Snippets

Just a few quick thoughts before I don't have Internet access until Monday:

Last Sunday I was able to go to a beach far, far away on the East coast of Japan (near Chiba). It took about 4 hours by train, but wasn't too costly due to awareness of the Seishun 18 ticket. I've been meaning to write about it, but there are constant welcome/farewell parties going on here and I have been coming home at 1 or 2am and not in the mood to do anything but sleep.

I'm headed to Asakusa on Saturday blindly hoping the weather will be agreeable. It's currently Friday night and I'm staying late at the office blogging, woohoo - a new low. I'll be later meeting a friend who will be getting a new bike and passing the debatably-usable remains of his old one. The price was right, at least.

If you're curious to know more about aspects of Japan and Wikipedia isn't quite cutting it for you, japan-guide.com is a great resource for quick and easy overviews. ("What is this Asakusa place?") That's all for now, folks.

Home Sweet Home

I suppose I can now talk a bit about my living conditions, as they are a bit different than what I'm used to. Probably even more so for you people with your fancy houses and vehicles and.. food. Spoiled, all of y'uns!

When I first arrived here, I had with me two generously large (one overweight) pieces of luggage. The taxi driver couldn't fit both in the trunk, so the "large" one had to occupy the front seat. I was shocked he got it to fit; it could have held like 2 bodies - or maybe 3 if they were Japanese; or 4 children.. maybe even 5 depending on how you cut them up. But you get the point, this thing was huge. The taxi driver was very cool about it.

Getting them up to my room on the second floor, however, was not so cool. Apart from 3 sets of stairs, there was only one elevator that someone must have engineered out of an old telephone booth. Its size permitted only one bag at a time, so multiple slow, doubtful trips were needed. Claustrophobic? Getting stuck in this elevator would feel the same as being buried alive. The most shocking part (moreso than getting dizzy from using the oxygen up all in one breath): it was rated for 4 people, but I couldn't understand all of the kanji, so maybe it was 4 only if you cut them up.

Allow me to describe the interior of my humble abode: you open the door and take a step in onto concrete. Just before your feet is a raised, carpeted floor, and you'll notice all of my shoes arranged near where you stand. Slip them off and move a step onto the carpet and into my kitchen. You did bring easily-slippable shoes, didn't you? Well where the hell are we going to find some in your size? Not in this country..

To the right, my kitchen is equipped with all the modern features you've come to expect. It boasts water from a faucet and accompanying sink, next to which is a cupboard on the right, and my gas stove on the left. Why does it smell like a flowery turd, you ask? I've been meaning to ask the same to the Korean who lived here before me and left a most potent pot of potpourri to deposit its foul stench in the wood. Maybe I should save some of the good adjectives for when we get to the fridge. Anyhow, the stove has only one burner, which has a hose going to a gas line on the wall. There is perhaps two inches between the stove, the gas line, and the sink - in sum, depending on how you shift it around. I sincerely hope no oil fire ever starts because there would be no way for me to turn off the gas without reaching my hand directly through the flames.

To the left, my bathroom is equipped with all the modern features you've come to expect. It boasts water from a faucet and accompanying sink, next to which is a toilet on the right, and my shower on the left. Why does it smell like a not-so-flowery turd, you ask? Must have been the curry, sorry. The bathroom has a door that doubles as a security device by blocking the kitchen off from the outside. The tub is deep but too short to be useful for soaking. This brings a tear to my eye since the long, hot soak was truly one of the best experiences a poor boy like me could hope to have regular access to. I guess this will at least be a catalyst for visiting a public bath-house. The shower also happens to be very picky about water temperature. Think roulette but always betting on the green spaces instead of black or red, which either freeze or scald you depending on your "luck". The toilet is fair (nothing like the space-age stuff I've seen before), has a "big" and "little" flush. Always makes me laugh because the little one barely accomplishes its meager task and the big one is so ridiculously long and loud - the first time I thought it was broken and that I'd soon be swimming. I feel bad for the guy next door who I bet can hear me cackling as it carries on.. those weirdo foreigners.

