New video of my town in Japan:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58fkLIt4uww

 

New Blog

I'll be posting at

http://whiteguyinjapan.blogspot.com/

 

 

There are five pugs in as many wagons.
Now Playing: Not playing. Working.
I talked with my little sister the other day and she was telling me about some article she read about how Japanese thinking is different from the normal way—I mean the Western way, and she mentioned two basic differences. One, which was tested by showing the test-taker a picture of a cow, grass and a chicken and asking them to circle two things that belong together (OK, so I don’t know the correct wording of the question, but indulge me), and the Asian students usually circle the cow and the grass because the cow eats the grass. Westerners circle the cow and chicken since they’re both animals. So the researchers propose that the normal way to think—sorry, there’s that prejudice acting up again—the Western way to think is in categories, while Asians are said to think more in terms of relationships. And I think mostly about getting out of relationships. Burn! No bail. (Family Guy reference).

And the ADD student who has been brought up on violent video games draws teeth on the grass and has it eat the cow and chicken while saying, “Grassman wins! Fatality!” I guess I’ve gotten more juvenile since I’ve been in Jpaan. Didn’t see that coming, did you, mom?

I’m not a psychologist, so I can’t intelligently say how Japanese people think, but I do run into differences right and left. It’s like a steeplechase. For example, I had to explain how to make a grading rubric for essays to every teacher. That’s one of the most basic teaching tools. So that’s one hurdle. It’s not that surprising, actually, since Japanese schools rarely (if ever) require students to write essays or papers of any kind, as most of the grading is determined my mid-term and term-end exams.

When I first came to Japan, I didn’t really know what I should do in lessons. But I knew what they were doing was BS. I experimented, with lots of bad results and failures in class, but over the course of my time here, with trial and error, research and stealing good lessons from other Americans, and also through my own Japanese language study, I think I’ve figured out how to give a really good language lesson. It’s really depressing that I have to ditch all that, since I’ll be teaching science come fall. Teaching English is really meaningful if you have willing students and you can watch kids improve. But it’s equally painful watching them struggle and lose motivation while a teacher who doesn’t know what they’re doing pounds them into place.

This year I have students writing essays, and third year students are writing journals. They write really great stuff. Some of it makes you want to cry, like when I get compliments I don’t deserve, “You cut hair is happy” (I’m glad you got a haircut), or laugh, like a student who did an essay on superpowers (I give themes like that), and she chose to have photosynthetic hair, and a guy who chose to have the ability to generate electricity so that he could charge his cell phone. Well it cracks me up. It’s better than reading example sentences from the grammar book, such as, “He made five mistakes in as many lines.” If I have to read that again I’m going to puke five times in as many toilets.

Worse than heroin
Now Playing: The Real McCoy
A wise man, well actually, an aging baby-boomer I worked with when I was but a young adolescent wondering how the hell you’re supposed to get laid, once told me, and I remember the exact words, “Women are worse than heroin. You can get over heroin—it’s hell—but you can do it. Women, man, you will never get over.” It’s not terribly profound, but it’s a kind of thread that runs through the life of a man that is often underestimated by other people, and often is the inspiration of piles and piles of lies. Along this line, Tolstoy is reported to have remarked to a friend, “The bedroom is the greatest tragedy,” and many people have speculated on what he means, most of them bitterly wrong, probably because they were literary scholars. He was speaking very literally and obviously. The shame of the need? No. The fear of poor performance? Guess again, bookworm. Sex isn’t fun? Go back to MIT.

I once had a two-word conversation with a friend of mine when I was working at a restaurant. He was on a smoke break; I snuck a beer outside. “Chicks, man,” I said. He exhaled his smoke and nodded. It was perhaps the deepest conversation I’ve ever had. Really.

Last weekend was the Kishiwada Danjiri, famous throughout Japan, and not so famous outside of Japan. A bunch of people in each neighborhood of the city pull their age-old neighborhood’s “danjiri,” an intricately carved wooden shrine-cart, through the city, pulling around corners as fast as they can. Big lines of people in front of each cart—sometimes over 200 people—power them through corners. In each shrine, there’s people playing drums and flutes, with a very un-syncopated rhythm. They pull from six AM to 10pm, with breaks in between, and by the end of the night, they’re drunk and tired as hell. Then they do it again.

One of my friends told me about a lesson he did last year, where he was asking students when their birthday was, which was basically the whole lesson, as he was at a very low-level Jr. high. He asked the teacher why 90% of the kids’ birthdays were in June. The answer, which came after class, was that it is 9 months after the Danjiri festival.

