The greatest mistake I ever made was falling in love with something I could never have.
Seven years ago I visited Japan on a whim and a $450 plane ticket, and promptly I fell in love. With such wonderfully enticing foods, locales, language, and seemingly everything else, how could I not want to be there? So it was that less than three years later I set out on the JET program to live and work in the place I loved. I got a taste of the life I wanted to live.
After three years on JET my time was up, but I didn't feel like my "Japan life" was over. I applied for jobs in Japan and in the nick of time managed to land one. I would be living in Tokyo in an amazing house, and living the dream of working a "real" job. What could be better?!
In the words of Chris Martin, sometimes the things that you love just don't love you back.
After a particularly long period of waiting, my work visa application was denied, and I was ejected unceremoniously back into the legions of the unemployed, this time looking in a city and even a country that I didn't really want to be in.
Fast forward two years later, and I'm still in that city with another rejection under my belt. It's becoming abundantly clear that Japan just doesn't want me back.
It's hard watching your dreams crumble in front of you. On days like today, I really think that getting that $450 ticket was the biggest mistake I've yet made. Had I never made it over to Japan, maybe today I wouldn't be stuck in this seemingly-endless cycle of disappointment.
In Tokyo, the number of annual train rides per person is 742.
Tokyo's population is 35 million. I'm not sure if each of those people is taking 742 rides per year, but it's nonetheless impressive, considering New York's population is 19 million.
Paris: 216
London: 129
New York: 94
Boston: ha ha what?
Other facts:
The average delay for the shinkansen (bullet train) for the entire year of 2007 was 30 seconds. Let's see the airlines duplicate that!
The shinkansen started running in 1964. "Bullet" train in the US? 2000. 36 years later.
France's TGV system is almost as extensive as that of the shinkansen, spanning 1180 route-miles. Vive la France!
Not long ago I was reading a monthly publication released by some sort of train-system watchdog in Japan. Being that I am in love with the idea of quick and non-shitty rail transit, it was pretty interesting to me, despite being dry.
One particular section that caught my eye was a timeline of events regarding the production of shinkansen (bullet) trains in Japan. On this timeline, I read the following: in 1972, all new Series 1 (I think it was 1, but it doesn't really matter) trains were outfitted with scrolling displays on the outside. These displays are the LCD kind of thing that show basic information like route number, destination, name, etc.
What struck me is that a great number of the trains on the MBTA subway system in Boston still have paper/static displays on their side...and half of the time they show the wrong destination. So to recap: Japanese trains got digital displays in 1972. Almost 40 years later, the MBTA has yet to catch up.
In other news, I noticed in the news paper this morning that the MBCR (the commuter rail division of the MBTA) has given up on its bid to buy new trains from the Toronto transit system. Of note is the fact that those trains are 20 years old. So wait, if those 20-year-old trains are considered "new," how the hell old are the old trains?!
With our public transit system in such a state, it's a wonder anyone uses it at all. Way to go!
A few interesting tidbits about the sushi that everyone loves to eat because they think they're cultured:
While I was in Japan, I was told in what I think was a half-joking manner that the best people to make sushi are old men. They have dry and cold hands, which enables them to pat the rice together in the perfect way, and also preserves the fish in its freshest state. Thinking back on it, I do recall that most sushi makers at "regular" (read: not 回転寿司 kaitenzushi, the conveyor belt kind) sushi places were gentlemen on the elderly side.
Just the other day I heard from a coworker that women are a poor choice for sushi makers; they have warm, moist hands, which apparently can cause problems patting the rice and also can spoil the fish. Of course, this is why you don't see many, if any, female sushi makers. I'm not sure how much I believe that a pair of warm hands can "ruin" the raw fish in the very short time it takes to make a single piece of nigiri sushi, but it is true that the female headcount of sushi makers in Japan is very low.
Food for thought.
Natto is a Japanese concoction made up of fermented soybeans. It's supposed to taste good on white rice and with mustard. As an American and somewhat sane person, I don't have the same appreciation for Natto that many Japanese do. Maybe it's the fact that it looks like rabbit poo, smells like weeks-old sweaty socks, and has the consistency of mucous. To me it tastes like funky coffee, which doesn't necessarily mean I dislike Natto. I just don't like it.
Imagine my surprise and horror to discover the work refrigerator absolutely packed with the stuff. The first time I discovered it, I was so bewildered that I had to retreat to the safety of my office to take stock of this new development. Over the period of a week or so the Natto vanished, with only a hint of grungy socks lingering as evidence that it had ever been there.
Apparently a local New England maker allows our office to order it in quantity; all of the Japanese workers here swear that it's actually better than Japanese-made Natto. Such a statement, of course, is a huge deal, as anyone worth his salt in Japan knows that anything Japanese is far superior to its equivalent from other countries.
This time around (it happens with a certain regularity) I got in on the action and ordered a couple tubs myself. I just can't wait to have that slimy stuff hanging from my chin.
In the States, I've gone from being "average" to definitely on the small side, according to clothing retailers. It's a pain in the ass.
In Japan, being "American small" was a relative advantage. I was somehow considered a size large there (somewhat of an ego boost), and most things fit me very well and looked damn good. Hot damn. This was true for pretty much everything except hats.
According to Japanese people, they have huge faces. What this really means is that they have huge heads. Now before you get riled thinking I'm saying something racially unkind, ask a Japanese person about it. Besides, I have pictures to prove it. Anyway, in Japan my head is like the head of a pin. It's miniscule.* It made for a painful time when shopping amongst the many fashionable choices of headgear.
I'd thought I would have escaped the phenomenon when returning to the States. Sadly, it's simply not true; I still have a tiny head. Normal men's hats engulf my head like pacman eating one of those little dots, and of course I can't wear women's hats, which tend to the pink and pastel side of things. I've resorted to children's hats, which are universally crappy in build quality and also hard to find in colors other than "very bright" and "related to cartoons and movie merchandising."
It's a tough life.
*Ironically enough, in Japan the statement "you have such a small face/head" is perceived as a compliment, much as "you have such a big nose" is. They're a part of the ideal beauty as represented by white people. As you can imagine, me with my child-sized head and king-sized nose, I was a frickin' god. Or at least, so the story should have been.
Last week I finally caved to the pressure and got myself a cell phone. Let me tell you, it was a difficult decision. I had been holding out for some miraculous and entirely unexpected leap in American technology that would suddenly put us on par with the rest of the world in handset technology, but sadly my dreams went unanswered.
I bought a phone that instead is no better than the one I bought four years ago in Japan.
As far as phones go, it's all right. It makes calls, it receives calls, it gives a company an excuse to totally rip me off. I have to say that after a few days of playing with it, it's nice enough, but only last night did I discover its greatest flaw: It has no strap loop.
A "strap" is a little phone accessory that is wildly popular in Japan. For the first couple of years in Japan I'd held out on buying one because I thought they were pointless and distracting. Then I realized that there was an incredible variety of cool stuff specifically made for dangling from a phone. Fast forward to January 2008 when I last spent time in Japan, and you'd see me buying up every cool one I could find in anticipation of the long dry period ahead in which I'd be forced to live in the States.
Fast forward again, and you'll find me discovering that the phone I'd just bought doesn't have a space (in the form of a little hole/loop in the shell of the phone) for a strap to fit. I was, as you can imagine, devastated. So devastated, in fact, that I have considered exchanging the phone for another model.
It sounds idiotic I know, but sometimes it's the small things that keep you afloat. I really wanted to use those things!
It's a hot week. In rural western Massachusetts, that means we get up to eighty-five degrees with a humidity of seventy percent or more. The air feels heavy when you walk outside, and it's a recipe for a good deal of sweat. Everyone complains bitterly about how "oppressive" and hot it is.
But I have a not-so-secret weapon.
I have been "lucky" enough to have lived through much, much worse. You see Gyoda, where I lived in Japan for three years, borders Kumagaya, which is widely known as the hottest city in Japan. By virtue of the fact that the two towns are right next to each other, this also makes Gyoda the hottest town in Japan. Don't believe me? Look it up, though you'll probably have to do it in Japanese.
But anyway, it is hot there. While I was there it regularly reached ninety-five during the day, usually with ninety percent humidity. The summer I left, it actually reached one hundred and seven (point six!) degrees, again with that same lovely humidity. Phoenix ain't got nuthin'.
"Oppressive" doesn't begin to describe the air in Gyoda. Walk outside, and you're hit smack in the face with a brick wall of heat and humidity. You haven't sweat until you've spent a summer there, I can tell you. Literally the moment you walk out of the sweetly air-conditioned train, your shirt is soaked. Add to that the fact that you're using a bike to get anywhere, along with the fact that your apartment's air conditioner is broken (and will be for three years), and it's a surefire way to get heatstroke. I'm pretty sure I had it every day there.
So now when I sit in the relatively balmy New England heat, I just remember that I've been through worse. This is nothing!
But somehow when I tell that to people, they don't quite appreciate it...
Apparently I have a thing for frogs. I've posted about them here and also here.
I made a recording of frog noises back during rainy season in Gyoda, but never got around to posting it. It's a noise that I find strangely compelling. Perhaps, along with the sound of squealing cicadas and the smell of damp tatami, it serves as a reminder of Japanese days past.
That recording you may find here: Gyoda Frogs
Contrast it with a recording I just made a few days ago in Massachusetts. These frogs are much bigger than their rice field compatriots, making them much easier to see. Don't let recording levels fool you; they actually manage to be quieter than the frogs in Japan.
Enjoy the natural ambiance here: Massachusetts Frogs Recording
Now if only I can get close enough for an adequate recording of the rather-elusive "peeper frogs."
UPDATE: I got a recording of the peepers! Oh joy, right?
Check them out: Massachusetts Peepers Recording
If you're reading this without reading Part One, I seriously suggest you go read it now. You my find yourself a little lost without it.
Where did I leave off? Oh yes, am I gay, no, blah blah blah. Right.
The whole tone of the interview, along with the little giggles and reactions from everyone involved, gave it a distinctly abstract feeling. I couldn't imagine that this was a real interview, and maybe it was just some elaborate joke on the gaijin (foreigner). Where were the TV cameras? Thinking back, I can definitely see this kind of thing happening on some comedy/variety show in Japan. However, had it actually been a television show, at least I would've had a moment of fame! No such luck.
The president meandered through another "normal" section of the interview, his segues between questions like "Are you gay?" and "tell me about your design skills" executed with masterful straight-facedness. Then he came to what I still consider "the winner" of the interview.
He asked me (of course in Japanese): "Do you like to do 裸族 in your apartment?"
He'd used a word I'd never heard before. "Excuse me, do I do what?"
"すっぽんぽん."
Ah, this was a word with which I was familiar. Roughly translated, it means "butt naked." Wait. Do I go butt naked in my apartment?! Naturally, I was utterly shocked into answering completely honestly. "Well, uh...I...my town is the hottest town in Japan, so sometimes it does get awfully hot..." Everyone laughed. But what possibly could that sort of question have to do with my ability to properly do my job? You can imagine this wasn't the first time I had second thoughts about exactly what kind of job I might be doing.
The interview itself wrapped up not long afterwards. It was explained to me that in the line of work that they do, it is relatively common to be dealing with gay men and selfish women, as they have dealings with celebrity and artistic types. Go figure. It helped explain part of the interview, but certainly I was still left wondering why it mattered if I liked to get naked in my apartment.
The president brought the interview to a close and brought me around the rather small and very cluttered office. He announced me to the staff who were still working at 10PM (virtually everyone), including the fact that I was currently girlfriendless, looking actively, and love Japanese women. Never mind the fact that it wasn't necessarily true, everyone seemed to take it in stride. He then proceeded to introduce me to all of the single women in the office. First off was a woman who'd studied in the States and therefore knew a bit of English. He told her to introduce herself to me in English. I've changed the name, but this is exactly how she introduced herself:
"Hello, my name is Mayuko. I lived in the States for a few years. I've divorced three times!"
Upon which I promptly replied, "Oh...nice to meet you! Your English is excellent." What else to say, really?
I met two other single women in much the same manner, minus the divorce and English. The last one had such a fake smile during the exchange, it was kind of painful and not a little uncomfortable. The president told us to exchange business cards, so we could "get to know each other" or something. But...I'm not even working at the company, and nor do we even like each other...so why would I want to do this? We obliged of course, no doubt both thinking similar thoughts: "yeah right." He was, after all, her boss and my potential boss.
I remember thinking as we walked back out into the oppressive humidity that there was no way I'd take the job.
Three weeks later, I took the job. Go figure!
I think enough time has passed since this experience to let the trauma settle a little bit. At the time I didn't quite feel this way, but I can now say with not a small amount of pride that I had a job interview that was probably far stranger than most people will ever experience.
Through the good graces of a coworker at my school, I had managed to secure an interview at a small advertising and marketing firm in the heart of cool: 表参道 (Omotesandou) in Tokyo. On a rainy and sweltering evening in June myself and my coworker decked ourselves out in full suits and took the train down to Tokyo.
