I have made my decision. Guess who's going to Manchester? I have yet to hear from Cambridge and I'm convinced that Imperial College has lost my application but no matter. Manchester has offered me the most in terms of moral support and of course, money. If I decide to continue my education beyond a masters and pursue a PhD, they have offered to pay nearly all of my tuition fees (which translates to about $60,000 over the course of three years!). I don't know if I'm ready to take that road quite yet, but as Jeff said, a PhD is like a black belt in science. Am I tough enough? We'll see. Although, I did only make it to red belt in tae kwon do.
On a completely unrelated note, it's allergy season here in Japan. I usually don't suffer from hay fever or seasonal allergies or whatever, but here is another thing in this country that's working against me. It's apparently cedar tree pollen that causing my immune system to go completely haywire. This has forced me to carry pocket tissues wherever I go, because I never know when I'll suffer a sudden attack of unstoppable sneezing. Which brings me to another curious observation I have made about Japanese people:
A lot of Japanese women don't like people to know that they perform natural bodily functions like the other 6 billion human beings that walk this Earth.
The most recent example of this is nose-blowing in public. I first noticed a few weeks ago (when the cedar trees first began their rampant dry-sex tree-mating) when I was blowing my nose in the teachers' room. Everyone else was just sniffling constantly and I didn't really think much of it, since it's pretty well known that the Japanese aren't prone to blowing their noses in public unless absolutely necessary. However, I did start to notice that a lot of the female teachers--particularly the younger ones--would go to the bathroom JUST to blow their noses. Male teachers do it in full view of their peers when the need arises, but women retreat into the bathroom as if they were performing some dirty deed. Weird. I still blow my nose in public.
My fellow female ALT's can vouch for me on my next observation. Nearly every public women's bathroom stall is equipped with motion sensor sound boxes that play the sound of rushing water when you enter. Apparently, this sound is supposed to drown out the sound of a person peeing, so that other people in the bathroom CAN'T HEAR YOU PEE. If there isn't a little sound box, women will flush the toilet BEFORE doing the deed so that the sound of the flushing water will act as a surrogate sound box. I have never been so self-conscious of using the toilet in public places as I have become in Japan.
The thing that gets to me is that everyone goes to the bathroom; everyone and everything living and breathing must excrete wastes. It happens. Nature calls and when we have to use a public toilet, everyone knows why. There is no need to cover the sound of your peeing because you know what? Despite what method you may or may not use to try and mask the fact that you are indeed performing a natural function, I, along with everyone else in the bathroom, KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING IN THERE. It means you're human.
Yes. Girls eat, drink, breathe, fart, and use the toilet. Get over it. Oh, and we also need to blow our noses, believe it or not.
I'm curious, are men's bathroom stalls also equipped with these magical sound boxes? I'm seriously really curious.
Still Reading: The Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood
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