Drawing your attention forward, you can see all of my living room, dining room, and bedroom. I bet you wish you had a fridge in your bedroom. Or a computer in your dining room. Of course, all of these luxuries are standard here, where utility is master. Watch your head as you step down into my inner sanctum; all of these entryways are made annoyingly enough to appear tall enough to ignore, but that would be a lie.. a very painful one. The smell assaulting your right flank is my fridge. To the left is a closet with all of my clothing. Next to the closet, the collapsible futon on which I lay at night, wondering if it would be worth buying a mattress or not. At the foot of this "bed" and in the far corner rests a TV with 6 or so public access channels (surprisingly entertaining).

My curtains conceal the sliding windoor in the far wall between the TV and computer desk, or maybe they conceal me, instead. Due to the extreme temperatures, I'm often forced out of most of my clothing; this isn't particularly new. What is, though, is the small children's playground immediately outside. I'm not high enough up to be out of sight, and so anytime I sit scantily clad under the AC unit, I feel as though I'm inviting a world of trouble into my room unless I close the curtains. I don't recall a lesson in my Japanese books introducing the vocabulary to defend yourself from a police investigation.

So under the AC (in the other far corner) is where I sit, and to accompany this chair, I've got a desk and portable drawers. These components make up the most of my room, and I've pushed them all to one wall or another so that I can at least experience the optical illusion of having open space. I'm glad that I lived in smaller and smaller dorm rooms over time, this is simply the next iteration and coming from any other environment (say, an apartment with furniture), I suspect you would be very disappointed. Over time, places such as these tend to "grow" on you - not in a homely fashion, but you feel they are adequately sized, until someone else steps in and reminds you otherwise. Speaking of which, it would be logistically impossible to entertain a guest or two without some drastic re-adjustments. I'm content to dine on a box that I can hide away in the closet, but there's only enough room for me.. get your own box! Those fold-up TV trays never looked so appealing. I could even fit them behind the fridge.

Yes, the one you won't get to hear about today because I've got to shower and go to work at some point. Later!

Roppongi Nights

Fast-forwarding into the future a bit, I'd like to pen my clubbing experience while it's still fresh in my head.

Friday was to be the last weekend that one of the fellas here at the dorm could have before returning to Europe for school. He had invited everyone around to go with him to Roppongi for drinking, eating, drinking, karaoke, drinking, and dancing. I was fortunate enough to have met up with him and his regular clubbing friend at a bar the day before and gotten to know them better, so I happily accepted his offer. It would be a chance to learn from the master, as he put it. Both he and his friend were very kind and funny in spite of being a little obnoxious as well - I'm sure they were aware, but not interested in sacrificing their amusement to fit in. The date was set for Friday night.

I met up with those two and a few others at the train station around 7:00pm (someone was kind enough to print me a map since I'm still stuck in the stone age - no bike, cell-phone, and surrounded by strange odors). The station still functions the same in that you've got a colorful map placed directly above the ticket vending machines. This way, when you are squinting really hard at the scatter-plot of station names, other people mistakenly assume that you are waiting in line to buy your ride. It's not too bad, though - many places are kind enough to subscript English beneath the kanji, and if all else fails (and this applies everywhere) you can simply ask someone to help you.

Unfortunately, Roppongi isn't just a stone-throw away from Atsugi. It took us at least an hour to get there, going by train to Shinjuku and then a transfer to the subway. Before going underground, I was able to get a rechargeable, hassle-free, and all-around badass Suica card. You buy it for 2,000 yen and it comes with 1,500 worth of train travel already on it. No more disposable (ie. wasteful) stubs that you have to feed into the gates - this guy can be swiped over a sensor (think security badge) and away you go. When you're done with the card, I understand that you can get the other 500 yen refunded. This is good for me since I can just keep the card in my wallet and swipe the whole thing, and not needing to buy tickets every time I wish to travel - I only need to put money on the card when it is low. It works for Suica, too, in that I'm giving them an interest-free loan and permission to track my travel habits. It's anonymous data, however.

