Hina-chan
Now Playing: Shakira
I’ve been running every morning while staying at H-sensei’s house, and I thought a week off would have gotten me out of shape, but I’m fine. The whole experience of coming here has actually been strangely energizing—probably from the stress (mostly good stress) of the adventure of Japan. I haven’t slept more than five hours at night—if at all, and that’s just catching up with me now.

I came back from my run to find a little girl playing with a ball-and-cup in the living room. It was the cutest thing ever. She is the most out-going Japanese person I’ve met so far. Although she usually doesn’t look at me when she talks, she chatters on and on. I played the ball-and-cup game with her—she’s intensely competitive, and she does nothing but smile and chatter. She gets so excited that her voice cracks in a kind of half-laugh half-talk that I couldn’t begin to detail the mechanics of. She reminds me of the girl, Chihiro in Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, one of my favorite movies.

H-sensei and I took her for a walk back by some ponds and small “farms.” As a side note, I haven’t seen a Japanese “farm” that’s bigger than half-an-acre. She immediately takes off running down the street—huge smile, looking back to see if we’ll actually chase. We don’t, but it’s just as much fun for her. She comes running back holding one of the many locus that are out. They emit a near deafening sound from the trees that sounds like a choir of men going “Reeeeeeee.” It’s surprisingly loud. One of the other male ALTs I ran into said how discusting he thought they were. That only made the picture I have of Hina-chan holding the insect even more beautiful. Y-sensei later told me that the sound they make is symbolic of summer in Japan. Hina-chan doesn’t want to hurt it, but is surprised that it won’t fly away when she releases it. So, she picks it up and throws it into the air again. And again.

Our walk continued through a bamboo forest, where Hina-chan immediately tried to uproot a small bamboo tree, unsuccessfully. I’ve never seen anyone so eager and happy to exert their will seemingly without any purpose in mind. She comes running back to show us the bullfrog she found swimming in a trough, and then spots baby turtles sunning themselves on some rocks by a pond. Then she tries to hit them with pebbles. She sneaks up behind H-sensei with a furry grass clipping that reminds me of Pompous Grass—soft, cottony strands that flare out like a horse tail, and she uses it to tickle his neck. When that’s not enough, she dips the end in water and returns for attack two. I'd forgotten what it's like to be so unselfconscious.

When we return after school, H-sensei is helping me study Japanese, when Hina-chan comes home with Mrs. H from school and immediately disturbs my studies. She tries to read what I’ve written with a proud, announcing style, smiling wide as usual. Then she pulls out her first grade writing book, with cartoons and all sorts of colors, which beats the hell out of my black-and-white grammar book. She’s a lot more advanced in writing Japanese than I am, so I just watch while she shows H-sensei and I all the Kanji (complex Chinese characters) she’s learning. Then we play a game of identifying the Japanese name of parts of the body. Someone says “ears (mimi!)” and it’s a race to see who can touch their ears first. I change it up to try to get a leg up by saying, “book (hon)” or “TV (terebi),” which is way across the room, so we both go diving for it. She won.

Another morning, she came up to my room and she started laughing about how I had my clothes strewn out over the floor. I couldn't understand her, but she was intensely amused. Then she started describing something about four people and downstairs. I went down and discovered that she wanted to play cards--specifically, memory, althought the Japanese version is called, "nervous breakdown," and they don't put the cards in a nice square order. We all lose horribly to Hina-chan. THen I teach her slap-jack, which they have to call slap-eleven. She seems to like the game, but I beat her horribly.

At school on Friday, Y-Sensei, the karate master, took me out to look for an apartment. It’s kind of the duty of the English teachers to help me get settled, but they’re so damn happy to do it. I’ve been driven around in cars, taken out to eat and put up in someone’s house for multiple days and it hasn’t cost me a dime. Or 10 yen.

Y-sensei takes me to the real estate office, where the air conditioner is broken, so it’s hot as hell. As anyone selling something will do in Osaka, they yell, “Irasshaimase!” which is roughly translated as, “welcome,” but literally as, “Your honor us with your presence.” They bring us iced green tea, by far the most popular beverage here, which I’m still getting used to since Lipton spoiled me with sweeteners. This is unsweetened.

