in knowing I was the only one not to use note cards. I'm sure everyone else memorized theirs, but I think they fell into that trap that if you bring notes up with you, you end up constantly looking at them and reading from them. I knew that would happen to me too, so I just...didn't make any XD. Good thing my topic was pretty easy. There were people who talked about mock trials, technology dependency, the American school system, and a lot of other elaborate things. Even though mine was simple, I'm proud of it because I think I did a good job presenting it, comparatively, and it was easy for everyone to understand, and only 9 new vocab words. Also, I hate public speaking. A lot. Especially in Japanese. Which is why I have about 1,000 heart attacks every time I have an oral exam. In fact, I don't actually remember giving the speech here, that's how terrified I was, I just blocked it from my memory. It was even worse because you could see yourself on a giant tv in the back on the room. **shudder** so scary. Ok, but anyway, I'll post the video. I'm not going to sub it, but I will write a translation underneath so if you're curious as to what I said. I hope you enjoy this! Hopefully I can actually return to writing this blog regularly in the future ^_^

Apple Cider and Cider Mills
Autumn in the season for the most delicious food. Since it is the apple harvest time, apple cider is very popular in fall. The drink apple cider is not the same as the Japanese soda called "cider". Apple cider is unprocessed apple juice, but it does not taste the same as apple juice. Since cider is more natural, it spoils easily, and can only really be drinken in the fall. Cider is made in cider mills. In Michigan, there are over a hundred, several of which are rather famous. For example, in my home town, Rochester Hills, Yates Cider Mill has appeared on the Food Network channel and other "Best of" lists. Because of this, it's become more famous, and now in the parking lot you will see many licence plates from different states the visitors are coming from.
At cider mills, not only do you drink cider, but often cider mills will have their own attractions. For example, you can buy pumpkins, go apple picking, ride horse drawn wagons, have fun in corn mazes, and moreover there could be a petting zoo.
Every fall, I go to the cider mill at least once. There, I always buy fresh cider and donuts, and then dip the donuts in cider and eat them. Apple cider is my favorite drink, so that combination is very delicious. Historically, cider has been America's most important drink. A long time ago, instead of water, people would drink cider. Even today, apple cider is loved throughout the country. If you go to a cider mill too and drink America's beloved cider, I am certain you will come to love cider too.

notes: For those of you who don't know, cider in Japan (and Korea), is like what we call sprite...actually, the flavor is more like 7up. They do have other flavors too, but essentially it's just a type of soda. I'm not quite sure where this comes from, because historically, since the middle ages, cider has always referred to fermented fruit juice, most commonly apples. Also, I don't know why I didn't say this in my speech, but maybe people are confused as to why cider was the drink of choice and not water. Actually, in the colonial days, the water was not safe for drinking. Cider is really easy and inexpensive to produce, so that was usually what people would be drinking. If there are any other questions, feel free to ask.

Mary

Location: Dorm room
Mood: Procrastinating. Avoiding studying for finals XD
Listening to: Salvation for a Proud Nation - Immediate Music
Japanese for the day: 一番好きなのは＿＿＿です。ichiban sukina no wa ______ desu. My favorite one is _____. --> so if someone asks you your favorite food, drink, brand, choice for something, etc, just fill in the blank.

Taga (多賀町) and the Mansai Matsuri

Even though I've written about the graduation, the adventure is not over yet! I plan on continuing this blog for a while, so don't give up on me now, folks! XD

Since our host parents couldn't have us spend the night that night, Alisa had asked her host family if it was alright if Alex and I spent the night at her homestay in Taga, a small town not too far away from Hikone. Alisa and our friend Scott went to go grocery shopping and planned to meet us at the station, and by the time the group of us who was going was ready, we were kinda all thinking screw it to walking to the station with all our bags, so Alex, Ivan, Lu, and I got a taxi together. At the station, we went to a different platform that I had never seen before that seemed old and creepy and seldom used XD. There was nothing automated there, and I had to figure out on the map how I would get to Taga and then give my money to the attendant behind the gate. It was the weirdest thing, waiting there, and eventually getting on the old looking train with lace and ugly Victorian seat coverings. I was at the same station, but after being surrounded by modernity for so long, this seemed so foreign. Even the people there seemed un-mondern, housewives with kerchiefs, salary men in suits... Anyway, after transferring trains and a bit of wandering being confused, we arrived in Taga, and I was greeted by this:

but more interestingly, this:

Yes, that song was playing. All day long. But actually it wasn't that annoying- probably if you lived right next to those speakers it would be, but Alisa's house was on a side road, so you couldn't hear it that well from over there, so when we were walking along the main street it was fun to dance to it XD. Maybe you can hear me say it in the video, but the music and the lanterns there were all for the festival that was to take place that night, the Mansai Matsuri. Now, I might be wrong about my information. I can't find anything on the internet about this festival, and so I only know what Alisa told me because of what her host parents told her, so if something is wrong, please correct me!

