Japan through the eyes of a 4 year old

Japan continues to be one of, if not the most, fastest moving countries in the world.  Business booms, technology advances and transportation gets more and more startling.  Still for all of its breakthroughs in the modern world, the culture and traditions alive for hundreds of years have their place in contemporary society.  The ability to synthesize the present with the past and future is simply, sophisticated.  But, for being one of the most sophisticated places on the planet, I can't help but thinking that my life here is often congruous to living life as a four year old.  I've been keeping a mental list of activities I've participated in or seen , or bits of life I notice everyday that I am pretty sure affect the Japanese as it would a normal child.

-  Children are always captivated by cars, trains or airplanes.  Who didn't put on a penny on the train track or watch planes takeoff?  The hub of every city/town in Japan is the train station.  It's not unusual to see fully grown people marveling at the speed of trains or even taking pictures of them when they're stopped.  I've done this myself a few times but it's fair because I come from the city with the most embarrassing trains in civilization.  That's right...civilization.

-  This one may be more about me than anything but I find the Japanese obsession with fireworks very peculiar.  I enjoy firework shows for about 10-15 minutes.  Japanese firework shows last over an hour and they are never spectacular.  As children, we could probably get lost for a few hours watching fireworks...that bit of childhood does not die here.

-  Japanese people regularly obey traffic signs.  Occasionally there are people who make that brave first step to cross against the light but, for the most part, people gather on both sides of the street and wait for the nice green man, accompanied by birds chirping to tell them it's safe.  It's almost the same as 'look both ways before you cross' - except there is too much trust here to look for oncoming traffic.  The green man would never steer me wrong.

-  Remember the day you were allowed to dress yourself for the first time.  You took your favorite things without consideration for their ability to match and threw them on...welcome to every morning in Japan.  "I have these awesome pink and brown striped bellbottoms - can't go wrong."  "Oh, a belt with silver spikes - yep, the pants have to stay up and I need some protection in case someone tries to touch my no-no's."  "This neon green and fuschia tie-dyed shirt with arbitrary English on it - bitchin."  "How about these boots - they look like they were pilfered from a gay pirate...y'arrrr I look good...time to get some booty."  And you're set, now all you need is to prepare your hair for six hours and you're ready to face a long day of shopping to buy a pen.

- I know that Americans are used to eating and drinking a lot and, by extension, the dishes are bigger.  I will never be able to understand how people can finish meals and drink a tablespoon of water from a shot glass.  It's like they're handing you a sippy cup and a bib...or you're the guest of honor at a tea party with Malibu Barbie.

-  Seemingly every object is met with a deluge of "kawaii"s (cute) and food with "ooishii" (delicious).  I am not too aware what the childhood of the typical American girl is like but I imagine everything being cute and an impulse to say so every time.

-  Children have it easy sometimes...for pretty much anything they do past pooping and breathing, they're applauded and supported.  Similarly, I've never been commended on my pooping or breathing abilities (both of which are advanced by the way) here but for almost everything else, i feel like the most talented person in the world.  When I correctly ask a very easy question in Japanese, people act as if I've cured cancer.  There is nothing wrong with this - I like people who think I'm great for my mediocre accomplishments.

-  I think I was about 5-6 when I remember my dad giving me a sip of beer.  Of course, I thought I was drunk.  I began to slur my words and take my pants off...after all, I had an excuse.  The effect I thought that sip of beer had on me is the actual effect alcohol has on the Japanese...except the quantity of alcohol doesn't drastically change.

-  From the ages of about 5-14, I don't think I got anywhere without my bike. From the ages of about 3-death, I don't think people get anywhere without their bikes here.

-  "Don't track mud into the house.  Take off your shoes!"  "Make sure these not-always-so-pristine places (some restaurants, schools, temples, castles, etc) remain not-so-pristine.  Take off your shoes!"

-  People of all ages love Pooh-san and everything Disney.  Even the most hardened of J-dudes sport lion hair and a Mickey Mouse t-shirt.  And it's almost as if the Japanese believe the characters are people.  I can't tell you the amount of times grown-up people have told me about "meeting Minnie/Mickey".  Along those same lines, anything that can be relayed can be done by cartoon.  From picking up dog poop to not having your torso severed from your body by train doors...or magazine porn, everything is a cartoon.  When I was 4, I am sure everything was joke and I wanted to try everything I was told not to do...do you think adults here have that same impression?  "Haha, that cute cartoon tells me not to eviscerate animals on the castle grounds...it can't be that bad because the animal looks rather amused."

-  Last one...purikura - picture club.  They are little photo booths where you can decorate the pictures with an endless amount of bedazzlers, glittery things, cartoons, hearts, various astral bodies and miscellaneous other colorful enhancements.  Sure, these are more geared towards teenage girls but I am pretty sure I drew stars, the sun and various other ornaments on my pictures when I was child - same thing, just computerized.