The real estate agent sat down with us, and Y-sensei began describing the kind of apartment I want. “What do you need in your apartment?” he asks me. I tell him I need to be able to lie down somewhere (there are apartments where I can’t do this) and that I want a bathroom and kitchen. He talks with the agent for about five minutes, while I sit and sip tea. The real estate agent says a well-rehearsed, “Hai,” every three or four seconds when he’s listening. The, “hai” (yes) must be completed with a head nod, even putting a little shoulder action into it when he really means it.

Finally, Y-sensei turned to translate for me. “He says, he will take you to four apartments around town. What about location? Do you want it close to the station?” (the train station). “Yes.” “What about the school? Do you want it close to the school?” “Yes.”

The agent takes out some of the building floor plans and some pictures, smiling a lot and pointing at them. It’s all in Japanese, so I can’t tell what rooms are what, so I just smile and nod back. Y-sensei wraps up the conversation over the next ten minutes, and then translates for me. “He is busy today, but tomorrow he can take you out to see them.” “Okay.”

When we go to see the apartments, they’re all much bigger than I thought I’d be getting. One of them was big enough for a family. All of the prices were about the same, though, about 6 man a month or roughly 550 bucks. At two of the apartments, Y-sensei said, translating for the agent, “it will be very difficult to describe how to get here if you have any friends coming.” At another apartment, he said, “He says there are men that get paid by the hour for construction over there, so they can be loud. But they are not dangerous.” Another one was prone to crime and had the train not ten feet from the window. I finally decided on one that was perfectly near the station and the school, and also in a safe part of town, although it was a bit smaller than the others. Talking with some of the other ALTs later, I found out that they were paying the same rent as me in an apartment complex not a block away with rooms that were less than half the size. I think I owe it to Y-sensei, since I read that real estate agents don’t like to find housing for foreigners. They often jack the price up too.

After the apartment search, we picked up Hg-sensei and T-sensei and went to a nice restaurant. Parking is difficult. Everyone cheers when Y-sensei scores a spot right in front of the restaurant.

What's being white got to do with it?
Saturday, July 30, I’ve got the day free and so after I run and have breakfast with the H’s, I head out. Check out the pictures for this outing—I did a lot of novelty shots, and also some of the temples in town. After studying the Japanese map for at least 20 minutes, I figured out how to get to my apartment-to-be. I start wandering over to where the mall is supposed to be, when I run into one of the other ALTs I met at orientation in Tokyo. He’s this tall, suave, black dude from L.A., Mr. M. We chat and meet up with another ALT who’s been here a year, Ms. C. We go to buy a bike for M, and I come back later to buy one at the same shop. The bikes are pretty crappy, but they’re only about 50 bucks, and they’re great for commuting since they have a basket, generator light, and are of similar style to everyone else’s in town, that no one will want to steal it. You need your address and phone number to buy the bike because they register it, and the cops, as C explained, will come and check the registration randomly. She’d been checked twice. All that for a 50-dollar bike.

We checked out town and ended up going back to an apartment complex where two of the JETs where staying. Ms. C said something about how hot it was on our way up the stairs to the apartment, Mr. M leading the way. I said that I had a real problem going to my school the first time, dressed up and sweating like Michael Jackson at a playground. “I mean,” I said, “I sweat a lot, even for a white guy.”

“What’s being white got to do with it?” she snapped back.

Time out. Ms. C is of Asian descent and Mr. M is black. I admit I voice my own generalizations about races and cultures all the time; I’m not afraid to admit them—anyone who is uncomfortable speaking about these things is usually not improving their attitude toward people of other ethnicity or race. However, when I mentioned sweating more than other races, I honestly thought this was a physical characteristic. There exist different races because we evolved separately for some time. I refuse to simply not acknowledge the physical or cultural differences among people of different races. If I had said my skin burned more easily in the sun that a black person would she have taken offense as well? If you refuse to realize that humans are all different, then you’re repressing the problem of prejudice instead of throwing it into the ring. We all harbor our own messed up bias and preconceptions, but people nowadays like to think their perfect and we’re all the same, like that’s the final solution to our history of racism. I say, in the most eloquent terms I can think of right now, fuck that.

“I thought Europeans sweat more,” I answered.