Let me give you a short background on interviewing in Japan. There, if you are lucky enough to have a connection who gets you an interview, you actually go to the interview with that person. At the interview, your person (a sponsor, really) will give a spiel about you for a little while, and then the interview will turn over to you, where you will give a little prepared speech about yourself and why you want to work at the company. This explains why I, my contact, and his contact all ended up in a very small meeting room with uncomfortable plastic seats.
I came into the interview knowing it was going to be different. I had been told that we would be meeting with both the company president and vice president, something that doesn't happen often in Japan. Usually, you see, you meet with an underling. In any case, as we sat waiting, all three of us in our full suits, I'm sure we all felt a tad jealous of the VP who had just come in looking a little dumpy in his khaki slacks and a polo shirt. The real moment of truth, however, was when the president himself walked in. His white t-shirt had some outrageous print on it, and his jeans (jeans!!) were ripped quite liberally. His hair was spiked. Oh, this was definitely going to be a different sort of interview.
Things progressed smoothly enough. First my coworker's contact gave his little speech about me, then my coworker did the same. I couldn't help but think about how great this was. Here I was at an interview, and it had already lasted a half hour without me saying a word! One could only hope that it would only contin-
"So," the president said, turning his puffy sleep-deprived eyes to me, "do you by chance play rugby or practice boxing?"
Knowing that many companies in Japan sponsor rugby teams, I thought maybe he was asking about my interest in sports. I practice neither, so I volunteered what I do practice: "No, but I do practice Tae Kwon Do..."
"Ah!" He sat back with the look of a mystery solved. "So that's why your nose and teeth are crooked!"
Now, I'm pretty sure a comment like that would end an interview in the States, perhaps with the interviewee walking huffily from the room. I, however, was astounded into silence. My two sponsors laughed a little, so I figured maybe this was some sort of icebreaking strategy. I never thought that icebreaking by way of pointing out physical flaws was particularly effective, but there are innumerable differences between my opinions and Japanese society as a whole.
Believe it or not, the interview continued in much the same fashion. The president did most of the talking and asked me most of the questions, concentrating for short stretches on relevant topics such as my skills, my interests, my love of Japan, my love of the women...what?
Among other things, he asked me if I had a girlfriend (American interview no-no #1). I told him no, we had broken up not long ago. He expressed that after the interview he would introduce me to the single women in the office. He asked me if I liked Japanese women, and being that his manner and questions were so shockingly direct, I couldn't think of anything to do but to answer. It happened time and time again, and every time I was a deer in headlights, unable to do anything but answer honestly. I tell you, giving well-considered, strategic, perfect answers is entirely out of the question in this sort of situation.
After we got out of the way that I loved Japanese women and was desperate for a new girlfriend, (What? Even I wasn't aware of that...) we moved on to more mundane job-talk. Not for long, though, I assure you. There was a short pause before he switched tack again.
"Do you like selfish women?"
Again, being that I had hopelessly lost all ability to answer cunningly, I pondered for a moment my dating history. "Well, it would seem that I do..."
"Are you gay?"
"Um, no..." Didn't I just say I liked women?
"Do you like gays?"
"Well, I have a few gay friends, so yes."
Satisfied, he returned once again to talk of the mundane. A little breather, no doubt, before the next wave of shock and awe. Stay tuned for Part Two, in which we explore the nuances of discussing nudity, as well as the interview's aftermath!
One of my favorite things to laugh about in Japan was the legendary status of the Tanuki. They're a fun little critter that is often described as a raccoon, though it's an entirely different animal. I've only seen one in real life at a zoo, and I wouldn't really know how to describe it other than "smaller and pointier" than a raccoon.
Anyway, legend has it (according to two Japanese people I know, so obviously it must be true what I say) that Tanuki are notoriously crafty. Certainly, Japanese folk tales featuring Tanuki do tend to accentuate the naughty things they do. Western raccoons are fairly naughty in real life, so I can see why Tanuki might be translated the way they are.
But I digress. The real reason I'm posting is to talk about Tanuki balls. I remember the first time I noticed them. I was standing outside a restaurant and noticed a statue of this weird owl/bear looking creature. I asked what it was, and I was told it was a Tanuki. I also asked why he had enormous testicles. Accordingly, I was told that his balls represented his enormous luck, and any restaurant that has a Tanuki statue was rewarded with good luck. So if you're ever in Japan, you'll see a lot of these guys around. You might even see some in the States.
Tanuki balls represent good luck with money (or so I've been told). It's interesting to note that very long hanging earlobes also represent good luck, I believe also with money. As such, you see a lot of Buddha/Hotei statues with very very long earlobes. I suppose we may further assume that hanging body parts in general provide good luck.
During the last few days of "Operation Bai Bai" in Japan I took the ridiculously-fast Nozomi Shinkansen (bullet train) out to Hiroshima for a day and a half. It was something I'd always wanted to do but had never gotten around to.
Hiroshima itself isn't much; all there really is to do is the Peace Park and other Atomic-bomb related stuff. Miyajima, with included Itsukushima Jima and Daisho-in temple was where it was at.
Click on the rugged picture of yours-truly for the gallery.
To make a very long story short, just last week I found out that due to circumstances that were very well beyond my control, I would not be able to live and work in Japan as had been my plan. I feel horrible. I haven't even come to terms with the reality that is essentially being forced to live somewhere I don't want to live (the States), but slowly it sinks in.
To combat the creeping depression that I can already feel when I think about it, I've come up with a way to perhaps deal with it, at least temporarily: Lists! This time, I'll explore what I will miss about Japan. Next time? What I won't.
I've done this before but this new list will assuredly be tinged with the experience of three years in Japan...and probably more nostalgic.
What I'll Miss
- The food, oh, the food. I've made the mistake of eating sushi only once since I've been back here in the States, and it was a disappointment to say the least. I will miss the awe-inspiring sushi, the orgasmic ramen, the delicious raw egg of sukiyaki. In the States it's very true that quantity wins out over quality in all but expensive hoity-toity restaurant. I don't want a portion the size of my head that tastes like slop. I want a manageable portion of great-tasting food.
- Transportation. One of the things I most resent about having to live in the States is having to buy a car. I can't think of a bigger waste of $10,000. I'd take Japan's ridiculously extensive rail system any day.
- Keitai means mobile phone in Japanese. It's also synonymous with "three years ahead." My most recent cursory search for a mobile phone and plan in the States was like stepping into ancient history. Pay $80 for a "data plan" on a last-generation network? No thanks.
- Excellent service in even the lowliest of hamburger joints is something I've gotten used to. It has been very hard for me to deal with the "I'm doing you a favor to serve you" attitude in the States. People act like it's so difficult to serve you at all, much less be professional about it. A few days ago I was in a changing room while the salespeople outside were yelling stories across the store to each other. One such story involved "picking her up by the vagina and the boobs..." I don't care how fake it is, just show your paying customer some respect!
- Cleanliness. I recently went to New York for a job interview. Afterwards, I needed to take a train (ugh) home, and didn't want to do it in my suit. So I tried to find a suitable bathroom in which to change to street clothes. I don't know how I'd forgotten the disgusting state of every public-accessible bathroom in the States. I thought back fondly on how ridiculously clean everything in Tokyo is, whilst I tried not to touch the pathogen-seething floor of the Amtrak bathroom.
That's it for now. Tune in soon for the follow-up piece, what I won't miss about Japan.
Last night I went to a local (ish) bar for an event my sister's gradschool department was having. It was the first time I've been in an American bar since coming home from Japan. It's your classic New England bar with pool tables, beer, and lots of white people.
Not long after arriving I realized I wanted to use the bathroom. So I went in search of it. When I got there I noticed two doors, one for women and one handicap bathroom. I figured the men's room must be somewhere close by but couldn't see it. So I stood there looking confused and waited for the bartendress to help me. It never happened, and I looked like an idiot, no doubt.
In Japan, it's not uncommon for bathrooms in a bar (Izakaya) to be in a confusing place. All you have to do is look like you're searching for something, and inevitably one of the very helpful staff will show you to the bathroom. It's a wonderful arrangement. Here, obviously that does not work.
Cue reverse culture shock.
So first off, the reason for my incredibly long absence from making any posts in the past (more than a) month has been my move back to the United States. I finished off my contract with JET (the program with which I spent three years teaching in Japan) in the end of July and headed home on August 3. As you can imagine I was very busy packing and tying up seemingly infinite loose ends, and one of my last priorities was posting.
So now I'm back, relaxing in the green hills of western Massachusetts, and thinking about the things I'd so much (and so little) anticipated about being back home.
Some observations of my first days back:
Everything is so green. Endless swathes of grass, trees ... you name it! I flew from Detroit to Hartford on a small jet and in looking out the window I remember thinking we were flying over a huge body of water. Turns out it was just endless trees. Awesome!
Vegetables at home are fresher and tastier. Don't even get me started on the fruits.
Sadly living up to my expectations, people here are enormous.
It's cold. Everyone keeps talking about how hot it is, and I suppose midday it gets to be pretty hot, but I haven't once felt like I was going to die of heat like I felt every waking minute back in Gyoda. I really think it's the oppressive unending humidity there. Here it gets hot for a day or two then tempers. There, it lingers for weeks.
Jet lag has hit harder than ever this time. I pass out at 9 every evening, only to wake up at 6 or 7 every morning. I feel 20 years older than I really am. I must break this cycle...
I have plans to go back to Japan in a few months, though they aren't decided yet. In the meantime, I hope to have a good long relaxation period before I go back to that frenetic land.
Yesterday on my way home I heard for the first time this year the call of a Cicada. This morning I can hear perhaps the same one chirping from somewhere in the trees near the school.
I love that sound. If there were two things I had to give as my strongest memories of my first months in Japan, one would be the call of the Cicadas. For me at least, that sound defines my Japanese experience.
I still remember every day in early August sweltering in my apartment, surrounded by the smell of tatami and the steady squeal of those creepy but lovable bugs. The sound brings me back.
Last night I was returning home on the train and talking to my friendly neighbor. I commented that even though it was a cool evening the train seemed awfully hot. It was pointed out to me that the car we sat in was in fact a "low cooling" train. Apparently there are designated cars on the trains in summer that use less air conditioning than the others. Three years here and I'd had absolutely no idea that something like that existed on JR trains. I realized that the tiny blue sign that I'd seen dozens of times on train doors was actually telling me that I'd gotten into one of these cars.
Indeed, the learning process truly never ceases.
Japan has its fair share of good bread. Many quality supermarkets have their own in-house bakery, which makes for some excellent fresh breads, snacks, and sweets. I especially enjoy getting a load of fresh-baked bread before a big pasta or stew dinner.
But store bought breads are lacking. More specifically, they lack heels! When it comes to pre-packaged bread, you'll be hard pressed to find a loaf of bread that actually has heels (the crusty ends of the bread, called "ears" here). The sliced bread has crust, so obviously the heels used to be there. They must cut it off at the factory. Why is that? I've been told Japanese people don't like bread crust. Certainly this could explain why most store bought sandwiches are completely crustless.
So with millions and millions of loaves of bread sold daily in Japan, where do all of those orphaned heels disappear to? Do they simply throw them out? Make other bread products? Feed them to the hungry? I'd certainly like to get to the bottom of this.
The other night I made a scrumptious helping of sauteed pork, salad, and egg all over white rice. I sat down to eat it, congratulating myself on my feat. When I dove in to my second helping, it occurred to me that without even thinking about it I'd cracked open a raw egg on the top.
Three years ago I'd have approached such an idea with trepidation if not downright horror. Now I'm apparently so used to it I can do it without even realizing it might seem distastefully strange to others from back home. It's amazing what a little time in another country will do for your sense of what is foreign.
I love this season in Japan. It's just before rainy season, so the sky hasn't started dumping on us yet, the weather isn't ridiculously hot yet, and the rice season has just begun. The rice season always starts by flooding the fields and planting little ricelings (that's what Ilike to call them). What this means is that on a cool night riding my bike past the fields I am sole witness to thousands and thousands of frogs chirping their minuscule lungs out trying to find a mate. The sound is somewhat akin to "peepers" back home, but they frogs are less afraid than their cousins back home and will keep chirping even if you're nearby. Sometimes it's a wonderful experience just to stand there next to a field and listen to their drone. I've never actually seen one of the little guys until last night. Bonus: two of them!
There has been a pair of Brazilians at the gym for some time now. Being that foreigners often tend to ignore each other unless somehow forced to interact, we haven't exchanged any more acknowledgment than a brief nod.
Being that The Dude has started to latch onto them, we now have a common enemy. It gives us excuse to converse.
I spoke to one of them last night, ostensibly in order to invite them to join the soccer team I'm trying to get together. Much to my surprise and dismay, we were barely able to communicate beyond "How long have you been here?"
You'd think that for two people who have been here using the same language for three years, we'd be able to get a little beyond that. Sadly we did not, and the conversation ended rather awkwardly.
To top it off, they don't play soccer! I thought all Brazilians play it in the womb!
This past weekend I participated in a soccer tournament that was organized I believe for language teachers in Japan. It featured sixteen teams, one of which was obviously ours.