Anyway, since Ivan had visited Alisa's house before, he luckily remembered the way to her house. Along the way, some old, very difficult to understand Japanese people wanted to talk to me and Alex since they figured we must be friends with the American girl in the town. They didn't really notice Ivan or Lu since they are both Asian :P. We got to Alisa's house where Alisa's host parents and their friends were socializing while Alisa's 3 and 5 year old host siblings ran around. Essentially we were there as babysitters, since we seemed to be their new play things, which I got the notion was what Alisa usually had to do when she was there. Lu started cooking, and since I'm next to useless in a kitchen (as you may have been able to tell by the pictures of the meals I make myself, aka cup ramen), I played with Haru-chan and Ko-chan, the kids. Shortly after that, Alisa and Scott arrived. Alisa helped with the cooking while the 6 foot 5 Scott became the new jungle gym. Poor Scott. He is too nice to say no, so the kids literally were climbing all over him and making him lift and throw and spin them.

comically tall Scott with Haru-chan

         

        the cooking masters

       

making shaved ice

For dinner Lu made Cola fried chicken wings and Mapodofu, which is a really really really spicy tofu dish. It's the only way I can stand tofu, but it's too spicy for me :P. Alisa also made tacos and we had chips and salsa too. By the time we finished eating it was beginning to get dark, so all of us headed out towards the big shrine. I took several videos in which you can see what is happening and I explain things. Although we know from experience that the sound quality of these is awful, so I'll explain a bit more after.

Oh goodness, those videos took a long time to load. So anyway, I was told the lanterns are supposed to represent dead ancestors, and that is why the bon odori is preformed as the people walk to the shrine, in honor of the dead. The Bon Odori can vary from place to place, as can the song it's played to, but ultimately it is very similar to what you see and hear in the videos. The reason the groups are all dressed differently is because they represent different companies in the area. After watching the procession, we joined the sardine tin tight crowd in praying at the shrine, and enjoyed some music and entertainment and had fun doing shopping and whatnot. There was one thing though...
At one point, the gang of kids wanted to go to the main road to look at the food there, so Alex and I were going along, but we asked them to wait a second because Haru-chan wanted some shaved ice. In the short time it took us to get it, they were gone without giving us indication as to where they went. We walked Haru-chan back to her parents, but then Ko-chan wanted some shaved ice too. We took him down to get the treat, and when we got back to where his parents and their friends were....no one. Alex and I were doing our best not to panic, but as we wandered around the huge shrine grounds, the people were becoming fewer and fewer. Ko-chan didn't seem worried as all, he just went around contently eating his shaved ice, but Alex and I were not pleased. Apparently Alisa's family thought it was fine that as long as their five year old went with us somewhere, they were no longer in charge of him, and we can totally FIND OUR WAY BACK HOME. Because that's where they had gone, back home. We know this because eventually we made our way out of the maze that was the shrine and found the rest of the gang buying things on the street. We idoled around, waiting to see if Alisa's host parents would come out, and when they didn't, we went back. What if we hadn't even found Alisa? I had already asked them where she had gone to, so they knew we didn't know where she was...grr, whatever, I just hate being put into that kind of a situation, especially since they were just taking advantage of us as babysitters. But it's in the past, so it's not a big deal. Anyway, here are more pictures.

When we got home I was rather exhausted from several very busy days, that, and being a human jungle gym, but the kids just wouldn't go to bed! By 10:30, I was like "Ok, Mary needs to get to sleep now" XD. Alex, Alisa, and I settled down for our last sleepover, before heading out early in the morning for our penultimate destination.
 I'm going to add this part now afterwards, because Ivan said that I sound ungrateful since I talked mostly about just the negative story and only skimmed the good things. To clear up,  Taga was actually a lot of fun, and although I didn't write about everything we did at the house, it was really cool, like a mini party, and it was a great way to cheer up after the sadness of leaving our host families and friends we made at JCMU. The kids really adored us, and they were super cute- really tiring though. I know I couldn't play with them all day everyday like that, and I could see why Alisa already looked tired after just a short time since she went through that everyday XD. I think Alisa was quite lucky to have such a host family, since I know people who didn't have it nearly so good. It was actually really sad to leave them the next day, especially because when we missed the train, they drove the three of us to Hikone from Taga. Alisa tried to be cool about it, but we could see she was sad to leave them, and even her host dad was about to cry when they hugged goodbye. I was so thankful we were allowed to stay there, like I wrote in my previous post, and I'm sorry I didn't mention it more throughout this one. I'll try to be clearer next time, and speaking of next time, this story is to be continued... 