“I get sweat blotches all the time,” she replies, but I’m the one with pit stains and a stomach stain for some reason. I don’t know why my stomach is sweating. I drop it at that because I can’t afford to piss off any English speakers in this town. Pity. It would have been one sweet telling off. The one time my multicultural education could have paid off.

We lounge in the apartment for a while and talk a bit. It’s a weird, superficial kind of talk since we all barely know each other. We just talk about what we brought for school. Well, they mostly talk about what Mr. M brought. Every time I try to relate a story I get cut off or ignored. I got the feeling that Ms. C had a thing for Mr. M, and so they’re trying not to talk to me. I’ve been in this situation before; it’s very frustrating. They need me there to keep things from getting awkward, but they’re deliberately ignorant of me, which is a disgruntling feeling. What I really hate is the people that flirt right in front of you, but if you hint at leaving, they both insist that you stay until they actually start kissing. That’s happened to me countless times.

Later, we meet up with another new ALT, Mr. M2, who I met at orientation. I click with him a bit more and we start trading stories about our positions. His predecessor said his placement was really tough. He’s in a junior high school where there’s been a lot of fights. His predecessor was punched by a student outside of class once, and I guess he responded by throwing the kid to the ground. In a separate incident, the ninth graders ganged up on some of the seventh graders, and soon the school was in complete chaos. Mr. M2’s predecessor went around throwing kids into bushes and swearing at them in Japanese. He threw one particularly violent student up against a wall and repeatedly bashed him into the wall. The principal later summoned him, and he thought he would lose his job, but instead, the principal thanked him since that student had a bad history of violence and “needed some discipline.”

This story makes me feel even more like I’m lucking out with my placement in the most advanced high school in the area. And there’s a freaking castle in the front yard. Mr. M2 explained to me that there is some selection in the JET program, where I had thought it was just randomized. I guess each prefectural board of education gets it’s pick of JETs, Osaka getting one of the top priorities. Next, each school within the prefecture takes it’s pick. Given this information, it would seem that I was one of the top picks in the JET program, so there’s more than luck to my placement, I guess.

I went home for dinner and met up with them later since Kishiwada city was having a festival that night with fireworks. I missed the fireworks—and I hear Japanese fireworks are pretty sweet, but I got to see all the women in traditional dress. Over half of them wore summer kimonos, I forget the name. It makes me wish my culture had a stronger support of our traditional dress. At American cultural events, women pay a bunch of money for something a Malaysian kid labored over that shows off their chest. Here, there’s a very intense and authentic connection to the past in the traditional dress. I’m impressed that the youth take such an interest in it. Almost none of the men are in traditional dress—I didn’t see any.

I met another ALT, Mr. C, who’s also new. Mr. M, Mr. M2, Mr. C and I all go to a nearby bar and have a few rounds of beer. We quickly have a beer before going in too, from the vending machines. It’s a little easier on the pocketbook. The guy that owns the place has an impressive hip-hop collection on display, one of the more chill albums playing when we enter. Mr. M, the black guy, later requests an album that I haven’t heard of. He tries to get us talking about hip-hop, but the other two ALTs and I don’t really bite on it. I tell him I like 2Pac, which he’s “down with,” but that’s the only lame connection I attempt.

I surprised myself how dominant of the conversation I was in the beginning—I had more stress from to work off than I realized. I mostly talked about my experience with the school so far, bragging about the students, since they haven’t been to school much at all. My school is much more advanced, so the students are there every day for supplementary lessons or club activities.

I also try to explain how much fun it is to spend time with Hina-chan, who made a fan today with dolphins, whales on one side, and trees and bugs drawn in detail on the other, but they don’t seem to care.

“You should start charging the parents,” Mr. M2 says, when I tell him that I’m trying to teacher English too. I smile. I guess you can’t really explain what it’s like to gain the trust and admiration of a child if they’ve never done it themselves. The secret is to give them your trust and admiration. And love.