Despite having never practiced together and most of the team being comprised of self-described "chain-smoking alcoholics," we managed to hold our own. Granted we lost every game we played, but (perhaps due to the brevity of the games) we managed to lose only by three points maximum per game. By our second game we realized that our single goal for the tournament should be to score a single goal. We managed to do that within the last thirty seconds of our fifth and last game. So with an overall goal ratio of one to twelve, we emerged triumphant.
My body has rarely hurt more in my life, but it was a fun and invigorating time. Strangely enough it has also ignited in me a small bit of interest in soccer, where before I detested the sport. I guess all it takes is a sound beating and fun teammates.
UPDATE: You can see photos of our journey here: http://s23.photobucket.com/albums/b365/osmocote/Nagano%20Soccer/
In Japan it's widely known that umbrella theft is the most common crime. Second to that is bicycle theft, followed by (obviously) less common and more serious crimes. It's a wonderful statement about the relative safety of this country.
However, it brings to one's life a whole new set of problems that may be completely unheard of back home. Parking a bicycle, for example, is an exercise in figuring out which of (at least) two locks to use. Umbrella theft being the crime most committed, it calls for a special set of personal strategies one must adhere to.
Until relatively recently I have been immune to this heinous crime, at least at my school. Since I park my bike in a certain place and every student in the school knows it's mine, in my infinite naivety I figured they would keep their paws off of my stuff. Sadly when it starts suddenly raining and a student is left to walk home without an umbrella, anything not bolted down and close by is fair game. I have lost two umbrellas in the past month to sudden rainstorms.
There are, as I said, things I have to keep in mind when it comes to maintaining ownership of my umbrellas. If it's raining in the morning when myself and all of the students are coming to school, I'm safe. No student leaves the home umbrella-free, so the odds of him being caught without one after school are low. It's those midday storms I have to worry about. It's those that send me scurrying down to my bike to retrieve my umbrella before someone else does. If I don't, naturally I'll end up the loser going home wet. On these days I actually find myself a little tense if I can't get down to the bike before classes have finished.
Regardless of such grueling strategizing, I still have to keep a backup at my desk just in case.
Our final day saw beautiful blue skies and a village from the past. We headed from Iriomote back to Ishigaki, the main point for all ferry trips down in the Yaeyama region. From there we hopped off, bought tickets, and hopped right back on the same ferry for the ten-minute ride to Taketomi. At its widest point Taketomi is only nine kilometers across, and it's also one of the most popular tourist destinations in the area. You can imagine it can get very very crowded, but thankfully we were able to avoid most crowds because of when we visited.
To my dismay Taketomi's swimming/snorkeling isn't stellar, though the place makes up for it with other things to look at. The beauty of the central town is the main attraction on the island, and for good reason. The place we stayed at was no exception to the rule that residences on the island should use the traditional red-tile roofs, and the couple that ran it were fabulous. We checked out the tiny island a bit and did a tiny bit of swimming, then came back for dinner. There we met some other guests, with whom we later watched the sunset and went looking for fireflies. We found none of the latter, but we did get serenaded by the owner while we drank copious amounts of the local liquor.
Our second day took us to the "brooding jungle isle to the west," Iriomote. Even though I couldn't help but mock my guidebook's description, it really does brood. While Ishigaki had been colored grey by the overcast sky, Iriomote was covered with threatening rain clouds. The first sight of it gives the distinct impression of going to Jurassic Park or the island in LOST.
Iriomote has an area roughly the same size as Ishigaki, meaning it's a bit less than 300 square kilometers. Though that means it's fairly big, it has a population of 2200 and has only one main road. I can't tell you how many times I thought to myself "is this really Japan?" while we were there. The jungle is so widespread and the settlements obviously not, it reminded me of the mountain forest preserve I stayed at in Costa Rica. For this I fell in love with Iriomote.
We stayed at the Japanese equivalent of a bed and breakfast, where we met the French Bulldog "Guts." He was adorable in an ugly way, and some problem with his nose caused him to snort like a pig while he breathed. It was like having a furry little pig around all the time. In the morning we took a kayak/hiking trip to the tallest waterfall in Okinawa, Pinaisaira. Unlike my companion and everyone else who was there, I was determined to swim at just about anywhere I could, so naturally I swam at the foot of the fall. Here we had our first encounter with a very weird creature, something that looks straight out of prehistoric times. It's a half-frog, half-fish thing, and skips across the water on little leg/fins. I swear it's a perfect illustration of the halfway point in evolution between water dwellers and land creatures.
Before we left the island on the next day we rented motor scooters, which was perhaps one of the coolest things I've ever done. I can't express to you the giddy idiotic grin that crossed my face the minute I gunned the (miniscule) engine. In the short time we had the scooters we made good use of them, hoofing it all the way to the northern ending point of the main road. Can you believe it? A "main road" that just stops at a dead end, cut off by mountain jungle.
Near there was where we swam out to a tiny deserted island and explored some natural sea-carved caves.
This past week I spent a few days down in the southernmost part of Japan, a few small islands that are part of Okinawa known as the Yaeyama Islands. I'll be separating my accounts of trip by island. So to start we first stopped at Ishigaki, which is the main island of the group merited by the fact that it actually has an airport and a smattering of roads.
As a matter of fact, for the majority of the trip we found ourselves traveling beneath lead sky; the rainy season has just begun in Okinawa, and though we saw very little rain, the dark sky made for some less-than-brilliant photographs.
Ishigaki is seeing a major population influx, mostly in the form of retirees. New construction was everywhere, though for a while we thought it was buildings going to disrepair. Since not only during a slow season but also during the week, the place seemed desterted; it was great! We rented a small car and set about exploring the island. We took pictures for a very enthusiastic couple, found hairy (yes, really hairy!) crabs at low tide, ate Okinawan Taco Rice, and got sunburned. This is unfortunately where an unwanted guest, a hair of some sort inside my camera lens, made its first appearance. You'll see it featured throughout, much to my dismay.
This past week a friend of mine visited from Hong Kong. He's been living there for roughly a year and has become thoroughly accustomed to life there. Though Japan and Hong Kong are obviously quite different there are some fundamental "Asian" similarities that made hosting him a particularly unique (until now at least) challenge.
For the most part it's rather easy to host visitors from back home, as few of them have been anywhere in Asia and are thus impressed by just about anything. Temples? "Can't get enough of 'em." Crazy food? "What is that?" The hustle and bustle of Tokyo? Dumbfounded.
This time, however, he's been all over Asia and has seen a million temples already. He's eaten indescribable things. He lives in Hong Kong, which makes even Shibuya look tame at times. His life experience for at least the past year has resulted in a person who is much more difficult to impress with the wonders of Japan. So I had to reach deeper into my repertoire of amusements to show him what Japan has to offer.
We played kickball.
Yesterday each class at school was carefully herded outside so that pictures could be taken for the yearbook.
What this means for the students is that they're required to dye their hair back to their natural black, and remove all makeup and piercings.
I was oblivious until I noticed the startlingly high number of girls without eyebrows.
Bar none the hardest thing for me to adjust to since coming to Japan has been the degree to which people smoke here. Coming from Boston where smoking in public (technically, "anywhere people are working") buildings has been banned for years, it was like stepping into Europe...except worse.
Here, a "no smoking section" is often a tiny area of a restaurant in which smoking is not allowed, though there is no means or motivation to prevent the massive quantities of smoke from the smoking section from wafting over and ruining my meal...every time I eat out. And literally, just about everyone smokes. Eat at a restaurant that allows smoking at all, and you're guaranteed a smoky time. Luckily, it does seem like restaurants that are fully smoke-free are slowly becoming more common.
This is not to say that I think people shouldn't smoke. If they want to do that to themselves, that's all well and good. I also don't think that they should stop smoking in places they're allowed to smoke. It's unfortunate for me, but it's their right. However, the one piece of the puzzle that has bothered me the most is smoking parents. I can't tell you how many times a day I see mom puffing up with her infant sitting right next to her. Do these people have any concept of "second hand smoke" health risks? Though I can't be sure, it certainly seems like they don't. Just look at (aforementioned) horrible implementation of non-smoking areas, as well as the blatant disregard smokers here have of the people and loved ones around them. In a culture obsessed with not ruffling the feathers of others, I find such a thing kind of out of place.
Of course, it doesn't help that the government has a large holding in Japan Tobacco. Why let anyone know how bad the shit is for you when a huge portion of your yearly budget comes from tobacco revenue?
Last night in trying to pull a box of cling wrap from a drawer I somehow managed to gash my index finger on the metal teeth that are supposed to (but somehow don't do it very well) cut the wrap.
Apart from being an almost mind-numbingly humiliating injury, I've discovered it makes for rather challenging chopsticks usage.
The 選挙 (senkyo: election, vote) has begun. In Japan that means one thing: A solid week of armies of vans and trucks driving around, blaring little speeches out of oversized PA speakers.
It's an interesting (and unsurprisingly, loud) time, because every town it seems is blanketed by these roving shouting advertisements from precisely 8AM to 8PM. They vie for your vote by driving around and waving at anyone who will take notice, with a chorus of "thank you" and Japanese that has no literal translation.
What I find interesting is that no one seems to care that very few of the politicians running for office actually state what their platform is. I have yet to hear one (though admittedly my echoey-PA-listening skills are subpar), and when I inquired my coworkers agreed that it's rather rare. So how do people decide who to vote for?
Probably just like back home: appearance. And that's what the signboards are for! In a designated area in each section of town (towns are broken into distinct sections) has been erected a massive board with space for each candidate's picture. I couldn't imagine that anyone would actually pay attention to these things, but while playing wiffleball next to one yesterday I witnessed dozens of people looking closely. But what for? None of the pictures have anything but a catchy slogan and name written on them.
A Japanese mystery indeed.
Today I partook for the first time in a mild craze that has been in Japan since just after I arrived: jelly drinks! It's being marketed mostly in the sports drink category, but the particular kind I tried is labeled "For Beauty." Note that I did not buy this product of my own volition; I received it as part of a gift package.
VAAM Jelly (as it is so called) is bizarre. The drinks are all packaged in a plastic/metalized bag with a hard plastic...teat. The experience of "drinking" the stuff isn't particularly pleasant. You suck as hard as you can to get slightly-liquidized Jell-O to blast into your mouth. As this was my first VAAM experience and I didn't know quite what to expect, the sensation was slightly distressing. I got used to it, but I can't see how this could possibly be marketed as a sports drink. When I'm hot and sweaty and thirsty, probably the last thing I would want is sweet curdled chunks washing down my throat. Regular liquid for me please!
Really I just like the drink's name, which I suppose must mean something along the lines of "Here it comes...Wait...VAAM!!"
As today I was biting into a tasty おにぎり (onigiri: a Japanese riceball snack), I realized as I got to the tuna filling that I couldn't stand to have the filling facing downward.
Background for those not in the know: onigiri come in a zillion varieties, with the most popular sold at convenience stores tending to have a filling of some sort (fish eggs, tuna, salmon, pickled seaweed...). Though the filling is in the center, it tends to be near the top or the bottom. Imagine the "top" or "bottom" of pizza or something.
Anyway, I figured that it made no sense to have the filling on the top, because there are more taste buds at the bottom half of my mouth. I flipped the onigiri over, and it just felt wrong. Where did this irrational feeling come from? I suppose from a lifetime of eating toast with spread on top?
Regardless, the snack was finished without further incident.
I know I've been absent for quite a long time, but I've been insanely busy. Good friends have been both leaving and visiting, so I've had very little time for things like posting here. Well, the madness is over with nothing but (mostly) empty space as a replacement. I expect to be posting more now that I have some free time on my hands.
For now, make sure to check out a sampling of the pictures I took while my good friend Jansen was visiting. I've also figured out a way to easily add captions to my pictures, so be sure not to miss those!
As always, click on the thumbnail below for the full gallery.
Yesterday I took a long-overdue trip to the nearest 100-yen store, which also happens to be the first one I've ever been to. These days a lot of things are happening with people leaving and my tenure drawing to a close, so I've been thinking a great deal about my time here. My reflections lead me to start a little mini-series I'll call Recollection. I hope to be able to include a little photo with each of my remembrances.
For maybe the first week in Gyoda, I had no real access to internet. I remember huddling in one uncomfortable corner of my apartment, trying in vain to get a suitable connection to a neighbor's unsecured wireless network. Failing that, I took to roaming the streets on my bicycle (a total "mamachari" or Mama Chariot if you must know) with my laptop tucked in the basket, screen open and ready to display any signal I might come across. It was summer (and damn hot) and I was ready to camp out just about anywhere so I could write home. Remember, at this point I don't even think I knew my phone number, much less how to call out. Regardless, I found no signal.
Unfortunately I don't quite remember how, but I stumbled across the best free internet in town on the top floor of Paseos, our local throwback-to-the-80s department store. If you sat in a certain area, you could get a signal that was reliable enough to send out some emails before conking out. The bonus was that the area in which you could sit also happened to be the cafeteria for Paseos, which meant that there were actually tables and food and drink! After my search, I had come to paradise. It was made doubly enticing by the fact that though it was sweltering outside, it was nicely air-conditioned within.