We got to Roppongi to find a summer festival in-progress. The station was unusually full of yukata-wearing girls, and everyone seemed to be in high spirits. We walked out and immediately into the mob. The flow of people crawled along at a snail's pace, but with a lion's strength; it would have been foolish to try standing still, but instead of staring around, we were more interested in finding some squid-on-a-stick. The pedestrian streets were lined with vendors of all varieties: food such as noodles, chicken, octopus, and hamburgers; snacks such as chocolate bananas, candy-apples, and cotton candy; sellers of traditional clothing, hand-crafted earthenwares, rare pokemon cards - yes, everything was here.

I enjoyed my grilled squid with a beer, the choco-banana didn't taste as rich as it looked, but I was held hostage in a state of terror after I tried one of the candy-coated grapes offered to me. The coating was very thin and not strong enough to survive in a spherical form wrapped around the grape, but it soon shattered into many stronger, triangular, and razor-sharp pieces. I couldn't choke them down for fear of shredding my esophagus, but I wasn't too inclined to keep them scattered around my gums for fear that someone would bump into my jaw. In spite of their immediate threat to my ability to eat or drink for the coming week, their flavor was still something pleasant, so I kept my head as high as possible and let my saliva do its job.

To my surprise Auld Lang Syne started playing overhead, signaling the end of the event. Vendors began scrambling to get rid of their unsold perishables while cunning buyers began haggling them. We walked to a subway entrance to meet up with some friends-of-friends. While sitting, I had time to observe some natives holding out flyers to passer-bys. This is something you see in the vicinity of every train station. You will walk by and be offered a fan or a small pack of tissues with advertising printed on the exterior. At least it's useful stuff, I suppose. Most Japanese are jaded to this behavior, so to make their quota, they have to get fancy with their lines and presentation.

The over-dressed, over-compensating fellow was only interested in handing out to certain women walking around him. Conversely, his female friend tried to pass her wares along to any guy who came by. After asking one of the more knowledgeable people with us (living here 5 years and fluent), he confirmed that the first was trying to recruit the girls to work at some sort of men's club - this could be anything from dressing up nice to not dressing at all - it wasn't possible to tell from our vantage point. His female accomplice was hoping to get the guys to attend said club. What was most interesting to me was that the pair didn't come off as particularly seedy people. They would occasionally take breaks from pacing around, sit together and strike up conversation. I wouldn't say that they were friends or lovers, but co-workers just like those in an office building.

Once the desired people appeared, we walked to the restaurant we had thankfully reserved a day before. It was all-you-can-drink with a few courses of food that would be periodically brought out. The event was structured for 8 people and we were allotted 2 hours to do our damage. The place was filled with small, wooden gazebos that had cloth draped around for a bit of privacy in a densely-packed area. Wondering how we were going to pile into one of those, we were escorted to a surprisingly large, dark room in the back with exact seating. Expecting to be gassed, we were all happy to find that the vents were for air conditioning and our room was equipped with a TV for karaoke! Sitting in our climate-controlled paradise, we ate and drank merrily. We sang, too.. I just don't think it would have been merry for those who loved the song prior to our interpretation.

Food offered: shrimp appetizer with melon and avocado, veggie salad, thin-crust mushroom pizza, seared tuna sashimi, pork fried rice. It was filling! My share of alcohol was varied (many types of umeshuu to try), but Japan continues to leave me unimpressed with its selection of beer. The only good one I've found that didn't come from another country has been Yebisu black beer, and even here it's expensive and hard to find. The meal was 3,000 yen per person and certainly worth every.. penny. Two hours flew by and we soon left for a club.