Leaving the hotel
Now Playing: Greenday
The next day, we were supposed to meet our supervisors at the hotel and then go to our schools to meet the rest of the staff and begin the settling process, which I found is a very, very long process. In fact, by the time I’m settled, I should be ready to leave. So the meeting room in the hotel is all set up, air conditioned and a Japanese dude is running around giving all the ALTs glasses of water. There are seating charts, so the supervisors will not have to waste time going to meet the wrong ALT. We all sit facing forward, away from the doorway. It feels like I’m playing a game of hide-and-seek or something, where I’m waiting for someone to come around from behind to meet me. This next part is fitting for me, if you are aware of my habits concerning punctuality. Everyone’s supervisors begin to arrive and the meeting starts at 9:30, and everyone’s supervisors have come except mine. The director of Osaka prefecture, who had dinner with us last night, rattling on and on in Japanese, occasionally saying something in English, but almost exclusively in Japanese. So I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

I had been really nervous about meeting my supervisors, so I was practicing my polite Japanese phrases that you use to introduce yourself. I had even attended an hour long session on business manners at Tokyo orientation. It’s complex to explain, but there’s a lot of bowing. So about 25 minutes into the meeting, this young, attractive Japanese woman—hair still wet from the shower—comes in and offers me a weak handshake. “I am T, pleased to meet you,” she said, and sat down. I said, “Hajimemashite,” (A fancy hello), and skipped the rest of the routine. Immediately, she pretended I wasn’t there and began reviewing some of the papers set on our table. I think she was embarrassed, as punctuality is a huge thing in Japan. Soon after her, Hg-Sensei arrived, a man I had had email correspondence with prior to coming. I later said my, “Doozo yoroshiku onegaishimasu,” which is Japan talk for “you are awesome, I suck” or “you are very good looking, I am not attractive.” You get the idea.

They had thought the meeting started at ten, so they were very sorry for being late. I did my best to be polite and was very scared of offending them. I’m always very self-conscious about my manners, since my father has helped me realize how rude and ungraceful my social discourse is. That’s one thing that’s unique about me: I hate manners. I was excited to see that Shakespeare agrees with me: “The prince of darkness is a gentleman,” (Twylfth Night). If I ever act sloppy around someone, it is intended as a complement—it means I trust them and my way of showing my honesty. Usually, if someone is offended by my relaxed manner, they’re not someone I want as a friend. I didn’t think that the Japanese would jive with this, but later, I discovered I was wrong.
Hg-Sensei asked me if it would be all right if we stopped for coffee. The Japanese are big fans of iced coffee, “aeesu cohee.” He also asked if he could smoke, and I of course said I didn’t mind at all. T-sensei avoided making eye contact with me and sat up straight in her chair, apparently taking interest in the floor and the table. Her cheekbones were out of control. She must have drinken plenty of milk growing up. Hg sensei sat back in his chair and tried to blow the smoke out of the way. He spoke very relaxed English, with a mild accent. He reminded me of my Uncle Jim—never in a hurry and seeming to enjoy everything he was doing, as though he were forever sitting in a Jacuzzi.

I bought my first train ticket with them, which wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be. At the train station, one of the mechanics was fixing the ticket machine that you use to enter the station and it looked like a Rube Goldberg experiment inside—pullys, wheels and all sorts of gizmos. All that just to eat your ticket and spit it out on the other side. I think I impressed them with my manner, and even got a few chuckles out of them. They seemed to be very easily amused. The key was not to try to hard. My only flop was trying to describe a Saturday Night Live skit where Will Ferrel walks in wearing a Speedo with the U.S. flag on it.

Walking from the train station to the school was maybe a ten minute walk, but it was hot as hell and humid too, and I was wearing my backpack, so my pit stains had wrapped all the way around my shoulders, and there were blotches of sweat on my pants too. I was wearing a long-sleeve shirt and tie with slacks to make a good impression, but I was only impressing them with my sweating ability, so I gave in and rolled up my sleeves. I was dripping sweat off my nose despite my efforts to wipe my face dry.

I dropped my bags in a room by the main office, where my other two bags had safely arrived. Whew. Then we met the rest of the office, and I said my fancy Japanese phrases to all 8 of them. I also met H-Sensei, who I would be staying with until I found an apartment. He had initially wanted me to move in with him. He actually had built a new addition to the top of his house with a separate entrance that was recently finished, which was to be for the new ALT, as my predecessor told me, and also warned me not to take him up on the offer. He lowered the rent significantly, compared to other apartments, but she said he would try to live my life for me if I did. I told my prefectural advisor, Mr. K, who acts as a sort of go-between with the prefecture board and also as a kind of hold-my-hand guy for the other ALTs. I found out that he gets no additional income for doing this, and he’s a really nice guy in addition to being the only black, English guy I’ve ever met. So he advised me to lie about having an American girlfriend that was going to visit me very soon, and that I also wanted my privacy, and I did. Later.