Once we got to know each other more, I remember sitting there for quite the long stretches with Nichole and Peter, sharing computers before we all had one and sometimes plastering ourselves to the window in vain attempt to get back a signal that had died. I've never eaten mediocre cafeteria curry so many days in a row, and I do hope I never do again! We always got soft-serve ice cream after our curry/wi-fi fix, and since we were still all furnishing our apartments to our liking, often a 100-yen store visit followed.
These days, any trip back to Paseos brings back those memories. All I have to do is look out the window and remember those first summer days.
You can read one of my original posts about it here: http://www.shock-e.com/archives/2004/08/a_town_called_gyoda.html
Last night I hosted a small barbecue that was supposed to be the last real get-together of The League. It started out innocuously enough with a very small fire in the local park that was carefully coaxed into being over the course of about an hour (yeah it always takes us forever to get fires going). We cooked our food, then my neighbors came over to cook theirs.
Now, there were never more than four people at any one time at this fire. It was also contained in a barbecue grill that I have. Yet we must have ruffled someone's feathers by having too much fun (read: standing around and cooking quietly), because both the fire department and the police showed up within minutes of each other. Mind you, this was after we'd had a fire going for over an hour. It was uncomfortable but they were very courteous and we were asked not to do it at night.
Someone had apparently called in about it. It's really too bad that people can't be more accepting of even such a small step out of the norm. Spontaneity in Japan is dead.
Regardless, we had a good time and I am very thankful that both the FD and the PD were good-hearted about it. In fact, the police looked quite regretful to continue their patrol!
Today on my way to the bank I saw something I never thought I'd see anywhere in Japan, much less in my little town of Gyoda: A protest! Here I was for three years thinking I lived in pretty much the most apathetic country on Earth, but this is an obvious sign that such is not the case.
Granted, they were protesting a tax hike (when do people not protest a tax hike?), but it was a bit refreshing to see Japanese people get up and fight something they don't want instead of shrugging and accepting it with the obligatory しょうがない (shouganai: roughly it means "can't be helped").
Pictures to come, if I can get the pictures off of my phone.
Today I prevailed upon one of the Home Economy teachers to give me help in sewing a blanket for my friend's soon-to-be one year old daughter. I wanted to give a gift that was something a little more special than a generic baby toy, which I'm sure they have a billion of. I remembered my own baby blanket and wanted to make one.
The problem was that I haven't sewn enough in my life to actually be able to put together something even as simple as a blanket. Horiguchi-sensei really helped me out and enabled me to make a pretty kickass (in a cute way) baby blanket.
I'm glad that in this country there are still plenty of people who are willing to help out instead of defaulting to "I'm busy." She saved the day!
Yesterday our third grade (the equivalent of senior) students graduated. The ceremony was predictably very long, filled with formality and speeches and tears.
For me it was a particularly poignant time because I had to say goodbye to two of my dearest students, we'll call them A-san and A-san. They were scared and small first graders in the English Club when I first came to my school, also scared and small. I feel closest to them because we all grew together and we're all leaving.
Of course, I really doubt they feel so strongly about the whole thing seeing as to them I'm only a teacher, but seeing them go has made me reflect a great deal on my time here.
I hope I see them again.
In response to Pete's excellent rendition of a Saturday pick-up game of bad football, I made my own version. It's quite a bit different, regardless of the fact that the base footage is the same. Take a look and I guarantee you can't help but crack a smile.
Turn up those speakers and prepare to be rocked.
Because YouTube can't seem to get basic video encoding right, I strongly recommend you choose either of the files below instead of the YouTube version:
http://www.shock-e.com/media/confusion_bowl_remix.avi High Quality, 85MB
or
http://www.shock-e.com/media/confusion_bowl_remix320.avi Low Quality, 30MB
Failing that, you can always watch the YouTube version below. Be warned, you're missing out on the entire point of the video, as the audio sync is slightly off.
A few weeks ago a group of ALTs in my area played a game of tag football. It was the most unorganized event in recent memory. Thus, The Confusion Bowl I was born. Please enjoy the following "promotional clip," filmed and edited by none other than the infamous Peter Weber.
Stay tuned for my own take on The Confusion Bowl...perhaps even as soon as today!
We went on a weekend excursion to Sapporo this past weekend. Pretty much your standard drink-eat-drink sort of affair. The nighttime lit-up-stuff is the Otaru light festival (雪あかり路まつり).
Click on the thumbnail below for the full gallery.
You can also check out Pete's gallery of the same trip here.
Recently I've taken to reading The Little Prince in Japanese as a way to beef up my rather pisspoor Japanese reading ability. It's a grueling but excellent way to practice.
Today I came across one particular passage that really stuck with me.
Spoken from the viewpoint of a six-year-old boy:
"Grownups love numbers. When talking about a new friend, they don't ask about the most important things. Instead of 'What kind of voice does he have?' or 'What's his favorite game?' or 'Does he collect butterflies?' they ask 'How old is he?' 'How many brothers does he have?' 'How much does he weigh?' or 'What's his father's salary?' By asking such things, finally they can understand a person. If you say something like 'There's a beautiful house with bricks the color of roses, with blooming Geraniums on the sills and so many pigeons on the roof...,' grownups can't imagine it. You can't say that. If you say 'I saw a million-dollar house!' then grownups will get interested. 'That's beautiful!' they might say."
I love this passage. It makes me think of everything that's wrong with the way people prioritize their lives these days.
Today on my bike ride home I witnessed the everyday occurrence of a woman picking up her dog's droppings.
Only she was doing it with chopsticks.
We filmed another entry in the "friendship series" of short movies. All Pete's brainchildren, they've been featuring various friends and acquaintances we have here. If you notice, there's a common theme between the two pieces. Can you guess what it is?
The lighting is much better in this one.
As many of you know from reading here before, the Japanese winter is particularly harsh on foreigners. Not because it's especially cold or anything; in actuality it's quite "warm" compared to the frigid temperatures of my native Massachusetts. The problem is that houses in the 関東 (kanto: the "central" area of Japan surrounding Tokyo) area are uninsulated and lack any form of heating.
This leads to the use of stinky (and poisonous!) kerosene space heaters and the like. It's not something I prefer to use whilst sleeping, so generally I just hunker down under a massive layer of blankets to sleep. On very cold nights I might use an electric heater but electricity is quite expensive even here in the "country" and I am loathe to waste it.
It presents a problem. One of my quirks is that I need fresh air to sleep. I can't, for example, sleep fully under blankets. If I could, I wouldn't have a problem, but as it stands I sleep with my face exposed to the cold air. My face is fine, but it's my (rather prominent) nose that causes discomfort. My nose gets extremely cold at night. I have compensated by trying to sleep like a mummy with only my nose sticking out, but of course ... my nose still gets cold!
I expressed my situation today to my coworkers. They all agreed it was because my nose is "so tall."
Pete, Will, and I filmed a short film while out camping in Tochigi. I have to say, it's a fun little flick and I really enjoy how well the music fits.
Unfortunately it's pretty washed out due to the camera's white balance or something (it was a very bright day), but so be it. A cute film. Just click below for the YouTube video.
Yesterday I (along with thousands of other hopeful foreigners) took the level-2 Japanese Level Proficiency Test (日本語能力試験 if you must know). There are 4 levels, 1 being the highest. Suffice to say, level 2 is pretty difficult.
There are three sections. The first is devoted to "Writing and Vocabulary" even though there's no writing, just kanji recognition. I did okay on that section, but not great. The second is "Listening" which I feel very confident about. The third is "Reading and Grammar," which totally rocked my world (in a bad way). I think I guessed on about 90% of those questions.
Well, at the very least it goes to show my strong/weak points.
Thankfully it's over, but it does make me want to improve my reading skills.
Last night I survived another all-nighter down toward tokyo after DJing for a short spell.
All I can say is 24-hour manga cafes live up to every single sleazy expectation.
More appropriately, this post could be titled "Japanese things that should be but aren't the same as back home" but it didn't really have a very appealing ring to it.
There are many things here that by all practical purposes should be the same as they are back home. Naturally between countries things vary considerably but there are things that often I wonder why they're different at all. This post has actually been sitting in my "draft" folder for months now waiting for me to compile a good list, but I'm left with only one. So I might as well just talk about that.
Here, when you open a bottle of soda (pop, coke, carbonated beverage) it makes a different sound than back home. I figured things like Coke would be especially similar between countries, since its production is controlled at some level by the all-powerful Coca-Cola god.
I know this sounds stupid, but really, it makes a different sound. Back home you open a bottle and it makes something of a "fizz" sound. I'll approximate it by saying "fwssshhh" because that's the sound it makes. Here, you open the bottle and it literally goes "pop!" A single sudden popping sound, no fizzing, and that's the end of the opening experience. I can only assume it can be attributed to differences in carbonation tactics but still...
...weird eh?
NOTE: JLPT stands for "Japanese Language Proficiency Test"
Yesterday I somehow became immersed in a conversation revolving around the uvula. I explained that many English speakers don't even know what the uvula is called, and if they do it's only after a certain amount of memory-jogging. As a result, most people end up simply referring to it as "that thing that hangs in the back of your throat." Upon hearing this, every Japanese person thus far as replied "that's way too long."
As it turns out, Japanese is similar. Almost no one knows the medical term for it (the Japanese equivalent of "uvula"), so pretty much everyone simply refers to it by its much weirder but more common name: 喉ちんこ (nodochinko). Well, it's certainly shorter than the English version.
Regardless, I still can't get over how a vast amount of people can with a perfectly straight face refer to the thing in the back of your throat as "throat penis."
Last night I was watching TV and stumbled across (well, sat there passively as it flickered on the screen) a rather amusing advertisement for plaque-control toothpaste. Apparently in your mouth, plaque is just a bunch of tiny dudes dressed up in puffy-looking costumes, all hanging out and having a party.
But lo! All is not well in plaque-land. Suddenly, an earthquake rumbles through and everyone panics. The plaque-people all run to the nearest gap between teeth and seatbelt themselves in to ride out the coming storm. What is it? What will happen to these slightly-cute-slightly-scary creatures?
Zoom out to the very cute woman who's about to use the special toothpaste. With the utmost in dramatic skill, she squirts the paste onto her toothbrush and begins her task.
Zoom back inside her mouth. Catastrophe! Mayhem! Morbidity! Puffy plaque-people go flying, their (apparently not UL-approved) seatbelts dissolved like nothing. Hot damn, this toothpaste really works!
Zoom back out to cute lady, grinning cutely despite the genocide she has just enacted.
Naturally I laughed, particularly tickled by the plaque people and their reaction to the coming destruction. I sat there for a moment, warmed by a geniunely entertaining commercial. It's these (far more entertaining than the usual offal that they call programming) that find me turning on the TV on occasion.
But then I realized. Inside the cute Japanese girl's mouth, the plaque-people were all gaijin.
What the hell?
So either gaijin are a tenacious and unsightly growth on the otherwise pristine surface of Japanese society ... or they just make better panic-in-the-face-of-destruction faces. You decide.
UPDATE: I just found the commercial online, you can view it at the LION website. Or just click on this link.
I know this may not be something you want to read, but I have to speak up. It's an oft-mentioned but rarely* blogged topic: Japanese Pubic Hair.
In Japan, grooming of pubic hair doesn't seem to be a top priority. In fact, it's not a priority at all, since nobody seems to do it. If you're stuck back in the west without access to a public bath for evidence, just go out and download some amply-available Japanese porn and see for yourself. The porn reflects the reality, I can tell you that. If you're here in Japan, I'm sure you know exactly what I'm talking about.
It's as if out-of-control bush carries with it some sort of unspoken bragging rights. I go to the gym almost every day during the week, which involves public bathing. Not like I'm actively checking out other men's equipment, but it's kind of obvious when there's friggin pubic bonsai** springing out at you. I apologize; bonsai are finely-trimmed, carefully-controlled things of beauty. The bush of pube, so to speak, is obviously not. Apparently people are more concerned about pruning said miniature trees. And why not? Not like anyone (including wives and girlfriends) is actually going to look...
The end result is that everywhere you go you'll find pubes. This is especially true in public toilets and baths. I can't vouch for women but I imagine it's not any different. Go to a urinal, and most of them are probably festooned with pubage. The floor of the gym's bathroom, though cleaned hourly, is frightening for its array of pubic hairs. I remember going to an onsen last year with a friend's visiting boyfriend in tow, and we had to apologize to him and explain that usually we don't have to refer to the baths as "pube pools." To this day, the place is known in our circle as "that place with all the pubes."
I wonder how such a fastidious nation could have developed such a disregard for that particular area?
Footnotes:
*I completely made this up. I have no idea if anyone has blogged about this.
**blatantly stolen from the most excellent film, Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle.
This past weekend, my school had its biggest-yet 文化祭 (bunkasai: culture festival). The students spent months preparing some very elaborate scenes as bases for their shops/gamerooms/etc. The results were quite impressive, something pictures can't really express. But I'm gonna show you pictures anyway.
Note: The people pictured in the thumbnail are not in costume. They dress like that normally for "fun." You know the drill. Click the thumbnail for the full gallery.
