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.

You need these things. I guess.
We took the night bus up to Tokyo, a trip that has been probably very common for Japanese people throughout the last few hundred years, but usually by other transportation means. It was me and three other of the lowlives that have divorced their motherland for the time being. And we were traveling.

I don’t think the main reason for people to travel is to see things, or have good weather. Everyone says that, though—“oh, yeah, you know, Frank and I are going to Cancoon. He know so much about history, I bet he wrote a book on it. He even knows the name of the Indians that lived there! I bet he could win Jeopardy.”

So while the boys had some things on the agenda, I think the main reason people travel, which is also the main reason I don’t like to travel very much, is that it’s a break in the normal monotonous routine you live. It forces your mind to be creative—gotta buy tickets, figure out train timetables, look at maps, find cheap restaurants and hotels, schedule a reasonable number of activities, get stomach medicine for the spicy Indian food you had, and tell the cab driver where to go in your third language. I think a lot of people who don’t have any other creative outlets rely on travel to do these things for them.

When you’re going out with the same guys over and over, the same old talk about how work sucks or how your girlfriend is too needy—it starts to lose interest. You need to shake it up. You need arguments over whether you should have taken the train that just left, or if you’re even on the right side of the platform. On a side note here, the word for platform in Japanese is taken from the English word, and shortened (as they always shorten words from English) to “homu,” which sounds like home, and so when I asked a Japanese girl what she thought the English word from platform was, she thought it was “home.” “It’s the train’s home, right?” I love these people.

You need arguments over whether you should drink first, then go to the public bathhouse, or skip both and stay out until 8:00am the next morning. You need adventures, like seeing the slowest police chase ever, involving Japanese guys who were very obviously off-duty pimps, who run form the police, successfully escape, then sit at the train station, while cops eventually arrive, trying to arrest them. One of the tiny cops will grab at the shirt of one of the suspects, and the suspect, a big guy with dread locks, will slap the cops arm away. Then, about twenty minutes will pass, while the train departure is delayed, since the cops are taking so long to arrest the guys. The cops will eventually leave with a fraction of the men they originally half-heartedly chased. You need these things. You need disgusting hookers making obscene offers to you when you pause to tie your shoe. You need to go to museums and see “34 views of Mt. Fuji,” (or is it 32?) so that you feel smart. You need to look at the cherry blossoms, along with thousands of other Japanese people who are sitting on tarps getting plowed before noon, as part of their seasonal tradition. You need to go to really old shrines, which have a religion you don’t understand in the least, and walk around them pretending that you studied their architecture and mythology for years. You need to have an intense, still unresolved argument with your friend about whether the fact that the word for “hug” in Japanese is a composite of “pull in” and “squeeze” makes it any less meaningful than a special, phonetically unique one like that in English on the night bus home while every other Japanese person is sleeping. You need these things.

wise men shut up
Is it just computer nerds and me, or are there others afraid of putting a space in the file name for fear that it won’t save? Just me, huh. Thought so. Another thing, I have never felt comfortable sitting at a computer. It’s like no matter what I do I can’t position myself very well for typing.

So today, the reigning teacher at my school, who is only a part-time worker, but has enough power to teach whatever class he wants and tell everyone how to do their job, dropped some little tidbit of his “wisdom” on me. He had asked me whether I wrote anything about my experiences in Japan, and I told him that I did in fact write some of the more interesting occurrences down for my own records. And so he said, “You must be interested in different cultures. The more different the better.”

“Well I like some cultures.”

“These kinds of people never experience culture shock, those who like different things,” he said, talking about himself, who had never spent more than two weeks in any one country.

“Well, I think everyone experiences at least some culture shock. What if you went to a cannibalistic society, for example. It would be hard to get used to eating other people, I think.”

At this, he just smiled and left. He doesn’t like to hear my opinion, but at least this time it seemed as though he actually heard it. He usually goes on talking as though I haven’t said anything. His idea of wisdom is telling other people the golden truths he has discovered in his long life. But I’ve found that wisdom is more acknowledging what you don’t know, rather than what you do. Like the Buddhists.

My poor teacher just likes to insist his ideas on everyone, like a fascist. But I’ve found it’s usually the most unwise people that insist their ideas so fervently or argue, specifically because they don’t completely understand what they’re saying, so they hope that if the bash the idea enough, it will crack open and they’ll see the light. That’s why I argue, anyway. A wise man just smiles at you when you get angry about something.

The wisest thing I think I ever heard was from my dad, who said one day, “I keep thinking, there’s some bit of wisdom I should drop on you kids, but everything I can think of you already know, so I can’t really tell you anything.” I think he meant that the idea of what we all want out of life is so simple, but it’s finding the strength to do whatever it is you think you should that makes it so complicated.

Reading Nooks
In response to Madame Flamingo's words...

I need a place to read a good story on a rainy day. Bastion’s reading room in The Neverending Story comes to mind. There's a shortage of reading nooks in Japan, so I go to the Starbucks in the mall when I'm feeling reclusive and read there, but I get the urge to hide when I read, so it's not that satisfying.

When I was a kid I would make a fort out of sheets in my room and bring in all kinds of snacks. I was a very slow reader, so I mostly just ate.

As an adult, when I was in Minnesota, I would set a lawn chair out on summer/fall days in the shade with a beer. No one does lawn chairs in Japan. I’ll have to start that trend.

For my down time at school, I'll have to break through one of the walls at my school, put in an old couch and a table for a hot water dispenser and tea materials—that or sneak into the tea ceremony room. Here's to reading nooks...