In a country where emotions, ideas, opinions and basically all expression is repressed, the compensatory release is naturally very…to put it politically correct, pro-active.

We all have our character very critically tested once in a while. Most people fail miserably, and I can’t say I make it out with much to brag about, most of the time. So I was drunk off of chuuhai, fruit-flavored liqueur, which was continually handed to me by drunk festival guys, whose hobby was apparently to make sure every foreigner they saw had a drink in their hand, and my former student, wearing some ridiculously attractive outfit to match her ridiculously attractive body, waves to me from across the street.

We’re separated by a line of the Danjiri carts passing through the street. Men and women in their traditional uniforms screaming “soorya!” at the top of their lungs and hauling the thing through the street, drums going and people shouting along with them in the overcrowded streets. It’s the most animal-like thing I’ve seen in Japan.

Of course, after the danjiris have passed, she comes over to meet me and my friend G. G, by the way is a really great friend, in every way a friend can be great, but that’s another story. So she comes up to me, and I remember Tolstoy’s line. And the guy at the bike shops’ line about heroin and stuff. And I turn to G and say, “Chicks, man.” And of course, the girl, who has had six years of English education, has no idea what the hell a “chick” is, in any sense of the word. And G turns to me and just laughs. It was maybe the second-most meaningful conversation I’ve had in my life.Of course, we said “baee baee,” which Japanese people have adapted instead of the older “sayonara,”—I’ve tried explaining that only little kids say “bye, bye,” with little avail (watching guys say “bye, bye” is still pretty funny even after more than a year in this country)—and found another drink from some drunk old man. Secretly, I toasted to Tolstoy.

some people can take a joke, and some people need to remove a large object from their colon
Now Playing: Aerosmith
Most of my life kind of blurs together and I can’t remember exactly what I did on any one day, but certain ones stand out, either because they were really good or really bad. If I look back and pick out the best days of my life—ranking is kind of silly, but I’ll go ahead with it—I can remember almost everything I did that day. I can remember the day I found out through the grapevine that a girl I was hopelessly, desperately in love with, and who had a boyfriend of several years, had the hots for me. I remember every thing I did up until that point and after it for about an hour each way, like a video tape. I can remember jumping into a large sand pit with my little sister from the construction of a highway in our yard. I can remember lighting fireworks off by the Minnesota river and talking about girl problems with friend when I was 12. Little peaks like that that keep my memory from becoming one helpless blur.

Big days like graduation and holidays stand out, but also there’re just some days at work or school that were just plain good, and for no particular reason. People were in a good mood and I had a good time, just as simple as that.

Lately I’ve been stressing about getting things done—trying to keep a daily exercise routine, studying for my Japanese proficiency test and keeping the ever-growing pile of stuff in my apartment at bay, but yesterday I kind of pulled out the stops and let in the momentum carry me.

It was my school’s festival last weekend, the likes of which we don’t have in the ol’ USA. Kids put on plays, music and dance clubs perform, and all kinds of crazy events. It’s something you have to experience to understand, but the atmosphere is happy as hell, to put it colloquially.

Some of the homeroom classes open up shops, so I had lunch at one of those. Then I had my fortune told at an Auspice, and I bought a bunch of key chains and bracelets from another place. At one point I saw an almost albino-white girl walking around with some older Japanese people, and I assumed she was an exchange student at another school, which is pretty rare. I stopped by their table and asked her, in Japanese, if she could speak English. No, in fact she was from some country south-west of Russia, whatchakalit-issa. And that was the second time I talked to a foreign person in Japanese out of necessity. She said she had gotten some scholarship to tour Japan for a couple weeks. So I left it at that and wished her happy travels.

I tried to catch all the plays, and my favorite had to be Alice in Wonderland, where the queen was played by the Judo club captain, a stocky boy. He really milked that role.

Anyway, while the excitement was dying down, one of my American friends and I were standing around. He’d come to catch the tail end of things. We chatted up some random people, and ran into a guy who had been student teaching at the school the previous term. We hung out for a while, and then he invited us over to his house, unexpectedly, which was only like a five-minute walk.

We sat around talking around a coffee table, and met his mother, who happened to be the host mother of the Russian-esc girl, Ana, who I’d met the day before—talk about coincidences. Then their daughter came home, followed his father, grandparents and Ana. My friend, Mr. G., the American, found out that Anna was a dancer, and they taught each other different steps, which was pretty smooth. And then Mr. A, our Japanese friend, showed me his high school yearbook. He was a graduate of the school I teach at, so I got to see younger versions of a lot of teachers. One teacher, who still works there, he told me had married and divorced to two of his former students, and was currently single, all based on rumor, of course.