In Japan, many "deli-style" places that sell food have a little section in front with samples for you to try. Japanese people haven't the slightest qualm about munching down on one or two samples and moving on to the next booth without a thought. Apparently, people on vacation have been known to actually fill themselves this way in lieu of meals (*cough* you know who you are).
Maybe this is a personal thing, but I can't take and eat a sample without feeling at least some semblance of guilt for not taking interest in the store in question. Perhaps it's a waste of my time and energy, but I feel some sort of obligation to show an interest in the store's wares. I see all the time people walk to a booth/store, take the sample, and walk straight away without a backward glance.
Is this just me, or am I carrying with me some sort of cultural guilt?
Yesterday two of my teachers were discussing how they could get moved from this school. In Japan, you have no choice as to which school you work in; the prefecture (in the case of High School) decides it for you. One of them suggested that another teacher was prematurely moved out of a bad school because he got into a fight with an "important person" at the school. Both of them then proceeded to muse about who they could fight for maximum possibility of transfer.
It brings to mind a few things:
- The level of my school really has dropped that dramatically in only a single year.
- The prefectural educational system may be in need of some changes...
- A fight...! You don't see those much in Japan, especially amongst teachers. Just the idea of that certain teacher (a smurfy kind of guy) in a fight is giggle-worthy.
We had a small "League Retreat" over the past weekend. It was a great time; great weather, great fun, etc. Of course we can't really call it camping at all, because though we were at a camp ground, the typical Japanese "campers" usually end up in a cottage with full electricity, included futons, and often air conditioning and heating. Hardly roughing it.
Anyway, below is the thumbnail to the gallery. You know the drill. The pictures of the stream you see are pictures of the coldest water on Earth. I know because we went swimming in it. We coulda given the Polar Bear Club a run for their money I think. I wonder if the PBC members squeal like girls as much as we did...
Please also bear in mind that I have a pretty strict filesize limitation set on my pictures, so they can sometimes have some pretty nasty compression artifacts. Sorry about that.
Finally, credit for many of the pictures goes to Will, who is far more energetic about taking pictures than I am. You can find his own version of the gallery here.
Last night the collective schoolteachers of Japan breathed a sigh of resignation upon learning that "Abe chan," an even-more-conservative politician than his predecessor, will replace Junichiro Koizumi as Prime Minister. I know very very little about politics in Japan, but the impression I get at least from my own co-workers is that "Abe is not a friend of teachers."
Apparently he isn't a friend of peace either, with one of his major pledges being to revise the pacifist Japanese constitution to include the ability to maintain an army apart from the purposes of self-defense. Awesome! Now Japan wants to wage preemptive war too! I fail to see how he can have any platform whatsoever for "improving diplomatic ties with China and Korea" when basically he wants to throw them a huge "fuck you."
I said above and will say again, I know pretty much nothing about Japanese politics and won't ever pretend to. It does make me wonder about the state of the world when boobs like Abe and GW Bush can lead nations.
One thing it does, however, is make for interesting staffroom conversation (and Japanese practice!).
...my Japanese still sucks.
I tried to make a reservation for a rental car today, and it was a disaster. I think I made the reservation, but I understood the guy so shakily that I actually am not sure.
Sigh.
Quite a few people in Japan have 趣味(shumi: hobbies). Often, these people are fanatically dedicated to their hobbies, and are quite skillful. We've taken up a hobby: golf! We don't have the dedication or the skill, but it sure is satisfying to smash four-hundred-something little white balls into green oblivion.
The most interesting part is where we golf. As Japan has little space to dedicate to such a space-hungry pastime, most people go to driving ranges, which are weird netted-in affairs. Inside, it looks like a normal driving range, except for the fact that the balls come to you.
Allow me to demonstrate (click on the thumbnail for a short video clip).
Coincidentally, this entry also marks the 500-post anniversary of shock-e.com! What that means is that I've been blathering on about things that bear little relevance to the outside world for not a small bit of time. Maybe more than 3 years?!
Sure, there are much more prolific "bloggers" out there, but I prefer to think that people who can write more than that are probably blathering about even less relevant things than myself. Amen.
...of rampant self-indulgence.
It'll give you the chance to:
a) Deride me publicly
b) See for yourself just what Japan has done to my sense of style
c) Gasp at my age
d) Laugh
Remember when you were in school, you always used to snicker about how the teacher couldn't figure out the simplest of technology, like the VCR or the projector?
I'm no stranger to technology as you know, but in the past two days I found myself on the receiving end of a big dose of irony. I spent five minutes at the beginning of each class struggling manfully with the DVD player. The sudden realization that I had just dated myself made it all the worse.
There is a strange parallel, I've observed, between the lonely warble of a loon on a still lake and the screech of high school girls echoing through a hallway.
Beauty and the Beast, if you will.
I took a trip out into the Japanese "countryside" a few weeks ago, but I didn't have space on my server to post the pics. Well my hosting company finally came through, and I have the space to post. Relief.
Included in the gallery (click the thumbnail below as usual) are pictures of 黒部峡谷(Kurobe Kyoukoku: Kurobe Gorge), 立山 (Tateyama), 氷見(Himi), 金沢(Kanazawa), 五箇山(Gokayama), 高山(Takayama), 銚子の滝(Choushinotaki: Choushi Waterfall), and finally 松本(Matsumoto).
Please enjoy!
I don't usually go for Engrish-themed clothing...but yesterday I got one I couldn't pass up.
Click the link below (you may have to scroll down, as the weird part is at the bottom of the picture).
Late-summer thunderstorms have come to my small bit of Japan, bringing daily mounting insane humidity, ominous clouds (replete with rumbling and distant flashes), followed by sudden torrential downpours.
For the brief (usually fifteen minutes or less) span in which the storm lasts, the cool is a relief. Soon after, however, the heat and even greater humidity tends to return. Sometimes the respite was worthwhile.
I remember one of my first weeks here in Gyoda, seeing the most intense thunderstorm I'd seen in my life. I'd never thought the term "raining buckets" was anything but a lame cliche, but it was true. Lightning struck literally every second.
Maybe it's nothing for people back home who live in the South or Midwest (or West even?), but in the comparably mild Northeast, I've seen nothing like it.
In Chichibu (the mountains that are the only thing worth mention in Saitama) there are plenty of places to get your nature on. I've been there in the past and I went again this year to get away from the oppressive heat and boredom in Gyoda. The pictures are nothing much, especially to those back home who are used to seeing trees and streams every day. You can, however, see a few pictures of me and get a look at how much I've aged in a mere two years since coming here. It's quite remarkable, really ... and kinda shitty.
These days, I really regret having not made a trip back home.
I need a break from my life here.
A lot of literature and other stuff comes to all JET participants from the main office and others. I tend to flip through stuff, including essays, articles, photographs, etc.
The one thing I can tell you that I feel every time is intense jealousy. You see while I live a very mundane and decidedly un-Japanese life in the most indescript of places in Japan, others are out participating in local festivals, living the local life, living a life with something meaningful. My featureless section of featureless Saitama often feels like it has absolutely nothing going for it. I get jealous and throw out the materials I receive.
I know it's not precisely like that, but it often feels that way. At these times, I feel sorry for myself and others who were unfortunate enough to be placed here.
Today I reviewed with my teacher the use of the very popular and very useful English modifier fucking. The new head principal at the school has proven himself to be rather strict about something which doesn't need such tight policing, and we were voicing our displeasure about it. He asked me to express it in English.
Of particular note were fucking stupid and this fucking sucks.
There's a lesson I wouldn't mind teaching every day ...
Summer started a while ago, but I barely noticed the passage of the Solstice thanks to the fact that school is in session straight through the end of July. But there are other, less calendar-based signs:
- It has been consistently 30-35 (85-95 for you F folks) degrees every day with at least 80% humidity.
- As a result, I cannot stop sweating.
- The cicadas have started. For me this is the #1 indicator of summer in Japan.
- One of my teachers, who wears nothing but a full suit, has started rolling up his sleeves.
- Every evening, the one thing I desire more than anything else is a very cold, very tall beer. Not Japanese, preferably, but I'll take what I can get.
Back home, summer is more than halfway over. Here, the heat has just begun.
I bought a shirt the other day (big-time sales here, woohoo!) and received some sort of re-usable bag with it. Whatever.
I was staring at it today in some sort of reverie, and realized it was supposed to be a word in English.
Can you figure out what it is? (Click the link)
I have over the past year been reading, with increasing irritation, the regularly-released promotional material that is produced at my school. The purpose of these pamphlets/books/etc. is to promote our school to parents and students of junior high schools. Students in Japan have a choice of which high school they may go to, as opposed to simply being relegated to whatever school is in their district.
The problem is that despite the fact that I have been here for two frickin years, they keep printing pictures of my predecessor. Perhaps they haven't figured out that there is a huge difference between the two white dudes who have been at their school, but he left years ago. It's a real nice way to be reminded that to the people designing/deciding/editing these things, I am just a faceless foreigner. Every time I see his face once more plastered across something describing their great English program, I get more annoyed. I know there are pictures of me teaching class, because God knows every 2 weeks someone is sneaking around taking pictures in classes. I know I'm not exactly the most photogenic ALT ever to grace the JET program, but come on, sadly the picture they chose for him isn't flattering either. Get with the times, people! Grr.
I am given respite in knowing that my fellow English teachers also think it's stupid, and that probably they will do this to whoever my successor is. But at times like these, you really do wonder about what kind of value you have for the people you're working with.
Barring some early technical difficulties (failing CD players, skipping records, the like), I spun a pretty decent set at club 911 in the nearby town of 熊谷(Kumagaya). Please click the thumbnail below to get to the gallery.
For a while I've been thinking about trying to come up with a Japanese-language journal for the sole purpose of practicing my Japanese. They say that cataloging your day in a foreign language is a good way to fill in holes in your vocabulary.
In the spirit of that, I've opened 武勇伝(buyuuden: brave story) to frightening public scrutiny. I'm wondering if any of my Japanese friends are on the internet enough to actually take a look at it. Here's hoping.
Anyway, those of you who are into that Japanese-language thing, please do go take a look. It's by no means anything special, so keep that (and my bad Japanese skills) in mind, and try to keep the temptation to condescend at a bare minimum.
NOTE: Since the whole purpose of 武勇伝 is to learn, of course I welcome any comments correcting my Japanese.
For a while, figuring out on what days and for what items a sale was held was a complete mystery to me. A store could have a sale advertised out front, but once you got in the store it was near-impossible to figure out what was actually on sale. First of all, "sale" is a rather inaccurate word, since often it meant there was a 2 yen reduction in price. Big whoop. Secondly, those items that were on sale were just as often completely useless or mysteriously hard to find nestled amongst other non-sale items.
It came to me the other day that I had adapted to this annoying Japanese custom without even knowing it. I call it "reading the swarm." Japanese people do almost everything, it seems, with some kind of hive-mind mentality. It has been like this for so long that choosing a restaurant to eat at is often prefaced with "oh, there's a huge line there, it must be good." Plenty of people who have found an excellent hole-in-the-wall know that this line of thinking is absolute horse shit, but nevertheless it is a very popular one. It affects many other things as well.
The swarm has its advantages. I can read a fair amount of Japanese, especially when it comes to the grocery store. I am, however, still rather slow at it. Reading the swarm is faster. Instead of scrutinizing every sign in the store, all I have to do is look for where the most people are congregated. Is there a line 5 people deep just to scope out the meat selection today? Ahh today must be meat sale day. Are there 10 stooped grannies hovering around the daikon? Must be a veggie sale. It's infinitely faster, and something I found myself doing without even knowing I was doing it. Fascinating!
The downside is that I'm starting to lose my faith in "going the path less trodden." I'm suspicious of restaurants without a hoarde. I wonder why an item on sale isn't selling like hotcakes. But I'm not there yet. I really hope I never think to myself "Oh, 80,000 people from Tokyo will be visiting that flower garden today. It sounds like a great idea to go there!" Some things about the swarm you have to be born into in order to appreciate.
Following Matt's excellent post on the virtues of the World Cup, Japanese stuff, and finally the true meaning of soccer, I concede I can hardly compete. But with World Cup Fever gripping Japan and pretty much everywhere else except the States, I guess I should get swept up as well. Figures.
Last night I stayed awake longer than I should have to watch Japan's first World Cup 2006 game, against the brutish (the team members, not the people themselves) Australians. Japan had it made on a single lame-ass goal until the last 10 minutes of the game. Then they got lazy and let another lame goal happen, this time at their expense.
I remember saying "well, at least tying is better than losing."
So you see, it was my fault. Somewhere in the echoing halls of the soccer gods, someone heard me. "I can fix that!" Losra, the god of sucky teams said. She swept down with fury and smote the Japanese players with a laziness that the human race had never seen the likes of. Australia leapt upon their opportunity with vigor and pounded the living shit out of Japan. All in 10 minutes.
It's kind of amusing because Japan's hesitant, near-timid playing style got the (hopeful) kick in the ass it needed. Also because I predicted Australia would win. But honestly, I'm sorry Japan. I didn't mean to shatter your hopes and dreams like that. But you have two more games to pray through, when first the Czechs Croatians and then the Brazilians crush you utterly.
Soccer isn't nearly as boring when you imagine its every moment laid out by vengeful gods.