Frailty, thy name is WOMAN!
For those of you who didn?t figure out the title, read Hamlet. And I don?t mean anything against women, but there is the overriding theme in Shakespeare that chicks cause evil, but that?s just because Shakespeare was a dude, and for dudes, that?s definitely true, in my experience as a dude, that is, I can say. If he?d been a chick, well then dudes would suck. But he wasn?t, so guys are awesome. Anyway. I should connect this theme to Japan pretty quick or you?re going to start reading that other blog, and then my sponsors would ditch me and I?d have to do some kind of work for suckers like teaching to make money.

So I?ve known for a while that half the bars I pass in downtown Osaka are one of several categories with different rules about the women. The most innocent are ?hostess? bars, where women are paid to get flirty with the gentlemen that visit the establishment, drink with them, eat with them, laugh at their bad jokes, etc., or as we know it in the west, ?marriage.? The very self-respecting women that have chosen this kind of career also have the responsibility of calling their customers, and?this part is optional?going out for dinner with him and more. These kind of establishments have shades of gray all the way to prostitution.

Now, who frequents these wholesome businesses? Unmarried, lonely, good-willed young men? I don?t think so. I?ve seen the drunk jerks that make up a good chunk of Japanese society. The ?salary men? (sarareemahn they say) who, as if it weren?t bad enough that they stay out late drinking and neglecting their families, also spend a good chunk of their time and money at these places.

It?s learning the sad facts about reality like that that make me remember Jr. High School moments: seeing my crush holding hands with another guy. I?ll never forget the times I was secretly broken by a girl, watching helplessly as she smiled and talked to some big, muscled guy. I remember telling myself, ?This is just growing up. Everything?s different when you?re grownup.? Then I think about the fairytales I read as a kid. I want to take one of those prince and princess stories, march into one of the hostess bars, slam it on the table, and yell, ?See?! See? They ride off into the sunset together, and they live happily ever after, damnit! Can?t you read? Get it together, man!? Then the guy will say, ?I donta supeeka da Engurishu!? And I?ll be like, ?This isn?t English, this is life! Figure it out.? Then I?ll look at the girl and be like, ?so, what are you doing later??

I guess, as I wrote recently to my dear sister, if you look at the divorce rates in America, we?re not doing much better. But at least we manage to pack all of our infidelities into the confines of Las Vegas (sorry Buckwalter and Madame flock hunt, you two may be the only pure souls in that city of debauchery). Still, it?s sad to think that according to statistics, whomever you marry, you will most likely have more than one infidelity and/or divorce in your lifetime.

But don?t let the numbers fool you. Man?s power of ignorance is stronger than his intelligence, as Bush has demonstrated, so the happy ending is still there, for you, my friends. So I bid thee: follow the yellow brick road, drink from the fountain of youth and jump over the slough of despond, for "Love from one side hurts, but love from two sides heals? (Shakespeare).

Did you drink a beer for saint patty?
As I’ve said before, I think one of the most important steps into adulthood is to admit you are a hypocrite.

I’ve never really liked going out to packed bars with people, and I can’t recall any time I enjoyed enough to justify the cost and the sleeping in and the hangover of the next day. I think it’s something people do in response to the week of work or studying, or if they’re a bum, just because they have nothing else to do. They’ve been starved for social contact, so they go and shout at people in a hot room with music so loud that no one can understand them anyway.

But it was my friend’s birthday and St. Patrick’s Day, and with those hefty reasons stacked against you, it’s hard to worm your way out of a social call. First off the train we met with some other foreigners that I didn’t know. There was a girl, teaching at a high school much like my position, and she had come with an exchange student from her school—a high school student. So he’s like 18. I started talking to him and it turns out he’s from Minnesota, gosh darn wouldn’t yabecha. And he was a pretty witty guy, if a bit insecure about his age—but can you blame him? Still, if I were in high school here, I’d just hang out with the other high school kids. He applied through some program that lets him spend a year in the school here, apparently free of the responsibility to do any of the homework, and in spite of the fact that he had not studied a word of the language before he got off the plane. Is this really where my tax dollars are going? Well, not this year, if my income tax fancywork pays off.

The first bar was named “McMickey’s” or “McMarlow” or whatever and it was full of English-speaking foreigners who all had something desperate to say to each other. I crammed myself next to the bar and my friends started taking pictures, celebrating the great five minutes they’ve spent together sweating with other strangers. The crowd was your usual bar crowd: guys with wooden smiles talking to girls while they nod like a Labrador and pretend to wave or give even cheesier signals to their “friends” across the room. Then there’s the guys whose idea of a joke is saying a story louder and with more hand gestures. The women, well, the common bar-going women I know mostly shed their personality at the door, and just like to smile and stare into a guys eyes, nodding and saying “yeah” or “no” or a “no way!” or “that is so cool!” with more and more emotion as the conversation continues, then move on to someone new. Repeat.

I just kept saying we should get ramen. That’s the only thing I like to do past midnight. And it’s also the only place I can speak to people, other than in the street between bars, but in the street, you’re just trying to figure out how to get to the next bar. We never made it to a ramen place; I’ll just spoil whatever weak suspense I had laid out.

My favorite part of the evening was when my friend Mr. Mi started puking. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t out of sadism, it just forced me and a few people to hang out in the street and chat while he recovered. And also we got some drinks at a nearby convenience store (you never have to go farther than ten steps to find a convenience store in Japan). The only conversation of substance that I had occurred at this time, with Mr. G, who was telling me how he decided to call it quits with the JET program after two years to go back to his woman in the states. I’ve had two friends that have decided to do this, the other is quitting after one year. Both say that if it weren’t for their women, they’d stay.

The problem with falling in love is that it usually doesn’t fit into your schedule very well. I guess there's other problems with it too.