All but one of the 8 English teachers went out to eat with us to a really nice and what I found out was a very expensive Japanese style restaurant. I rode with Y-Sensei, who is a really nice guy. He’s about 5 feet tall and speaks English like a game show host who’s flexing his stomach. He puts on a station with American rap in the car. I love this guy. He’s the only guy 40 plus that cranks the beats.

At the restaurant, we slip our shoes off and sit in our own separate room. Y pulls me aside and explains the Japanese garden in the middle of the restaurant to me. “You, see, it has trees and, ah, stepping stone? Do I make myself clear? Stepping stone?” “Yes, stepping stone?” “Ah. And, the arrangement is…ah…creative.” “Artistic?” “Yes, yes, that is the word. Artistic.” “With those trees, it must take many years to make the garden,” (I have to speak slowly and very clearly, which is very unnatural for me, and I also filter out large words and idioms). We go back inside and he tells me about a garden in Kyoto that’s made entirely of stone. I don’t quite know what he means.

The table we sit around is low to the ground, but there floor beneath it is cut away so that if you don’t want to sit Japanese style—crosslegged—you can drop your legs in. About half the people sit like me. In the center of the table, there are round grills. Y-Sensei recommends some things to me, and I don’t really know what they are. I know I’m getting some kind of beef and a vegetable dish, which turns out to have a raw egg on top when I’m served. I observe table manners, and I remember that you can’t stick you’re chopsticks in the food because that’s what is done with rice at funeral ceremonies. I look around and see people set them across bowls or with the tips up on the chopstick stand provided.

I entertain the guests with lame stories about America. I explain that we have a similar grill that we use when we have barbecues. Y-sensei asks, “Ah, so you do the barbecue on a…on a deck?” “Yes,” I deftly reply, and everyone gasps, impressed with my vast, expansive knowledge of American culture. Whenever I speak up, which is rare, the entire table stops their conversations and hang on every word I say. It’s a bit disconcerting, but I use my public speaking skills to slow down and make eye contact with everyone. One strange thing, is that there are frequent gaps in conversations, and everyone will sit in silence, staring at a spot on the table, waiting for someone to say something. If that happens in America, someone will almost immediately say something, make a joke about the silence, or make a stretching noise or something to avoid the dreaded silence. I like that they’re comfortable with the silence.

The food is amazing. The best beef I’ve ever gotten. The vegetable dish has a more discreet flavor, but also good. When we’re finished, I hear them discussing the bill, and, although my Japanese is shaky, I think I heard 12 man en, which is about $1200 dollars. Yikes. What a welcome meal.

At the end of the meal, T-sensei said they had gone in on a gift for me—a hanko, which is a stamp the Japanese use in place of a signature. You don’t want to loose your hanko. Usually, foreigners get their name in katakana, the phonetic alphabet for incorporating foreign words, but they had gotten me an actual kanji hanko. I later told other ALTs this, and they told me that was very rare to get. The first character, “bu” means warrior or samurai, Y-sensei explained. “This character is, ‘rai,’ which means ‘to come.’ So it means, ‘a warrior is coming!’” This got a laugh from everyone, and another when I told them that I am a descendant of the Vikings.

Back at the office, H-sensei has some lessons and texts that he has me look over. Another English teacher that I don’t know comes in and apologizes for missing my dinner. I notice several mistakes on H-sensei’s lesson, but I don’t mention them, since I was warned by my predecessor that he’s pretty arrogant about his English ability. I smile and say it’s very good. I get the feeling that that’s half of my job—saying, “Very good.”

