Worse than heroin
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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.