Later the grandfather wandered in, and he started talking about the war, for some reason, but not resentfully. And that’s the first time I’ve talked about the war in depth with Japanese people. He apparently had been training as a soldier, but as soon as he finished his training, the war ended.

Then we were invited to stay for dinner, and had temakizushi, make-your-own sushi roll. The family was really friendly and social, so much so that they didn’t seem at all Japanese. But when you meet witty people anywhere in the world, I’m sure they transcend their own cultures and do things the same way. As I say, some people can take a joke, and some people need to remove a large object from their colon.

After dinner, Mr. G and I said our good-byes, rode our bikes halfway home, and then stood around talking for a couple hours. Then a guy shouted to Mr. G from his bike, and it turned out to be a 20-some-year-old dude he met at a bar one time. He makes designer jeans out of his apartment.

It was just a good day. I don’t want to go all mystical, but once in a while you can feel fate pushing you in one direction—you meet one good person, and everything else kind of falls into place.

Misunderstood
Okay, I don't normally like to explain anything I've written, usually because it's not very interesting, or I just like the work to stand for itself. But it this case I'm in danger of being more misunderstood than usual.

The whole girl on a bike in the rain thing isn't what I think all women should be, not at all. It was just my image of what the most pure symbol of happiness I can think of. Of course, it's not the most profound, powerful thing in the world to me--there's better things like friendship or love or chocolate chip pancakes, but all those other things come with complications--lies, betrayal, etc.--which stain the experience, but as the old saying goes, pain with pleasure. I get confused with all the complications in life, and it's hard for me to draw the line between what's moral and what's going to far. In a country where men take it for granted that they will sleep with women besides their wife, that and all the other emblazoned obscenities in the world get to me, so I was just happy to see something I could clearly identify as good and pure.

But there are lines for me. Women can go and do what they please, in my mind, as I grew up with a family of feminists I learned this well. They can dance on the pole or make movies that would make their fathers cry, and I won't stop them, but there are lines between that and the life of a nun, and we all have what feels right to us. And to me, at least for women, the secrets of the bedroom should stay there, not be broadcasted on the tv, radio or a conversation over beers. Don't want to hear it from my sister, my student or my best friend. But like I said, I ain't goonna stop you girl.

running in the rain
My birthday brought me to the other side of the 20’s, and I suddenly feel old. Most of the older people I know met the person they would marry, or already have a kid at that age. Then I saw my best friend from college tie the knot at a spectacular wedding in Germany, like out of a fairytale. I wasn’t jealous, but it struck something in me, like getting scolded by my father, and I felt like there was something I should have done differently before.

After that, breaking off a six-month relationship threw me for a spin. I guess whenever a relationship ends, it’s like pulling off a band-aid. You know, even if the wound is healed, it’s still going to sting.

I guess all of this gives me the feeling of being picked last for dodge-ball, which has followed me all the way through college, after which I learned to be sick or have a piano lesson every time I was invited to play an organized sport. I’ve always thought that if someone didn’t like me for who I am, that’s their problem, and I’m better off with out them. I haven’t made a lot of friends this way, but hell, that’s me.

It’s the rainy season in Japan, and I went for a run in some pretty heavy rain. I even did some push-ups and pull-ups in a park that would make Arnold Swarzanagger (I don't know how to spell that thing) yell words of encouragement without using consonants. There’s something about running in the rain—which no one in Japan will do, since they think rain is dirty. It’s hard to hear anything but the rain drops, and your body soaked in water keeps you from feeling the air. Combined with the numbness from exercise, it’s a really strange sensation, almost like an out of body experience. I was coming back from my run, and I saw one of my students coming back from Saturday school, holding her umbrella and riding her bike—a standard skill in Japan. She smiled and said, “Ganbare!” Now on the one hand, I couldn’t really think of anything that could have been more simply happy than having a young girl smile and cheer you on in the pouring rain. On the other hand, that thought made me feel sad. But that’s the beauty of the rain. You could be crying or have just peed your pants because of that car that came out of nowhere, but no one can tell.
The other day we were doing our beer on the balcony, and one of my friends that’s a girl starts detailing her night with a guy she was with. I mean, we used “the base” system for describing the sexual parts, but it was still pretty easy to imagine. I don’t ever share the details about my bedroom, but I guess I don’t mind when other guys share. When she started telling us about it, I pretended that it didn’t bother me, but I got a bad feeling in my chest. I don’t ever want to hear details beyond a kiss from any girl I care about. If I don’t want to hear it about my sisters or my mother, then I don’t want to hear it from another girl. I wasn’t angry. It was a sad feeling, like watching my sister cry. I wanted her to be the girl biking home in the rain, not another guy throwing out the story of how he got laid.

