Blending In, Practical Exercise, Flip the Switch

1. My watch is broken. While not in and of itself a beautiful thing, it has transformed my keitai (cell phone) into my primary on-the-move timepiece… and another piece of cultural camouflage falls into place.

2. The 20 minute bike ride to my Japanese lesson that gets my heart pumping while serving a practical purpose. It reminds me of other unavoidable, yet strangely enjoyable cardiovascular workouts, such as racing from one end of a very large college campus to the other in 10 short minutes… multiple times in a day.

3. Spending an entire English Conversation hour talking about Harry Potter. I’m always pleasantly surprised when a junior-high student is eager to engage in active communication instead of stoically staring down wishing the ground would rise up and end their misery. Sometimes all it takes is a topic he or she finds interesting.