Later, Y-sensei and T-sensei show me around the school. I feel a bit awkward walking because Y-sensei leads me and T-sensei seems to insist on following behind me. I?m used to walking next to people, so I try to wait up for T-sensei or to let her go before me in doorways, but this turns out to be awkward. Y-sensei excitedly approaches any group of students he can find, and explains that I am the new ALT in English. Then he asks me to introduce myself. I slow way down, and speak loudly and clearly to the point where it feels like I?m singing a Broadway musical in slow motion. We approach several groups of students and make our way to the gym, where girls are playing badminton and boys are playing some intense volleyball. This is the biggest group I?ve spoken to yet. ?Heeeelllloooo! My na?? I?m cut off by students trying to answer, ?Hello.? So I repeat it, and gesture for them to answer with a deafening, ?HELLO!? I introduce myself and then Y-sensei approaches a student and says, ?I know you have many questions for Mr. Bly. Please, ask him a question.?

There is always a long pause after he asks them to ask me a question. It feels awkward to me because all the other students are quietly standing, waiting, not one whispering to another or anyting. At last, the girl speaks. ?Eigo de?? (In English?). ?Yes, please,? Y-sensei asks, and I wait, smiling. Another long pause.

?How old are you??

?Ahh, a very good question. I am 25 years old.? This is very exciting to them, and deserves a brief conversation.

The next question is always the same whenever it is a girl. Without fail, it has always been, ?Do you have a girlfriend.?

I panic?this is a critical moment. Through my experience in teaching, I know there is no right answer to this question. Both yes and no are equally defeating.

?Yes, of course. I have many girlfriends.? This is very funny to the girls.

Y-sensei picks up my lead, ?Oh, yes, there is Lucy, Mary, Jenny??

We were a hit.

When it?s time to go, I say my formalities to the staff, ?Oisogashi tokoro arigato gozaimasu?Shitsurei shimasu?? I try to remember the phrase you use when you leave early, but I can?t. I hit my head getting into H-sensei?s car, and he says to me, ?You have come to a land of dwarfs!? and laughs. Whenever he laughs, he waits for me to smile first, and then tenses up his face, his eyes disappearing in a mass of wrinkles.

At their house, they put me up in a nice room upstairs and shows me around the house. It is a beautiful house with both Western and Japanese elements. He also shows me the apartment that was intended for me, and says that if I have friends or relatives that they are welcome there. He really is a very nice man, if a bit arrogant.

Ms. H?s wife is a very neurotic woman. She chatters on and on in Japanese?speaks no English, and I can?t really catch any. One morning, H-sensei told me that she doesn?t sleep very well at night?sometimes only 2 or 3 hours. ?That is why your laundry is done this morning!? he says, doing his odd pause-smile-laugh. I appreciate that she speaks Japanese to me?sometimes people will not speak at all if they don?t think I can understand, but she speaks so quickly and repeats herself over and over. I don?t think she realizes how poor my Japanese is.

My first night there, immediately before dinner, I tell H-sensei that I?d like to go for a run because I?ve been caged up for the last week. He is very excited and asks, ?Oh, running is your hobby?? ?Well, yeah, I guess it?s one of them, yeah.? ?Do you have a good sense of direction?? ?Yes. Yes I do.? ?Ah, I will accompany you on the bicycle. How far would you like to go??

And so he takes me to a large manmade pond and to some nearby temples through the crazy streets of Kishiwada. Japanese streets don?t usually have names, and the city isn?t laid out in a block pattern, so anything goes, really. I don?t remember street names anyway, so it?s no better or worse for me. The streets are ridiculously narrow. Our one-way alley is about as wide as their two-way street?no exaduration. Of course, are much smaller. They remind me of Bonsai trees?just like the normal thing but smaller. In fact, I?ve found everything in Japan is smaller, faster and has Internet access.

We wind around lots of streets and I memorize the way by spotting landmarks. Right by the vending machine, straight by the lady with the hose, left when a dog crosses the road, etc. I?m blown away by the temples, when we arrive. They are beyond description. H-sensei leads me through the temple area and I feel like the white, American slob I am in shorts and a shirt half-soaked in sweat. People are praying at these small shrines that look like wells. When they approach a temple, they pause in each doorway and bow very purposefully. I came back with my camera, and that seemed very ironic to me, that I would take pictures of Buddhist temples?Buddhism preaches nonmaterialism, and my camera is the opposite, a relic of the information age.

It?s hot here. I take as cold a shower as I can before eating, but big blotches of sweat appear on my thighs, back and chest.