Volleyball friends
Last week we hit a restaurant downtown somewhere. I always get lost downtown. There’s so many subway stops and street names I honestly couldn’t take you to half the places I’ve been. But we get there anyway, the usual crowd, throw back some imported beer—some really weird stuff too, like a cranberry beer thing in addition to some stuff that tasted too much like soap for me. And we all discussed what and why we liked and criticized each other’s tastes like a bunch of L.A. rats.
Somehow we got on the topic of being rude, and Mr. M recalled how I had ate rice balls, that I had bought in a convenience store, in a restaurant. I admit, it was rude and I do regret doing that. I was trying to save money. Ironically, Mr. M later in the night stole beer glasses from the restaurant, and when I called him on it, it was decided that that was a completely different and more innocent act, as it was simply a matter of money for the store, where as eating food you brought with you in an over-priced restaurant is an issue of respect.
I’ve always had an issue with respect. I think it runs in the family. I suppose I’m especially suspicious of businesses, and I kind of feel like I’m always being robbed, so that’s how I justify my disrespect. I suppose when I start getting good returns on my investments I’ll get a little less stingy.
After the restaurant, all the boys in the group suddenly had to pee, and proceeded to find individual spots between buildings—this is an important part of Japanese culture. But still ironic, as urination is probably the oldest form of disrespect, but I didn’t call Mr. M on it.
We trained back, about an hour process, and spent an hour or so drinking in a park in the town I live in. We sat in the jungle gym, the shape of a plane, and sat back with our beers and snacks from a nearby convenience store. It’s not hard to find a convenience store in Japan. You just have to walk a block two in any direction.
I remember an overweight woman walked through the park with her dog and it must have been an odd sight to see 4 foreigners and a Japanese girl gathered in a park at 1:00am.
Another habit, in an effort to save money in a land of high consumer prices, has been sitting on the front of the second story of Mr. M’s apartment, drinking. No one does this in Japan. If people are going to have a social event, it’s indoors and quiet, or at a restaurant or a park. But the lawn chair on a porch or yard is a foreign concept to the Japanese. We call it beer on the balcony, a very original name. And there’s always this old, creepy man watching us from the window of his apartment across the street. Other than that, the only oppositions are people staring at us from the street below, but too perplexed or shy to say anything, and the surprisingly frequent trains passing by.
I’ve had some of the best friends here in my life. In fact, probably better friends than I’ve ever made. It’s like a combination of comrade-type relationship from being isolated in a foreign country combined with sharing similar jobs, but also just finding some good people. On top of that, there’s this lingering feeling like we don’t really belong here, like we’re on vacation or something.
It seems like most people have the tendency to devaluate whatever they’re experiencing at the time, but then when you look back on something later, looking at photographs or sharing a talk, it suddenly becomes a legend or immortal memory. Part of that is just because life looks better in a picture frame—you can forget any pain and confusion that was there, and feed from your selective memory, but it’s also because you never really realize how great something is until it’s gone.
But taking a trip to Germany, I got a chance to come back fresh to what I’ve made here after a year, and I think I do know how great it is. I want to freeze what I have right now—kind of a childish urge, like when you fight off sleep to watch another movie with your friends. But you can’t do that, in this century anyway, so like all walks of life, friends move away, people get married and you realize you need to meet new people. I don’t mind meeting a new person so much—it takes me a while to warm up to them, but I can do it. New people seem to come in waves, though, and that get’s tiring. I swear, if I have to keep replacing my friends every year or two, I’m going to just start talking to volleyball.

nachos
There comes a point in every man’s life, (and maybe a woman’s life too, but I can’t speak for women since women hate me) where you realize that you are a loser. It’s true. Some men are stubborn, and it takes many years, till you wake up one day, your teeth are falling out, you have ear hair, and it just occurs to you. To others, it comes much sooner, like to me, when my drawing of “super watermelon man” was discovered by a much cooler guy than me, and was ridiculed in front of the class. Actually, superwatermellon man was pretty cool.