Carefully following the leader (my experience around Roppongi is minimal), we stopped inside and found ourselves drowning in a wall-to-wall sea of people. The place had no cover charge, so it didn't cost us anything to find out it was overflowing with gutter trash (ourselves included). We quickly moved along to a less obvious club that charged 2,500 yen to enter. This came with a free drink in addition to us being greeted (or assailed, as my tastebuds were) at the base of the steps with champagne handouts. This place was much roomier - to the extent of being able to dance - and the Japanese/gaijin ratio was pleasingly high: our group was the only one.

We were all enjoying ourselves in cycles of talking, drinking, and dancing. I was happy to already be back into the groove of things, thinking about how much fun I was going to have this year. I'm sure that my friend was equally pleased to end his stay with a night like this. It would seem like meeting new people could get tiresome or boring, but I would have no regrets in telling my story over and over again provided that I have the opportunity to listen to the stories of others in turn. [I spent an hour typing and deleting here, and ended up deciding I would just leave it at that. You will be spared my inner philosophical struggles and musings.. for now.]

Of course, the more people you have in your party, the probability of one of them getting into trouble increases (one of the reasons why I normally avoid groups such as this night's). I noticed one of my acquaintances sitting out of the way on the floor - not a good sight since there were plenty of chairs around. His responses to verbal stimulus were not encouraging. Thankfully, if you've attended a university for any length of time, you have experience in treatment. (Perhaps they should provide additional certification along with your major on the diploma they hand you.) Thinking it good to get him out of the loud, hot environment and into the cool air (and afraid of having him donate to the dance floor), I pulled him up enough to get his arm over me, and we slowly ascended.

We sat down outside and the host out front asked us to move away from the entrance. I could understand his concern, and having him hostage to my deciding to move or not, asked him to have some water brought up (the only kind available in the club was in a 10oz bottle for 500 yen a pop). He obliged, we went away a bit further, and kept going back and forth between me sitting him up to him laying down. It is unique when you don't really know the guy whose head you're figuratively holding over the toilet. (Being in this situation is one way to tell who your true friends are, though.) You want to be their friend - their advisor - but finding the balance of it all is tricky.. especially if you know that you will see them again, worse yet if you will be working with them!

Now normally I wouldn't be opposed to babysitting a fresh coma - certainly not one with the prospect of vomiting up half-digested rice (looks like maggots kawaii ^_^). Unfortunately, I had abandoned my more responsible friends and also had to get rid of the water I had been drinking. So I did what any upstanding citizen would do and left him on the street (I at least made sure he was on his side and facing the sewer grating - what do you take me for, a barbarian?). It was OK, though; after telling our party about the situation we organized to periodically check on him. What, it's not like he was going to get robbed.

This would be a good time to mention that when abroad, I consider myself a cultural ambassador. I will be many people's sole impression of what an American is and how they conduct themselves. I don't like to play the "gaijin card" (compare with the "race card") here, I pay close attention in order to not be "that American" (compare with "that guy"), and - especially since our country has fallen out of favor with many - I try extra hard to point out to people that Americans can be good people. I feel as though in the previous few days all of my prior work has been undermined. From subtle cultural things such as talking in elevators to seeing a fellow American roll around in his own chunky stew and wear it home on his shirt, I feel overwhelmed at the task of trying to represent Americans. I will just act for myself, and if others want to positively correlate that with something else such as race or nationality, fine, but I won't be cashing in on it later.

We took the first subway train in the morning to Shinjuku around 5:00am, and after a long, sleepy ride (first pick on seats, woohoo) back to Atsugi, we all made it home alive.

Atsui Atsugi

This one will try to be more briefly informative. After arriving, I spent the night at the Narita Hilton - a seemingly classy place from the lobby, but not really what I would have expected for the price. I suppose the service more than made up for the plain feel of the room. They were content to take my bags from me after I stepped off the bus and bring them up to my room so I could check in without the two monstrous eyesores offending other patrons. Looking back, I'm still grateful to the hotel for at least providing me with the soap and toothpaste to keep me presentable until I could acquire some from a store. The tub was deep (never long, unfortunately), and so I calmly soaked in hot water for a while (alternating legs and torso) before going to bed.