Mary

Location: mah beeed
Mood: hungry. huuuungryyyyy!
Listening to: Ryouhou for you - Ulfuls
Japanese for the day: だめ！dame! - NO!/ No good!/Don't do that please! >_< (especially useful when chastising obnoxious children **ahem ahem**)

Graduation

Alex and I then spent literally an entire day packing. It was such a problem, trying to get all of our newly acquired possessions into our suitcases. Even though our flight wasn't for another five days, we needed to send our larger suitcase to the airport, since there was no way we could carry those things around with us, and also because we had to leave our homestay early. Okaasan and Otousan were leaving for Tokyo very early in the morning after our graduation in order to babysit their other two granddaughters, which meant that we had one more night we needed to find a place to stay. When we found that out earlier the week before, we were a bit worried, but luckily our friend Alisa said we could spend the night with her at her host family's house, so we were so relieved and grateful for that. However, that still left the rest of the trip. Mizuho actually went out of town and Yuki had had a surgery and didn't feel up to keeping us occupied, so that meant returning to Tokyo early was not an option. We had actually wanted to go back to Osaka and hang out there a while, and since Miki, Saki, and Mayumi had all seemed eager to hang out again, even saying we could stay at their place, we thought that would be a great option. We had sent them all texts about our situation, but no one responded. We started sending out texts to all of our friends in Japan. No one was answering us. Mind you, this isn't facebook where you can be like, "oh, he just doesn't go online often", no, we are TEXTING them, and they have our number, they know who we are. We believed it was because they either couldn't or didn't want to take us, but didn't want to have to tell us no. Japanese people don't like having to tell people no, which for Westerners can be very frustrating, since we take things at face value and to us it's the speakers' job to convey the message, not the listeners' job to read through the given answers to interpret what you want. When dealing with Westerners, it's best to just say what you mean, even if that's not what you normally do. Of course you can be polite about it, but don't say things just to make them happy. Especially if they ask you "do you understand" and you say yes even when you don't. I have had SO much trouble with that over the years with exchange students from Asian countries. I like to help, and I understand how frustrating it is to not understand what's going on. Yeah, sorry, I had to rant a little about that for like two seconds, but I'm done, I promise. 
Anyway, a week later, Mayumi texted us asking if we meant to stay at a hotel or at her house, which was fairly obvious since Alex wrote "can we stay with you at your house" in the original text, so it seemed like a delay tactic. Alex responded, but Mayumi never answered until the day before we were leaving, which by then we already had other accommodations. We went to Okaasan and asked if we could just go with them to Tokyo, but they weren't staying at their son's apartment, but rather at a nearby hotel, so that would be impossible for us. Okaasan suggested though, that we stay in Moriyama with her other son's family, since Tomoko-san is a teacher and she will be there during the day since it was summer vacation. We arranged to stay with the other Mabuchi family and we booked seats on a night bus to Tokyo and then a hotel in Tokyo at the airport since our flight left at 6:50 am on the 8th. It was like a huge weight was lifted off our chests, and I think we both felt so bad for putting everyone in such an awkward place, but there wasn't really another option, and we were just so glad something worked out.
Once we finally packed everything up, Okaasan and Otousan took us out to dinner to a restaurant that served Chinese dishes. The restaurant was really casual, but the food was really good, and no one really talked much since we didn't have anything to say really, since we'd just been home packing all day. I thought about how it was our last meal together, and I was really saddened by that. But it was really nice.

お母さんとお父さんと最後の食事

The next day we got all dolled up for our graduation and we started to get in the car. Okaasan had us put our bags in the front seat, so I asked where would Otousan sit. She said he wasn't coming, and it was then that it hit me that I was leaving them. I ran out of the car and Alex and I gave Otousan our card and said goodbye to him. He watched us leave, and I was already crying. At school, we all had a run through of what we would do for the ceremony, and I had time to take a few pictures with friends before the host families came in to watch us graduate. We had a speech from our director, who I was not very fond of, and it amused me that he was worse at giving speeches in Japanese than the students were, so haha. Then a representative or two from each level would come up and give a speech. My friends from level one were adorable, and Helen from level two and the guy from level four were very good, but Alex's speech for our level was really something special.

After we had really cute Japanese desserts and drinks and talked and took pictures until we could get our grades. Okaasan tried to leave when we were going to Matsui sensei's office, but I made her promise to stay.

Me, Jeff, and Alex

Level 1 kids' speech

Level 2 speech

Alex, giving level 3's speech

Level 4 speech

The Environmental Science kids' speech

Matsui sensei

Me and Melville sensei

Our fancy desserts :D

三年生！

I was not at all happy with my grade. I swear my teacher was biased. I think she knows I think that too, which makes her even more biased. But my speech was really really good and I only made one mistake total and she gave me a B +. It's not like that's bad, but my speech was really good, and really interesting comparatively. So I ended up with a 3.0, and I was already sad and what not, so this didn't put me in a better mood. And then Okaasan had to go. She tried to just shrug it off like it wasn't a big deal and leave, but Alex and I ran after her and hugged her as we cried, and before long she was crying along with us even though she was telling us not to. Alex asked her to please remember us and she said she could never ever forget us. She left, and soon afterwards Alex and I had to leave too, so we grabbed our duffle bags, said our last goodbyes to our friends, and headed off to Taga with Ivan and Lu.

Mary

Location: My bed in my dorm, where I have been literally all day while writing this.

Mood: sad, because now I'm thinking about saying goodbye to Okaasan (´Д｀。)

Listening to: Never Forget - Gothic Storm

Japanese for the day:　全然分かりません。zenzen wakarimasen. - I don't understand at all.