Apparently Thursday was the official beginning of 梅雨 (tsuyu: rainy season) here in Japan. What that means is that with little reprieve it will pretty much rain on and off for the next month. I have yet to experience a "real" rainy season here since last year's rainy season consisted of three days of rain. It was awesome.
This year, it reflects my mood (cue violin) much more appropriately, and is also looking to be much more of a rainy season. It's good for the rice industry and the bugs, and also for everyone's clothes smelling a bit rank. But it's meant to happen, so enjoy it, dammit!
I, for one, will be sipping cocktails and singing Why Does it Always Rain on Me? under my breath.
Yesterday was certifiably the worst day I've had yet in Japan. Nausea, headache, email fighting, locking keys in cars, insomnia ... it had everything that makes a day shitty.
In one of the few five-minute spans that wasn't occupied by crap, I managed to escape to the nearby 麦 (mugi: barley) fields for some pictures. The colors aren't so interesting in photographs, but it was nice to get out.
And who can't feel warm and fuzzy for at least a moment at the sight of a bunch of ducklings!
Click on the thumbnail for the gallery...
Today one of my teachers asked me "do you know the word implode?"
"Of course," I replied. "You mean like a black hole?"
His example was a submarine at high pressure, but the effect is the same. It turns out there is no direct single-word translation for "implode" in Japanese.
The usage is 内側に破裂する。 (uchigawa ni haretsu suru). It translates as "to explode to the inside."
In discussing our plans to go to lunch today, I and a fellow teacher were trying to decide whether or not to go on foot. The distance to the restaurant is quite walkable, but just far enough so that the limited time we get for lunch grows short. She said, "so it's closer by car then?" I readily agreed.
At that moment I recalled that I've heard that expression a great deal in my time here. It's closer by car. The fact of the matter is, of course the restaurant gets no closer if we go by car; it's not like us taking a car prompts the destination to spontaneously move closer to the starting point.
Of course in English we say "it's faster to get there by car." In Japanese, many people say "it's closer."
Nothing special, just a smile-inducing observation. I'll admit the idea of the restaurant growing a pair of enormous bird legs was appealing.
As if learning the Japanese language, with its 3 character systems and sometimes countless ways of pronouncing just a single character, wasn't hard enough, they just made Chinese that much more attractive.
I've heard you need a working knowledge of 2500 kanji characters in Japanese to get by at a fluent level. Whether or not that is true is unknown to me, but it sure as hell makes 900 characters enticing. If I could learn just 900 characters and be able to read 90% of media publications ... that would be awesome.
Of course, it does make things easier when said media is controlled by the iron fist of the State.
This past weekend I took a short trip to Okinawa with Roy and Pete. It was great fun, filled with sunburns, drinking in deserted bars, snorkeling, and of course searching for "beach bunnies" who weren't there. At least we had crabs...er...I mean we saw crabs. Hermit crabs!
As per usual, click on the thumbnail below for the full gallery.
We went the other day to a place called 森林公園 (shinrin kouen) not far from the apartment. It was a great getaway from the flat duldrums of Gyoda. Of course, all of the scenery was carefully controlled so that it could barely be called "nature" but the park is very big and there were plenty of bugs and critters to satisfy me (lizards, anyone?). It was almost like being back home, while strolling down some random path that no one had been on in years.
I want to go again. Click on the thumbnail for the full gallery.
Today I schlepped the equivalent of $3000 in cash across town on my bike.
It's something that I doubt I'll ever do back home, which makes it a task I will always associate with my time in Japan.
Thank god for low street crime!
I went to the dentist yesterday to remove previously mentioned scary stuff on my teeth.
My first impression was "damn that's cool that you can get a next-day appointment." Back home you have to wait like 6 months! My second impression, upon walking into the actual area where you get worked on was "why are all the chairs in the same room?" It seemed kind of odd that you should be able to hear other people's shouts of agony.
They sat me down and threw what amounts to a blanket with a hole in it over my head. Only my mouth and nose stick out from it. Then they went to town.
I feel like my mouth has been raped by a set of crazed tooth gnomes.
On the bright side my mouth is clean and sparkly after a half-hour of agony, and I only paid $20 for it.
Since coming to Japan, there are things about my own body that I've had to come to grips with. Body image is a different beast here, thus forcing me to sometimes completely about-face on notions I'd carried from the States.
Let's go with the positives first.
Thanks to Japan's pop-culture obsession with "America," as a white male I enjoy an advantage I couldn't have dreamed of back home. I'm no longer run-of-the-mill but exotic, even desirable (despite my dorky appearance). Don't believe me (you should)? Just walk around Tokyo and count the number of dorky-looking-white-guy-with-amazingly-hot-Japanese girl couples. You'll be astounded.
At the gym, I and Pete happen to be two of the biggest men there. It's refreshing. Back home, I'm almost always the runt, despite how much I might work out and get muscly. 75% of the male gym population back home is always bigger. Being at the top of the pile gleans not only instant grudging respect from the other "big" guys in the gym, but it also is a nice boost to the ol' ego. Never would I have dreamed of calling myself "huge." Here, I can do it with impunity.
There are negatives.
Even back home, my most noticeable feature is not my rugged good looks (ha!) or my bulging biceps or anything like that; it's my nose. It's sharp, bloody enormous, and has funny nostrils. Even when people aren't making fun of it, secretly I know they're marvelling at it. Fast forward to Japan. Japanese people claim that they have flat noses. For the most part, it's true. Many people have a hard time wearing "wraparound" sunglasses because they simply lack the nose bridge to support such eyewear. So many Japanese people have these cute little button noses it makes me sick with envy. For some mind bogglingly stupid reason, people like "tall" noses. This is where I fit in. Remember, enormous, pointy? They love it. I can't tell me how many times I've overheard (or directly been told) exclamations to the height of my nose. I suppose they think it's a compliment, but every time I hear it I cringe and want to rip my own olfactory unit right off. "If you like it so much, let's friggin trade!" Next person who says "ooh his nose is so tall!" is gonna get pecked in the eye.
Similarly, there seems to be the perception here that Japanese people have wide/big faces. Naturally, the white model is better, meaning a small face/head is better. I remember one of the first things that was said to me when I got in the car to drive to Gyoda for the first time was "My you have a small head. Mine is so huge!" While "Oh!" was my proper response, I do remember thinking "What the fuck?" My response hasn't much changed in two years. Daily students who have seen me around comment on how small my face is. WTF, am I a pygmy or something? So basically what I'm hearing is that I has a small face with an enormous nose. Doesn't really paint a pleasant picture, does it? I always knew my head was kinda small thanks to the fact that I look like an idiot in hats (sigh), but it's getting drilled in here with unprecedented ferocity. God, why didn't you give me a bigger skull!!
Finally, there's the teeth. Here I fit in nicely because I have bunk teeth. I've always prided myself on the fact that my teeth are always very well-brushed and sparkly. But just today I noticed an alarming amount of unexplainable junk on the inside of my teeth. I still brush every day. I still use Listerine every day. I floss every other day. I don't smoke at all, and neither do I drink coffee or much cola. So what is this crap? Upon seeing it, naturally I freaked out. I absolutely must go to the dentist now, but like most foreigners, I am terrified of Japanese dentists. We are told that Japanese dentistry is at the height of technology and among the best in the world. So why do so many Japanese people have horrible teeth? I fear that I'll go to the dentist for a simple cleaning and come out with three fake teeth. Yeek.
There you have the gist of it. There are other things, and I do think things are worse here for foreign women. For now, I'll try to enjoy my status...while going to the dentist.
Lost in Japan / Archives / Previewing IKEA in Funabashi Japan
IKEA is in Japan? This is both awesome and terrifying. I love IKEA, but I have this sinking feeling that the Japanese will love it more. The sudden infusion of IKEA stuff into the Japanese lifestyle atmosphere will, I predict, be staggering.
And all across Kantou, home centers with crappy kit furniture quake in fear.
You didn't think I'd leave you hanging after my previous riveting portrayal of the tapestry of characters at my gym, did you? Certainly not. Let me get to part two, as obviously described in the title: Konami Sports Club's employees. Some of them teach certain yoga/aerobics/bootyboxing/whatever classes, others just wander around and look encouraging. Without further ado...
- The Asstapper has, I think, a slightly twisted perspective on what makes up American-style sportsmanship. Hailing under the full name of Asstapper McTappington, he has a unique habit of tapping one's hindquarters at the most unexpected times, whilst pronouncing "頑張って下さい！ (ganbatte kudasai: hang in there / try your best!) At the beginning I thought I was immune because he sometimes works at the same school as Pete and thus had a connection. I was safe! Recently he's started tapping me on the ass too, so I'm obviously not. The trick is to have your ass against the wall or sitting on something. Sadly Asstapper is a sneaky rascal and catches you when you least expect it, such as when you're bent over the water fountain. Gym goosing is never fun.
- I bet you never thought I'd be talking about Rambo at my gym, but it's true. Sylvester Stallone (along with his overrated career) died and came back as a Japanese aerobics instructor. Rambo is kind of a rare sight at Konami, but nevertheless he's reached character status. He teaches some sort of weight training / aerobics combination routine that's insanely popular. Maybe it's because everyone wants to aspire to his bandanna-wearing badassedness. I can understand the head-worn bandanna for anti-sweat purposes, but the reasoning behind the one tied around his upper arm eludes me. It even has the long free ends hanging down his arm just like Rambo. I expect any day now that inside those plastic weights of his is hidden an enormous helicopter machinegun that somehow he can wield with his enormous muscles and mow us all down (that part is fabricated; Konami's Rambo doesn't have enormous muscles...nor a machinegun, hopefully).
- Our third contestant only gets mention because Jenn spent I swear 10 minutes ranting about the ridiculousness of her clothing choice one evening. Jeanny gets her name from the tight hotpant-style cutoff jean shorts she wore one night. Normally I don't see this as much of a problem (aside from the fact that the shorts were rather unattractive) except for the fact that she's one of the more hardcore fitness instructors at Konami. It means that she came in a pair of denim shorts to teach aerobics. Simply imagining the potential for chafing boggles the mind. Singlehandedly, Jeanny has demonstrated both the sometimes unfathomable Japanese fashion sense as well as the ability to be marked as a character by the gay-looking gaijin duo. Props!
- Mondays have recently become my favorite gym-going day, thanks to Smiley. Back in the day (read: a few months ago) I started by calling her Guy Smiley in homage to the rather obscure Sesame Street talk show host character of the same name. Being that Konami's Smiley is female the name didn't really fit, and thus the “Guy” part was dropped. Anyway, as I was saying, Monday is my favorite gym day because of her. It's not that Smiley is particularly gorgeous or flirty (never talked to her) or even an amazing fitness instructor (I have no idea what makes one). It's just that she has this infectious smile that really leaves an impression. I guess you could say she kind of resembles a muppet, seeing as her face-splitting smile has never left her face for more than a second at any one time. I wonder how she does it. If you couldn't tell, I have an irrational crush on her and my goal is to talk to her without getting roped into taking “latin dance aerobics” and thus looking like a complete fool. My goal doesn't really matter anyway, as her smile does make the gym a brighter place to be. Maybe Asstapper could learn a thing or two from her and smile harmlessly instead of tapping asses. Hmmm...
This wraps up today's gym characters chapter. Next time you can look forward to a more abstract set, featuring mythical characters like The Thong and The Sweater.
Ganbatte kudasai!
Since coming to Japan, I've made a most delightful discovery. At home whenever I created or printed a document on my computer, these mysterious A4, B5, etc. paper sizes always showed up in my choices. What could these cryptic codes possibly mean? How could one ever determine a paper's actual size through a simple combination of letters and numbers? To me, "letter" and "legal" made perfect sense.
I don't know about anywhere else, but in Japan A4 size is the standard "letter" size paper. I assume that much of the rest of the world uses this standard, since in all too many cases it seems to boil down to "the rest of the world" using one standard while the US (and sometimes England) uses some outdated half-assed imperial standard. Note that in no way do I claim knowledge of worldwide paper size standards; I'm talking out my ass.
After an extended period of confusion over these strange paper sizes, it was finally explained to me. Lucky you, that you get to share in my leaned wisdom. Witness: The letter (A,B, etc.) indicates the basic size category of the paper. The number indicates (it seems to me) the relative size in comparison to other numbers in the category. Two combined sheets of one number will always form one sheet of the next number up. For example, two B5 sheets will form, side by side, one B4 sheet. Likewise, two A4 sheets will form a single A3 sheet. Genius!
I imagine this makes for dry reading, but just try for a moment to imagine my excitement when I figured this out. It's like cracking a code or something. It makes the creation of school handouts so much simpler, not to mention cooler because I can do neat things with my handout sheets.
Yet again ... It's the small things in life.
A few months ago I got myself a shiny new membership to the Konami Sports Club here in Gyoda. It's a modest gym, nothing fancy and not particularly big. From what I've seen, it's pretty standard for Japanese gyms. I can only imagine that the clientele are also pretty standard. I've been to plenty of gyms back home, but I can't recall whether or not they had characters that are as interesting to describe as the ones are at Konami. Maybe that was because I didn't stay at any gym but my college gym for long enough to pick out anyone special.