I took the same airport shuttle back to Narita in the morning and bought a bus ticket for Atsugi. None of this was complex, by the way, because the service industry is incredibly accommodating in that as soon as you can approach someone their gaijin detector has already been triggered and they are speaking to you in English. If you find yourself on this island sometime in the future, fret not - thousands of foreign businessmen each year manage to make it home, you can too!

My first impression of Japan, by the way: HOT. I don't sweat that much, but I sure made up for lost time as soon as I stepped out of the air-conditioned terminal and into the hellfire called August. The online dictionary translates mushi-atsui to "humid", but that doesn't really do it justice. Atsui already means "hot", and I like to think of mushi as the disgusting, heavy feeling of the humidity hovering around, forming your own personal greenhouse. Mushi translates directly to "steaming". All of those long dress pants and shirts I brought... *sigh* this is the summer of their discontent.

In most civilized nations, one would stave off such monumental discomfort with the century-old technology we have all come to know and love as "air conditioning". Indeed, this has proved so useful that it has spread all over the world, even to my dorm room! So all is not lost. Playing around with all of the buttons and sliders in an attempt to understand what they do is a good way to pick up some Japanese, much better than if it were the controls to a forklift.

Why is he still talking about airports?

First, a quick note about the structure of this blog, as it differs from other things I've done prior. My intent is to inform a wider (still English-speaking, however) audience, and it has been somewhat difficult to wrap my head around what exactly I'm trying to accomplish. I would enjoy sharing any insights I have during my time here, I want to explain Japan beyond what is easily accessible to most people - really just some surprising or interesting observations and guesses as to how and why things work around here. I'll try and make it educational and entertaining at the same time, but you'll have to tolerate my bad bi-lingual puns and other oddities that may alienate or confuse you. Here's a tip: Wikipedia is your friend. It doesn't matter what your opinions are of a free, online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, it will answer your questions and if searching for "sushi" turns up text such as "LOL COCKS", then just wait a minute and a keen eye will revert the page and you can go on learning. Oh yea - there's Google, too. You should all get in the habit of searching for things you aren't immediately familiar with; it's too important a skill to neglect and as such I'll spare linking you to explanations.

This brings up another issue: this blog will have to be at least PG-13, and certainly with tendencies to push the envelope. I'd like to make it fine for you to show your grandkids on their school computer, but it wouldn't be fun for me - and I need to get something out of all this work ;) Think of it as safe for work in the sense that your boss wouldn't have the patience to stare through a wall of text while peering over your shoulder. Of course, when I eventually get pictures up I promise nothing obscene will appear without your awareness. I must admit, though, that I do get quite a joy from writing simply because I can image the various reactions you all will express. Speaking of y'all, the fact that there are a diverse set of people reading this makes it harder to write for. Mostly, this will describe my life outside of work.. it wouldn't be that interesting or educational to go on about, and if it were, it would probably mean I'm exposing proprietary data and will be promptly crucified - it's part of the contract. Also, I've got comments disabled; it's not that I don't want your feedback (I absolutely need it to motivate and further improve this), but I am trying to avoid cross-mingling between parties and the dissemination of personal information. Instead, please discuss amongst yourselves or contact me directly with your thoughts.. thanks!

::

After landing, I proceeded to customs with perhaps 2 other people; it was nice of them to let me in. I can imagine it being a real pain for foreigners wishing to work in the US for a year. After picking up my bags, the toughest question I was asked was "are you sure you have all of your luggage?" I was, and so I walked out into the airport unmolested. The nicest part about Japan for those of you who haven't been: respect. Exceptions exist everywhere, but on the whole, you find that people treat one another calmly and courteously (making it all the more amusing to consider it something of a "culture shock").