Ok, so that was the list...it's by no means comprehensive and those who have visited could probably come up with a few more.

Not too much has been happening recently.  My countdown to the end of Amity is 96 days and I'll be America-bound in 111.  This means that I have to find a new job.  I'm being told that the time I am looking to start is good because many people leave Japan around the holiday time and don't come back.  There's usually a spike in the available jobs in October/November.  I'm not a huge fan of just having this hang out there but I've been advised to remain patient.  We have a new teacher in our town and have promised him a beer pong night so I hope to have a report on that...really, the quality of the writing directly correlates to the number of times I play...root for my liver's faltering for your reading pleasure.  My friend and I have decided on being hostesses for Halloween - they're essentially escorts.  Wish us luck with preparation - and I am really thanking my lucky stars that Halloween is on a Saturday this year.  I can't recall if I wrote about this last year but Halloween was on a Friday and I was mildly over-served.  Parts of the night remain blurry...and I recall stumbling home on blind luck because I wasn't coherent enough to know which direction I lived.  The next day, I had eight lessons to teach on three hours of pass-out sleep.  I went to work still drunk and suffered through a floor class pretty successfully but my hangover hit during the second lesson.  About thirty minutes I had to excuse myself for a few minutes...I booked it downstairs, murdered the toilet with vomit and returned to teach the lesson.  I recall the worst part being that everyone knew why I was sick..which took away my leverage for asking to go home because I was sick.  That won't be a problem this time around.  Alright, over and out.

Three Months' Worth?

You know, there is only so much Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List a straight guy can choose to watch without going insane and needing to take a break and get back to something more manly...like blogging.  So after I exhausted the available D List episodes, I decided it's high time to head to the Brazilian, get some meat and start putting the pen to the paper - or the fingers to the keys.  Queue up LFO, it's time to write!

It's been three months since I last wrote but really nothing blogworthy has happened until this last week.  I mean, I've set the bar high with past entries and I can't write about every meaningless thought that passes through my head.  Who'd read that?  I'll start with last night and move backwards.  After coming back to the mainland from a mini two-day island vacation in Shikoku, I spent the night with Shuko before she took off for her hometown today.  With my newly welcomed white trash sunburn gracing my shoulders and neckline, I truthfully didn't feel up to braving the sickening heat and humidity.  But I dutifully went along with Shuko's suggestion and we took a few trains to Nara to see a candle festival.  I don't know of any other place in the world that would arbitrarily decorate fields and parks with thousands of candles and have tens of thousands of people show up.

A huge part of my life since coming to Japan is to feign excitement for the mundane...for this is reality here.  In its simplicity, it's great that people get so excited for displays of the ordinary.  For what it's worth, I've really tried to make an effort and have, a few times, found myself having an out-of-body experience and marveling at the moon or pretty flowers.  At times, excitement is contagious and for about a minute and a half last night, the candle love in Nara caught me.  They were arranged into what I think were pinwheels but were likely something much more symbolic and over my head.  Shuko was in awe and was dragging me in a hundred different directions.  We scurried to and from different displays with slight breaks to take pictures or soak the sweat from my brow with a bedsheet.  Living here has made me a touch desensitized to festivals and historical landmarks so I have to find other things to keep me interested.  I have had a lot of visitors (thank you all so much!) but that means that I end up seeing the same things a few times so I need to occupy myself with happenings away from the main events.

This proved a little tougher last night.  Aside from being mainly dark and not being able to see a lot, the overwhelming amount of candles produced a rather church-like smell.  With Jesus creeping up my nostrils, my focus was to block it out and watch the people.  I ended up finding three things to hold my attention.  First, as always with festivals, is seeing all of the little kids in their yukatas.  Without giving you the idea that I am channeling my inner Michael Jackson, I cannot help but to look at them all.  I have never ever seen anything cuter than Japanese kids in yukatas.  As strange as it sounds, you'd understand if you saw it.  Or I'll be on an international Megan's Law website.  Nara is famous for a few things - the daibutsu (huge statue of Buddha), being the capital of Japan for a bunch of years a long time ago and for deer.  In America, some people chase them with guns while others are just pissed that they end up stuck to their cars' grills.  In Nara, they're essentially treated like grandparents.  They can do whatever they want, poop where they please and even get angry and steal things from people but no one cares...they receive it all with a smile and a picture.  So I set out to keep close watch on the deer and watch their encounters with people.  They never really get angry and attack or anything but they aggressively approach food and will try biting at bags (eh hem, Dave).  Some people get frightened (one particular mom) and drop a plastic bag and run the other way.  Some people don't care (that mom's three year old son) and yell "Dame" ("bad" in a reprimanding way) at the deer and take the bag back.  If I wasn't seeing little kids in yukatas or waiting for my chance to catch a deer attack on video, I was preoccupied with concession stands.  At Japanese festivals, they sell a variety of different foods and have a bunch of games...a lot like America.  But I've recently learned that most of these stands are owned and operated by the Japanese mob - the yakuza.