Anyway, while introducing the gym's nuances to me, Pete pioneered our usage of the "character" nomenclature. He really was right, the place does have quite a few unique people in it, who only can be described as having "character."
- First off we have meathead. I've actually posted about him before but I'm not sure I did him justice. He is the foremost character because there's so much of him and he's so damn visible. I mean really, he is built like a tree. I've only seen him actually working about about 2% of the time he actually spends in the gym. The other 98% is spent gabbing with other wannabe-meatheads and touching women while ostensibly "teaching them." I noticed once a woman doing squats. She seemed to be doing fine by herself. Meathead's version of spotting her was cupping her ass with his enormous ham-hands to "help" her push up. Yeah, like I want a pair of meaty hands on my ass when I'm doing squats. Then again, maybe that's what Japanese women want in the gym.
- Our next character we appropriately dubbed The Stripper. Seriously, I have no other explanation for her appearance and behavior. She looks like she might be pushing 40, but she has the body of a 20 year old. She lifts quite heavy weights for the size of her body. She dresses in skin-tight everything (like bright pink spaghetti-strap tops and split-leg booty pants), and stares at herself in the mirror at all times. Her favorite exercise isn't really an exercise; it consists of standing and leaning on the freeweight rack with her ass stuck out into the room. Precisely what she's doing I haven't a clue, but I could wager a few guesses. Sure, it's pretty cool that she's obviously proud of her body, but what made me think "stripper" were the long intricately-painted and rhinestoned nails, the heavy makeup, and the huge gold hoop earrings. Yeah I know I'm stereotyping, but really, you'd probably say the same thing.
- Even before Meathead, the first person I noticed in the gym was Jacket. I think he was actually the first person I ever saw at the gym, even while I was doing my initial orientation. The guy enjoys a similar status to I and Pete (one of the biggest guys in the gym, w00t), but he does it with a more distinct style. The name derives from the fact that he wears this white vinyl Nike jacket at all times. He sweats like his innards are on fire, and he rolls up the sleeves of the jacket so it becomes sleeveless, but nevertheless he always wears the thing. He must really love that jacket! I could understand, I suppose, if the jacket was rivetingly cool, but it's not. I mean, the thing is vinyl! It's particularly amusing when he finishes one of his dramatic workout routines and collapses onto the floor, like he finished some epic marathon. Take the jacket off, man. You might find it easier to lift stuff.
- The next doesn't really need much introduction, because her name pretty much says it all. Pete dubbed her Perfect B's and I stand by his judgement. 'Nuff said.
- Naturally, there's also The Dude, but he's got an entire post dedicated to his glory, and I don't want to take away from that. We did recently save Jenn from Dude-Damnation by telling him that he couldn't talk to her because "Japanese people make her nervous" and "she's really concentrating on her workout." She owes us.
- Old Man Muscles is the name I came up with just now for a guy we otherwise call "the muscular old guy." He looks like he could be anywhere from 65 to 75, but he is frickin' honed. Pete said just yesterday, "Dude, if I had a body like that at his age, I'd be wearing even less than he does." Trudat. The man is like an old greek god. He's recently taken to wearing this weird tank top that doesn't even cover his nipples (at that point, I don't really understand the purpose for wearing a top at all) and scary booty-tight biking shorts ... zebra print. It's particularly distracting and disconcerting when he walks in front of you and you're trying to give the mirror your best "angry face," but let's be honest here. If I look like that when I'm his age, you can count on me going to the gym in a damn speedo.
- Sporty Spice is relatively new on the scene, having only come to the gym a few times, but nevertheless she made her impression and she's got herself a shiny new nickname. She looks eerily like she could've been a past student, but I'm not sure. The fact is that there's something about her (haven't figured it out yet) that makes her a character. That's aside from her sharp facial features and the workout gloves she wears, both of which scream "I will kill you if you so much as look at my machine." I said something very stupid to her yesterday and miraculously managed to come away with my life. Her alternative character name was Anime Girl because she seemed straight out of one, but it just didn't have the right sparkle for a good character name. I have big expectations for Sporty.
The fun part about having so many characters at the gym is wondering who will be there on any given night. Of course Dude nights are no fun, but everyone else sticks to their own business, thus allowing us to marvel at their characterness. It goes without saying that to everyone else there we are probably "The Gay Looking Gaijin" characters, but I do hope that we provide as much entertainment to them as they do to us.
Keep an eye out for the next installment of the Character series, in which I'll fill you in on the other half of the character set: Konami Sports Club employees.
My parents visited from the end of March into April. It was a great visit and we took a million pictures between the three of us. Here's the beginning of the set. It will be added to, so if you're interested make sure to check back over time as I hand-pick the best pictures to add.
Today as I was biking back from lunch I overheard two junior high school girls talking about me. The conversation went like this:
Girl 1: "Isn't he hot?"
Girl 2: "Really hot."
Regardless of the fact that they are probably 15 years my junior and also know very little about what criteria make a foreign man "very hot," it managed to perk me up just a tad on an otherwise dreary day.
It's the small things in life.
Here it is, my most recent set of random pictures that make you say "what the hell?"
Of particular note are the "Eyelids fold" pictures, which advertise (for $150 no less) a medieval-torture-device disguised as a tool to give asian women a more western-looking eyelid. Some asian people don't have folds in their eyelids, a feature that is seen as distinctly western. This idiotic tool apparently gives them that.
Click on the thumbnail for the gallery.
-
Tiny
So cute
Hairy!
Red (本当に赤ちゃんだね。)
Already made uncomfortable by gaijin
Frighteningly soft in the noggin
Not yet loud
Absolutely fascinating
Today the wind is intense. I'd like to think it's 春一番 (haruichiban: first wind of spring) but I'm told that already happened (when?).
It has me feeling like I'm witnessing the beginning of the twister in The Wizard of Oz.
Unfortunately I can't wittily quip "We're not in Kansas Anymore!" because well ... this never was Kansas.
Much of the time, I bemoan my foreign-ness here and how it can be problematic.
Other days, it's cause to rejoice. For example, just now one of the many door-to-door salesmen came a-ringin' at my door. I opened the door and he got one look at me and gave up his entire carefully-rehearsed schpiel. I came out of the affair unscathed with only a single pamphlet.
As a follow-up to the previously-posted Legend of Hot Sensei, I provide you today with another sordid tale of my Japanese life. Actually, "The Dude" is more of a living legend than a mythical beast such as the Hot Sensei.
Almost every weekday, Pete and I go to the gym to work out and generally try to look manlier than we are. At the Konami Sports Club in Gyoda lurks our nemesis, the dreaded Dude. I asked his name once but it really doesn't matter. He is our bane.
At the gym while you're lifting heavy objects, you're not likely to want to talk to someone else unless he's your heavy-object-lifting-buddy or an attractive woman. Since the latter are all scared of us (not, I wager, in a good way), we must content ourselves with talking manly talk together. This is where The Dude comes in. You can see him coming from across the gym, and you know he's headed right for you. You can smell it on the air, see it in his beady eyes. He's coming for you, and there's nothing you can do. So you wait, and he gets to you with yet another one of his daily gems. The most recent stinker that really sticks out in my mind, while Pete was trying to shrug more than 50 pounds in each hand, was "Do you call that color violet or purple?"
This marks the usual caliber of conversation we are dealing with here.
For being an English teacher in Japan, I have a rather low tolerance for speaking bad English outside of the school area. I know people want to practice their English and so thus do I bear that in mind. But when it occurs every day by the same guy who keeps me from getting to a machine before someone steals it...well this is a grave weightroom offense in my book. We've tried avoiding it or even ignoring him, but it doesn't really work. The other foreigner who goes to the gym seems to have better luck with it than we do, but he still gets caught daily.
Every day we go to the gym and peer surreptitiously through those foggy windows, hoping not to catch sight of The Dude. If he's there, we know our workout time will increase by a good twenty minutes. If he's not, happy, happy day.
Do you know The Dude?
The past few days I've been conscripted into team-teaching poetry classes. One Japanese poem, written all in hiragana, has me transfixed. It makes me actually appreciate kanji. Comment with your interpretations!
このこのこのこ
どこのここのこ
このこのこののこ
たけのこきれぬ
そのこのそのそ
そこのけそのこ
そのこのそのおの
きのこもきれぬ
Just when I'm settling some of my angry points with Japan and enjoying living here again, something incredibly boneheaded has to come roaring out of the gates. I've been reading about this for a few days, but sheer disbelief and the vast stupidity of this law has prevented me from talking about it.
I can't wait to see perfectly working but "too old" TVs clogging up the already garbage-choked rivers.
The hypocrisy with which this country claims an "earth-friendly" stance boggles my mind.
Akihabara News - 2nd hand electronics sales will soon be illegal in Japan
I'm glad to say I passed the third grade (not particularly impressive) of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. I barely squeaked past (even less impressive) the passing mark.
That being said, the listening portion was my forte. I quasi-owned it. Hot on the heels of that, I've realized that for a while I've been noticing the different speech patterns that my colleagues use. It's nice to know that even if you could listen to someone's speech without actually hearing their voice (you know, like someone else was repeating verbatim or something), you could still understand them by the way they talk.
Last weekend I went on a short trip with Pete and Roy up to the freezing country in the north known as 岩手 (Iwate). It was cold, kind of like home. In this cold, a tiny town has a festival every year involving dozens of near-naked men running through the streets having enormous bucketfuls of water dumped on them. It doesn't look fun, though you can smell the 酒 (sake) on them from meters away.
Here are the results of the journey.
Today I went to the supermarket to buy myself lunch. I was wandering through the instant ramen aisle (which is something you will never see until you're in Japan) when a small child spotted me.
Staring at me, he shouted something akin to "bleargh!" and cowered behind his mom.
I know how to make 'em fear, that I do.
I'm absolutely positive I'm not alone in my opinion that there is something wrong with drivers in Japan. Daily when we lowly foreign English teachers hop on our bikes to get to school, we bet our lives on those rickety frames. Just ask Roy who got hit and injured not just his bike, phone, and computer but also his body. Tons of people ride bikes here, which when I first got here made me think there was reason to believe that drivers would be more observant about them. Oh, how I was wrong.
There seems to be a basic problem with observation here. Drivers all over the world, of course, are in their own little worlds, but here it feels a lot worse. People tend to think that once they've hopped in their car, they don't have to worry about the little guy on the side of the road. Run him off the road (I can't tell you how many times this has happened), he's just got a bike, what can he do? I was driving the other day, stopped at an intersection and waiting to turn out into the intersection. A truck wanted to turn onto my road, so I waited. Instead of turning normally onto my street, he instead turned directly into the car I was driving. There was the whole other lane of the road, which he should have been turning into, completely clear, but instead he wanted to take the corner ridiculously tight and illegally turn into oncoming traffic. He was largely unaware, it seems, that my car was even there until we were literally a foot apart, at which point he and his wife stared at me indignantly like "why are you here?" Um ... I'm here because it's my side of the road you fuckup. I can't tell you how many times I've been a passenger to a Japanese driver and thought "oh God I'm totally gonna die." I've only been with one driver who actually appears to look carefully both ways when coming out of an intersection. Naoki is a very very good person.
I could be wrong (of course) but I think it's the insurance system here. I don't know much about it, but I'm always asking questions to try to get an idea of how it works. The basic gist is that very very rarely is fault established solely on one driver. The majority of the time, fault (and thus payment of damages) is split straight down the middle. For example, if I am driving on a main thoroughfare and some dolt pulls out from a side road and I nail him, the fault is still 50% mine. Why? I couldn't have stopped, but the law says that it was somehow in my power to avoid the accident and I didn't, so thus it's half my fault. Even if someone is driving on the wrong side of the road and causes a head-on, the victim is still 10% liable. From what I've gathered from asking a bunch of different people, it's close to impossible to establish 100% fault in an accident.
So then it makes sense why people are so careless here, especially when it comes to bicyclists or smaller cars. If you smash a cyclist, she'll end up paying for the damage her head made to your windshield. On top of that she'll probably end up paying her own medical bill, some of yours, and the fees to get rid of her mangled bike. Same goes for a small car. You clobber that thing with your brand new Toyota Monster, and you get the better end of the deal and end up penalizing someone thousands of dollars for being stupid enough to think that you were a responsible driver. The end result is that nobody cares when they drive, and it's a dangerous place out there for the rest of us.
If you have a better understanding of the insurance system here, by all means comment. But I may hunt you down and hit you with a car.
On a daily basis I contend with a herculean "Dangerous Minds" (I'm sure there's a better movie/book example but I'm drawing a blank now) complex that I seem to have developed. I keep thinking that somehow, someway, there's a way to "get through" to these kids (especially the technical school ones) and get them to like English.
I keep thinking that if only I can plan out that magical lesson where suddenly English is no longer boring, lame, and a time to chat with your friends but interesting and a skill that really could be useful in the future. I know I'm not a crappy teacher. Perhaps if I'm more of a friend to them and less of a teacher? No, that just gets them asking sex questions. How about games? Even more boring than rote memorization, apparently. Even the blatant bribery bit ( that JET people constantly warn should only be used in last-ditch scenarios) flopped.