I remember at LAX, one of the security staff shouting aloud to the crowd over and over the same procedure of putting your belongings on the belt into the X-ray machine. Part necessity, part frustration, and part belittlement, the vibe was that this guy was disgusted at the idiots passing through his checkpoint, who - in spite of the guidelines he would announce - would still mess it up. And I watched it happen right in front of me, too. A guy who left his boarding pass in his carry-on bag that was under X-ray investigation as he was walking through the metal detector. With multiple people (PA system included) barking around orders or warnings, a highly stressful environment, and maybe half of travelers speaking English natively.. it's an error-prone operation. But what is strikingly different in the US is how people seem to feel good about themselves by bringing others down; for instance, the same security guy who said, "don't put your backpack or bag into a tray before putting it on the belt - it's already in a container, so it wouldn't make much sense to put it in another." What the hell, I've been in airports that mandated I put my carry-on bag inside their too-small tray.

Back to the point, you'd never hear anything like that in Japan - you would have to screw up quite monumentally or run into a real prick (who would most likely NOT be working a service job). As a quick aside: no, this will not be solely dedicated to suggesting that Japan has the best culture on earth - indeed, there are plenty of things that aren't so good here, and I hope to discuss as much as I can in my time here. (Do you really think any culture could be "best"?) I'll add some more musings later, but I'd like to get this posted so you all have something to read. I've got a backlog of stuff to write about, but for now I will begin my work. Bai bai.

Takeoff

My voyage to Japan begins at LAX, probably the largest and most cumbersome of airports to take an international flight from. The TSA asks you to arrive two hours ahead of time under the pretense of security, and if standing around in lines until you are near collapse is their intent, then LAX puts Fort Knox to shame. From the time I was dropped off until sitting on the runway, I must have spent the full 120 minutes in a near-robotic mode: wait, detect movement, follow a step, wait... If I were to fly out from there again, here's what I would do differently: pay the sky-caps a meager sum to take my bags from the street immediately instead of waiting in line to check them, sit and read for 1.5 hours while eating/drinking the food I brought, wait until my flight is almost boarding and run to the staff, telling them I need to get through security ASAP, cut in line in front of 200 or so sorry bastards (savor this moment as everyone stares at you with utter contempt/envy), walk through the metal-detector and out into freedom. Being white, I can at least entertain this thought, your race-specific results may vary.

Dear TSA: really, why have a queue at all if you're just going to add more people to the front of it every five minutes? Doesn't that defeat the entire point? You have 10x the number of people in your airport, but only 2-3x the extra resources being utilized. That 4th security screening checkpoint that isn't being used? Guess what, you already forked out a million bucks for that machine, why not pony up the extra $6-an-hour for someone to run it? Then you would nearly double your capacity to humiliate and antagonize travelers!

The flight wasn't much of an issue once aboard. Eleven hours in the air is a breeze compared to the madhouse you have to endure on the ground. I didn't strike up any conversation, but it was relaxing to simply sit and read; I finished two of my books and got some sleep in-between. The in-flight dinner sucked a lot less than usual, with 80% of the items qualifying as "edible" and an astounding 50% of those being items you wouldn't later feel guilty or disgusted at having consumed (they always have that "motion discomfort" baggie just in case). Yes, I fly economy-class.

More to come as time permits - it would be rude to arrive here and immediately lock myself in when so many people are waiting to introduce themselves. As a quick FYI, there is no Internet access at the dormitory. The current procedure is to type out something on my laptop at the dorm, put it on a USB stick, take it in to work (security implications!), and upload it from the net-bound PC here. This will be remedied sooner or later, but sadly not soon enough.

First post!

When attempting to register a URL for this blog, not only was "guyjin" already taken, but in my frustration I discovered that "allthegoodnamesaretaken" was too. Wow.

More to come soon..