Anyway, the point is, when you realize you are a loser, you have two options: to accept being a loser, or to go on pretending you’re not. I chose the latter.

So I am cool. For the last two weeks, I’ve been neglecting most social contact in order to finish this paper I’m writing for the last class in my journey to get a masters degree in education. And it’s kind of weird. I’m like, wow, so this is my life. Today, instead of going with the crew to watch one of our buddies perform in a salsa dance show, I’m writing a paper.

But let’s say I did go to the show and take an “F” in my class. Here’s what’d happen. First I’d complain about my job on the train into downtown Osaka, and most people would kind of respond, but mostly listen passively and change the subject to something like why Japanese people eat tiny little dried fish with the eyes still on them.

Then we’d get there, find a seat, and my friend Mr. C would like start hitting on this girl who has a thing for guys that can’t speak her language, even though he’s sleeping with someone right now.

Mr. M would start fighting with his girlfriend, and they’d get so loud, one of the salsa show ushers would ask them to leave. Of course, Mr. M’d be all up in his face since he was worked up from the argument, and finally get to remain in the show, but everyone around us would be pissed.

Then Mr. Mi would want us to go grab a beer after the show, which everyone knows will turn into ten beers, and riding the last train home the night before work.

So I’ll just stay in my apartment, continue to lose touch with whatever friends I had in America, and eat nachos. Man, I could really go for some nachos. And like a good, funny movie. Not an annoying funny movie, but I mean like Office Space or Family Guy, something that doesn’t make you feel like a worse person when you’re done watching it.

Someone's out to get you
You ever get the feeling that someone’s out to get you? Well, not you EdenPrairie Adventures, we all know you’ve got plenty of people out to get you. Actually, I’m stealing this line from Calvin and Hobbes. “I just figure somebody’s out to get me.”

That’s the kind of feeling I get working at school. It’s hard being the only person of your culture in any environment. There’s so many misunderstandings and I constantly feel like I’m being judged or even condescended to. My first mistake was to take an American approach to problems, and try to solve them directly—explaining problems to my coworkers and being as honest as I could. No, no, that’s not the Japanese way, I’ve found. It’s kind of like a game of passive aggression chess. People hardly ever directly refuse you, they just lay thick, heavy hints here and there. Playing along with this charade, I might actually get to teach lessons my way, but with a larger class load than any other teacher, I don’t have the time to do it. Touche, Japan, Touche.

I’ve kind of learned to lay back and accept that there are bad teachers I have to teach with, similar to the patience you’d need to work with Kevin Costner in a film. I really don’t like going to the bitch teacher class who screams grammar at kids for 50 minutes (I can understand most of the Japanese in class now), occasionally turning to me with her winning smile, asking me to read a sentence. I swear, her transformation from “Oh, as soon as I write ‘conjunction’ on the board you understand the grammar. Figure it out yourself!” (in Japanese) to “Excuse me,” (Eyelashes bat) “[Whiteguyinjpan]-sensei, could you please read the sentence?”

But it’s worth it to put up with that (and learn a lot of Japanese in the process—I daresay more English than the kids learn), to go to hyper-sensei’s class, where he asks me an average of three questions a minute, such as “So, this sentence is difficult for Japanese students to understand, including meeee! So, the word, “sensual,” is very difficult. What is the meaning?”

Also I’m starting to garnish my own fan club—by that I mean I’m finding the students that are genuinely interested in learning English and speaking to me. From too many kids I get this superficial kind of interest, where they just like to shout random English at me, which is entertaining I admit, but they never stick around to speak to me in any language. And my letter-writing program is taking off. I got a sweet drawing of a samurai in one letter, and the stationary girls use is excessively cute—bunnies and hearts everywhere.

I tried going to both Judo and tea ceremony clubs last week. Equally painful, if you can believe it. In the tea ceremony, you have to sit in “seiza” position, which is the most unnatural way for humans to sit, and it took me a good five minutes to limber up enough to be able to walk. In judo, I had fun, but I was pretty nervous. At first, the teacher just picked different students and showed me the three basic holds—like pinning someone in wrestling. A girl student that speaks very good English had invited me to practice, and he made me wrestle her. That was a little awkward. I was very obviously hesitant, so he was like (in Japanese), “No, no, fight! Climb on top of her like this," and he wrapped his legs around her and pinned her without mercy. I was surprised that the boys and girls practice together in such a personal sport, since in every other sport—and in class—students always choose separate themselves from the opposite sex. So I’ve discovered that Judo must be the primary place for boys to meet girls—sort of like The Gap in America.