The Yakuza has been my biggest source of cultural confusion.  Two images - born from media, my year here and the University of Illinois are seared into my head.  The first is the bad-ass Asian guy that would thoughtlessly obliterate someone without so much as a facial tick as remorse.  The second is of the mostly effeminate guys I see on a daily basis.  Bright pink here is the American equivalent of navy blue.  Guys here routinely spend more time on their hair than women.  Actually the more 'bad-boy' a guy is here, the brighter their clothes and the more teased their hair is.  There are...well, I don't know what to call them - motorcycle gang (?) - called bosozoku.  They look like the UIllinois Asian-American Theatre group's cast of West Side Story...if it was modern.  My friends and I are convinced that the rival gangs have structured dance fights starting with bows and supremely complex math problems.  For this, my view of the yakuza is blurry.  Are they all clean cut Japanese guys with short hair cuts and sleek black suits...or do they look like the J-version of Adam Lambert?  I don't know much about yakuza but a part of the initiation is that half of their pinkies are cut off.  And that long explanation explains my preoccupation with the concession stand workers - do they have a full set of digits?  For the record, I didn't notice anything out the ordinary on the finger count mission.

As I mentioned, I came back from a vacation.  My friends, Mike and Lana, came with me to a large island called Shikoku which is a bus ride away from the main island on which I live.  I hate buses, even the ones with an interior meant for prom-goers.  It was comfortable and clean but my issues are those which can't be fixed by Japanese services.  First, I sat in the back of the bus, near the oft-used bathroom and we wound around a dozen or so mountains on the three hour ride.  I get carsick sitting in the backseat of a sedan without a proper view out the front so I wanted to die on the bus.  We had battled rain and wind all day and, unfortunately, we had to continue the fight through the majority of our time in Ikumi.  Ikumi is a town Mike had stopped at in the past and is a nice mellow places for surfers.  Being from California and Hawaii, Mike and Lana were interested in the actual surfing.  I was interested in watching like a proud parent watching their child in little league...proud of them for their efforts but really wanting to be doing anything else.  Neither of them got enough time to surf because of the weather but we had a nice time generally.  Mike and I have talked about how difficult it must be to get drugs in Japan.

(Yes, parenthetical paragraph.  Note - we've never tried to obtain drugs but we were offered.  If you recall, I made reference to Yao Ming in an earlier post.  He goes by 'Big Joe'.  One night, Big Joe and Mike were talking about motorcycles...which is my clue to not pay any attention.  Anyway, there was a lull in the conversation and I saw Big Joe lean in and ask us "do you want some cock?"  Joe is about 5-6 inches taller and has some pounds on me so I suppose the fact that it was a question more than a demand was relieving.  In any case, our stunned silence and apparent life-flashing-before-our-eyes look had indicated to him that we misunderstood.  So he reached into his pocket and pulled out a little bag and shoved it in our faces..."Coke?  Coke?".  Aha, not cock...coke!  Chalk that one up to a half hilarious, half frightening Himeji life experience.)

That was a long segue for the two sentences meant to follow the last statement...so, we met a Mexican guy that has lived in Japan for 11 years.  Mike mentioned our theory and said that it has to be tough to find weed in Japan.  Ivan answered perfectly, "Not for a Mexican."  Our trip was spent mainly in the restaurant operated by the small inn, our room and on the beach.  Maybe it's being around Californians or something but I've come to enjoy playing with frisbees.  The only partially active thing I did during those two days was playing frisbee near the ocean...which meant that I did actually enter the water and I did make some Dave-like unnecessary dives.

I must confess that I have a few things running through my head while I write this - the first is the stories I want to touch on and remembering the details but the second is Josh's comments that my writing had gone away from the Bill Simmons like writing I'd displayed in earlier entries...how do I get it back??