I can feel my disillusionment growing every new week. Every new cool lesson planned out only to be chewed up and spit out (sometimes literally) in moments, every hour spent trying to "friendify" them into trying some English ... I feel my desire to try slipping away. Soon enough I'll be one of the teachers who just go straight from the book. After all, if the students don't like anything creative, why not make the work easier on myself and at least use materials that are already prepared?
It doesn't have to be this way ... doesn't, doesn't, doesn't ...
EDIT: In pondering this during my daily lunch walk, I realized it really doesn't have to be this way: the reality is that I'm really not here to be a teacher at all, but a "cultural ambassador" (read: foreign one-man freakshow the kids can stare at) whose foreign ways will hopefully incite someone somewhere in Japan to be more interested in Internationalization. That being said, I feel a tiny bit better about my moribund classes.
I had the privilege today of watching a most interesting event at the school here. Four times every year, all of the students are gathered by grade (there are only 3 grades in Japanese high schools) in giant gyms to ... be inspected. It reminded me of way back in the day as kids in elementary school when we sat quietly at our desks while the school nurse picked through our hair looking for lice. The teachers weren't looking for lice this time. They were inspecting hair color, earrings, hair length, skirt length, and a variety of other things.
In Japan, it turns out one way to judge the quality of your school is to look at the kids. If they have multicolored asian dyejobs and pierced ears, you have a bunch of delinquents. I guess the higher quality the school, the more they look the same. It reminds me of my dad's story about catholic school, when a golfball would have to roll down the inside of your pant legs, otherwise they were too tight (this being when tight-ass pants were in, I imagine). So I watched as a bevy of teachers sifted through an entire grade of students, 280 in all, looking closely at hair color, earrings, fingernail length, even traces of makeup. Girls aren't allowed to wear makeup here, though it seems to me every single one does. I guess right before this thing (at least it wasn't a surprise inspection) there were fleets of girls in the bathroom wiping off their faces and hiking down their skirts.
I don't know as there is much disciplinary action available for kids who are "delinquent" and end up getting a checkmark for hair color or holes in their ears (guess that means I'll fail the test ...), but there's some sort of routine in the whole thing. I can't see how it is very effective due to this lack of disciplinary action (there doesn't seem to be anything like detention, and suspension happens very rarely), though the students do still follow the rules to a certain extent. I'm glad at some level for it, since I guess the asian mullet which appears so popular on young people in Japan would be rampant through the school. Sometimes I do find myself alarmed at the level of conformity that is expected, but of course my perspective derives from a very different culture. After all, per capita, how much violent crime do they have compared to the United States?
Nuff said. Maybe if my High School had a policy like this, I wouldn't have been driven to do something as stupid as grow my hair long and dye it black. Shudder.
Yesterday I had my first day here at 行田しんしゅうかん. I gave a speech to the assembled staff of the school, which was relatively easy. Then the hard part. A speech on the stage for 800+ assembled students. I guess they liked it.
The weird part will be getting used to everyone (students) seeing you in the hall and wanting to talk to you. When they do, and you talk back, they collapse into giggling fits (the girls at least). Do I have something hanging out of my nose? Is my fly down? It's quite a hassle I tell you. Nerve-wracking, really. But it has been fun. I need to learn names of course, which could take a long time.
Unsurprisingly, rumor spreads like crazy here. I showed some advanced features of my keitai to the English club last week, and today a random student asked me to show her the dictionary/camera feature. At least they're interested in me and my stuff as opposed to hating my guts! I found love notes and lots of photo-booth (really popular here with girls) pictures (with hearts on them) photos in my predecessor's (and now mine!) desk. And as much as the students seem to know nothing about English in class, they have enough guts to hang out of a window and say "I Looooooobu Yoouuu!" at the top of their lungs. Cute, really. As Ryan (my predecessor) says, you do feel like a bit of a superstar. However, one must keep it in perspective. To them, I am a green man. I stick out like a sore thumb and as stated previously, the Japanese don't seem to have a particularly refined taste for physical attractiveness in foreigners. I also have a sneaking suspicion that to them, I look the same as Ryan. Consider it the "all look same" syndrome asians often receive, except turned on its head. It's about time it happened to whiteys so we know how it feels.
In other news, I'm getting the hell bitten out of me by uber-mosquitos here, and swelling up like a balloon. The heat and humidity this year makes for crazy mosquitos (蚊) and roaches (ゴキブリ). Gyoda is so filled with rice fields (rank, stagnant water) that the kanji for rice field (田) is part of its name. Imagine (and realize) that said stagnant water is perfect breeding territory for evil little biting insects. And according to Japanese superstition, they like O-type blood. Guess what I am!
I've got some more pictures coming up, taken last weekend at a nearby dance club. Breakdance competition!
As you can see, I've been taking random pictures here and there during my wanderings. The most interesting here is of me eating an enormous shrimp during Teppan Yaki. You eat the shrimp, as you can see, whole ... spiny things and all. This was the weirdest food I've had yet. This beats out Uni any day in the disgusting category, but the taste wasn't so bad. It was just the ... weirdness of it.
Uni (raw sea urchin), by the way, wasn't as bad as everyone says it is.
Note also the flower pics, taken with my keitai camera. Also please excuse the crappy quality of the engrish picture and also the pile of octopus picture. I didn't know how to use my camera at that point ...
Actually, they don't at all, but haw haw boy did I fool you ... !
Go to Images and be treated to a special gallery of my new Keitai. As you can see, the one sort-of disadvantage of a Japanese cell phone is that they are huge. In comparison, the Keitai is probably twice as bulky as my Verizon phone. But as you can see, the Verizon phone has a tiny-ass screen, not to mention the fact that it's a total piece of crap. I guess their Keitais are so big because they cram so much in there. Mine has:
- GPS Navigation
- 2.0MegaPixel Camera with Flash (same as my current normal camera)
- English-Japanese-English dictionary
- Text/Email/URL recognition on the camera (scan a word and it'll look it up in the dictionary, or scan a url/email and it will copy it to the addressbook)
- MP3 Player
- 2.4Mbps (faster than the average American DSL service) broadband
- The Kitchen Sink
- Downloadable EZChannel movie/TV/radio programming
- Can Opener/Corkscrew
- List of top 100 pickup lines guaranteed to work on Japanese women with bad taste in men
I imagine those who aren't tech-geeks are saying "big friggin' deal" but imagine this: this phone is stable!!! My old Verizon phone would crash twice a day. Crash, as in like Windows. As in have to remove the battery to "reboot" the stupid thing. Stay tuned, and surely you'll see a photo gallery of me beating the hell out of that useless pile of electronic junk.
As for the 100 pickup lines, they must work, because man there are a lot of ugly foreign guys with good-looking women. We've come to the conclusion that there is a significant portion of the Japanese female population who have absolutely abomidable taste in men. Anyway, enjoy the Keitai. I know I will!
Please enjoy the few pics of my keitai. Some are blurry b/c my fullsize camera isn't pleased with the lighting in here. You can see the cool lit-up "win" when it's in the docking station (yeah, Japanese phones get a docking station free, instead of having to pay $40 extra like you do in the states), and you can see the GPS feature. That's where I live!
Last night I did something really freakin' dumb.
I allowed myself to be convinced by a fellow JET to go out to Kumagaya (nearest big-ish city) for beers. At first I avoided it because I had things to do today, like get my alien registration card and have dinner at one of my teachers' house. Finally I caved.
Four pitchers later, I was puking my brains out in the bar restroom. Way to represent, Justin! Now I'm nursing the mother of all hangovers and trying to get it out of my system in the few minutes before I go to this dinner. What an idiot am I!!! This is why I avoided drinking back home in Boston ...
Well on the "up" side, at least I got this out of the way early in the year to realize what a dumbass I am. Maybe I'll go commiserate with Jimbo the dead cicada.
Whilst my internet woes grow still greater, I managed to get out into town today with Lorna and Pete to Gyoda Castle and the nearby park.
Meet Bob, the laid-back Cicada. I think he's a distant cousin of Jimbo the pretty-dead Cicada who guards my apartment stairs.
Please enjoy while I call still more numbers in search of the ever-elusive broadband beast.
If you think American telecom corporations are bad, just wait until you have to deal with NTT. Nihon (Japan) Telephone and Telegraph owns (apparently) every single phone line in Japan. In Japan, if you want phone, you have to either buy a phone line for roughly $800, or you lease one for something like $60/month or something. The "meigi-nin" is the original holder of the phone line, and in my cases, is about 4 or 5 tenants ago in this apartment. To do just about anything with your phone line (including getting set up for internet) you need to know who this person is. It has taken me three weeks to find out who this person is. YahooBB won't give me DSL without it. Neither will KDDI. So I have it. Then I find out I need the Kanji of the person's name.
For the uninitiated, the Japanese have technically four alphabets. Romaji (roman letters), Hiragana (syllables used for Japanese words), Katakana (Syllables used for foreign words) and Kanji (chinese alphabet). Kanji is singularly the most annoying thing on the planet, especially when it comes to names. People use kanji in their names that may have nothing to do with the actual way that people really pronounce other words.
So I'm talking to this poor girl, Uweda-san, and trying to describe in my crappy gaijin ways the kanji for this person's name. It turns out, the kanji for "KAZU" is not "kazu" at all. It's "OSA." Imagine that. I had to actually draw a picture of the thing as my supervisor had written it and email it to a friend, who finally figured out that it was osameru. Gah!
But enough of that. I'm sure you're all dying to see what it really looks like, no? Check it out: 収める. It's the part right before める. Imagine trying to explain that to someone over the phone. Didn't seem too hard at the time...
For those toilet-sink naysayers: The sink in the toilet is perfectly sanitary! The water that comes into the toilet in Japanese and American homes is no different than the water coming into your shower. It has nothing to do with the water going out of the toilet ... unless of course you're pooping in the reservoir tank. Also, it's just a sink in which you wash your hands after flushing the toilet. You do not brush your teeth there, as there is a separate real sink in the showering area of the bathroom. It's a great way, I suppose, to save water.
Anyway, that's all for now. I'm getting cramped sitting in the one corner of my apartment where I can get internet ...
Yeah, sorry for such a long absence, but things have been pretty insane. You never really realize how much you need certain things; food, water, sunlight ... internet. Having gone through serious withdrawal (apparently though no one in Gyoda has heard of securing their wireless networks, none of them are strong enough for me to use ... curses!), I figure it's high time to start doing my blog writing "unwired" and update when I can. At least I can come up with witty things to say when I'm not trying desperately just to wade through the 400 emails in my inbox. No, that's not a self-aggrandizing statement. You see, most of them are notifications from Movable Type (the blogging program I use) that I've gotten yet another spam comment. I don't even know what the hell cialis is, but boy someone thinks it's important to plaster all over my page. Seriously, spam in every form should be punished with public whuppings. I know just about anyone with internet access would love to get a piece of a spammer or two. Not that kind of piece, you pervert.
So, about my experience thus far: I live in a town of 70,000 (I guess that's really "countryside" by Japan standards) called Gyoda in the Northeast section of Saitama Prefecture. Saitama is known by people in Tokyo as "Dasaitama" which pretty much means "uncool." Think of Saitama as New Jersey or Southern Connecticut is to New York City. But regardless of this, Gyoda is cool enough to live in. Unfortunately, I don't mean temperature-wise, because days here thus far have averaged over 95 degrees with over 70% humidity. Imagine waking up at 7AM only to find that it's already 88 degrees. Living in Gyoda has already been an exercise in self-discovery. For instance, I am reminded that my Japanese completely sucks. I also now know that I sweat more in one hour than I thought was humanly possible. Both of my JET friends have asian ancestry, so for some reason they are blessed not only with relative hairlessness (God am I jealous) but also, they apparently have half the sweat glands that I do. This usually translates into the one sweaty gaijin walking around the streets of Gyoda, even though there are three (or four, when Lorna joins us) new faces in town. I went to the local supermarket to buy groceries, and was astounded by the desparity of prices here. A watermelon literally costs $20 on average. A container of tofu (normally $1.60 or so in the US) costs 60 yen here, maybe 50 cents. 40 doses of asprin (less than a month's supply for me, thanks for the genes dad) costs $20. The most soul-crushing moment for me, though (at least in the grocery store) was the discovery that Doritos don't exist. At least, not good flavor ones. What the hell is "taco" flavor anyway? Oh God, what have I gotten into?
Most of my ramblings pretty much are things that every gaijin since 18-whatever have discovered. I guess I'll just be redundant. But every newcomer to Japan simply must visit the hyaku-en store. That's 100 yen for anything in the store. Basically it's a dollar store. Why so great, you may ask? Simple. It's not useless crap like American dollar stores have. Nichole (one of the other JETs) has bought so much crap there, I'm surprised her apartment still holds people. I hear Peter has bought one less item. It's all cheap, but it's really not as crappy as I may have expected.
I've posted some new pictures for your enjoyment. These are of my apartment and not-so-pretty Gyoda. Pay particular attention to the notebook I bought for Japanese study.
Collabolation!