Last Monday was my birthday...happy birthday to me!  Thank you!  Shuko's birthday is tomorrow..I am writing this on August 14th.  We decided to have a joint celebration - and that was last Sunday.  The day was probably my most enjoyable since coming to Japan.  Waking up at 6:00 was insane but it was in the name of fun.  Shuko and I met Mike, Lana and my Japanese teacher, Yumi, at the train station.  We rented a car and drove to some little country town called Yamasaki.  We had been looking forward to playing in a volleyball tournament there for a few months.  This wasn't a normal volleyball tournament, it was held in an evacuated rice field.  All of the rice had been harvested...what was left was a giant field separated into 12 courts and filled with a few feet of water.  Doronko ba-re is a somewhat popular event but I'd never participated.  Before the weekend, I'd decided that our team name would be The Effective Dolphins (an unintentional Christmas gift request from a student - there were Mad Libs involved).  The direct translation of 'effective dolphins' into Japanese would be something like 'clever dolphins'.  Well, 'clever dolphins' makes some sense because they are a rather smart mammal.  I don't want to make sense.  Instead of the direct translation, I opted for Kagayakashii Iruka (Glorious Dolphins).  People were more than a little confused by the large foreigners wearing blue shirts with horribly written Japanese saying something that made no sense.  Perfect!

After listening to instructions I didn't understand and clapping when everyone else did, we got a chance to enter the rice field to see what it was like.  I guess that it would be likened to quick sand because the harder you step, the more trying it is to pick up your foot.  At this point, we realized that this tournament had nothing to do with actual volleyball skill - which is a plus for me.  How it turned out was - the team that didn't look like retarded chimps and were able to just hit the ball over the net was often times the winner.  In the first two games, we played against retarded chimps.  We won both games and, therefore, were group champs.  We celebrated each victory by tackling the unsuspecting opposing team.  Everything was in good fun and besides, we were really only there to be novelties and dirty - dirty novelties.  As usual in big events being the only non-Japanese, we made friends fast and people are usually eager to practice or show off their English.  Between our second and third games, we had to wait about an hour and it really took a toll on our team.  So that combined with playing an actual volleyball team in the third game led to our dismissal.  The scores weren't even close but I did pull off a Misty May-like block at the net.

Thankfully we had some time between arriving home and having to leave to go to Kobe for the birthday party.  It was necessary because I needed a 40 minute shower to get to a point that I didn't feel covered in mud.  I've never had such a dirty taint.  Well, maybe once but that involved tuna and probably should not be recanted for you.  Either way, the shower plus numerous finger/toenail scrubbings and I felt human again.  The volleyball crew plus some other friends met us in Kobe at a little place called Bucato Cafe - is it just me or doesn't that name sound scandalous?  Shuko's friends joined us as well.  For the previous few months, we'd been anticipating eating a Costco sheet cake.  Apparently those types of cakes are never eaten so Shuko really looked forward to getting a slice of Americana.  It was all that it was supposed to be - rectangular, flat and kinda delicious.  It made her so happy and that was the point really.  We had a great time at the party.  It wasn't anything more than taking over a little cafe and talking and that's just fine.  Most people got us presents...and by "us" I mean for both Shuko and me.  We got matching Starbucks mugs and then some plates, chopsticks and other things that we can use in our apartment.  Oh, wait...we don't live together - yet (wink, coming in December!!).  Either way, it felt more like a low-rate wedding shower but it was still lovely all together.  Our night ended as all nights should end...karaoke.

Movie Corner:  A few weeks back, I made my way to a movie theater for the third time and saw the new Harry Potter movie.  People have some serious vitriol for this movie and I don't know why.  I saw some things that weren't in the book and parts of the book left out of the movie but I didn't think it was a travesty.  I've watched "The Hangover" twice and I liked it but didn't fall in love with it like the rest of the world.  With that said, I want to see the same crew in "The Goods".  Also, I am waiting to watch "500 Days of Summer".  "Bruno" was "Borat" subbing a gay guy for a foreigner.  It lacks something because it doesn't have the same shock value that made "Borat" so successful.  It's an alright movie and worth a rent I think.  Last weekend I saw "Funny People".  The first hour was a four star movie but then apparently a new movie with the same cast started...that was about a 2 star movie.  If they'd kept the first half going, it would have been amazing.  Oh and I just saw that Ponyo is opening in American theaters this weekend!!  Wow...that movie was super huge here last summer.  It's really a cute movie and done with drawn animation - not computerized so I think that's pretty awesome.  You should go see it!

News and Notes:

- I have pictures for the birthday party day but not uploaded yet so I'll get to that within the next three months.

- Shuko and I are coming for an American visit.  From December 11-15, we'll be in Seattle seeing Gom and Pop and meeting some of Shuko's Canadian friends.  After Seattle, we'll be in Chicago until Christmas Day.  We got this all for $685 per person.  This says two things - we have more money to spend on food and the prices are down, so if you haven't come to Japan, you don't have that excuse anymore.

- I am moving in with Shuko in December before we leave and presently looking for a job from January.  I'm taking a Japanese proficiency test December 6th so wish me luck.

- Illini football begins in 23 days.

- The White Sox just took the Blue Jays salary dump named Alex Rios.  Hope it works out...and it better after trading four prospects for a guy that won't pitch for another month.