My Japanese level is probably at the most frustrating level it will get to. When I listen to the H couple talk, I can pick out just enough words to completely misinterpret everything. Example, I might pick out of a one minute talk, ?Bly-san?bicycle?work?jump?green.? So I figure H-sensei said, ?Bly-san rides bikes to work and jumps over a fence that is green,? when really he said, ?Pass the soy sauce.?

He and she both are intensely into nutrition, and H-sensei explains that this is because they see lots of T.V. shows in Japan about health. He drinks a shake in the morning with leeks and other vegetables, takes plumb extract supplements and other witch doctor supplements, and they make their own yogurt.

His wife is an excellent chef. She was worried about what I would eat, but I say, ?Whatever you cook, I will eat.? A funny thing about Japanese culinary customs: They take the utmost care in preparing a meal that comes in tiny, neat packets, organized like an obsessive compulsive man?s (or woman?s) suitcase. But when it comes time to eat, it?s really time to eat. Slurping noodles, spilling off the plates and picking up dishes to get that last bite of rice. Mrs. H burps frequently and without embarrassment. This is very relaxing for me?I hate the Western standards of good manners. It?s an ironic pattern that reminds me of how I used to play with Legos as a kid. I would set up a beautiful structure, stand back to look at it, and then my sister and I would scream, ?Let?s wreck it!? and suddenly we were Godzilla or King Kong. You say, ?Itadakimasu? before eating, and then you destroy your food. I have no problem adjusting my eating habits to this standard.

The Spirit of Japan
Now Playing: Rachel Yamagata
On Friday, July 29, my third day at school, Y-sensei takes me to the real estate office to sign some paperwork. The A/C is still broken so it’s hot as hell, but people are smiling and serve us iced tea again. I sign where they tell me to and the agent photocopies a map of the city and where my apartment is, which turns out to be a lifesaver in helping me find my way around town.

We go back to school, and Y-sensei does yet again his favorite activity—showing me off to the students. Among other groups of students, I get to meet the Ju-do club, the ken-do (sword dance) club, and the dance club. I’d never seen ken-do, and I guess students have to practice moving with the sword for years before they begin actual sparring practice. They look very professional in their robes. The dance club is by far the most intimidating, and Y-sensei asks me if I’d like to see them perform. I can’t say, “no,” but I’m not quite comfortable getting a private performance. “Yes, of course! I love dance!” They do their routine and we move on.

We pick up H-sensei and T-sensei at the office, and go out for food. We go to a noodle place, and Y-sensei recommends a dish of cold Udon noodles of some kind. I can’t read the menus yet, so I go with it, even though it doesn’t sound to appealing. He gets me the hugest size possible—everyone thinks I can eat like half my weight at meals, but he gets the same size too. I ask Y-sensei about the martial arts, and he launches into his explanation about them and what they mean to him. They also talk about flower arrangement and the tea ceremony, both being clubs at the high school. He asks me if I understand flower arrangement. I don’t really know what he’s asking, so I say no. He says T-sensei is an expert and tells her to explain it. She smiles, mumbles, and puts her had on her forehead.

“I think if you have interest in one of these,” Y-sensei says, “you should study it, and you will discover the spirit of Japan. I started Karate-do with my son eight years ago, and I have liked it very much. I will probably do it until I die. You see, most people, ah, foreigners think it is just an activity, just a sport. But it is…ah…”

I interject, “There’s a philosophy?”

“Yes, yes. A philosophy. Each do (study) has it’s own philosophy or idea, and if you study it, you will understand.”

Everyone finishes their meal before me. I don’t know how—I was slurping as fast as I could.

On the way back, I saw my first Japanese car accident. As we’re approaching the cars, Y-sensei grabs at his seat-belt, for fear that the cops will see him. The roads are so freaking narrow, it’s no wonder they don’t have more accidents. Maybe if I study philosophy of Japanese driving, I will understand.

Leaving Tokyo
Now Playing: Who has time for music
Leaving the hotel, I kind of latched on to this half Japanese dude that we’ll call Mr. Y. He’s a pretty chill guy. Not arrogant or obnoxious like a lot of people I’m running into, but a little shy. We talked on the Shinkansen bullet train and we got to see the looks of rural Japan. There’s not a lot of rural Japan. I was expecting large rice fields and expansive gardens. No. The rice “fields” were squished between residential areas, with tea and other gardens too. It’s sort of like someone played Tetris with vegetation and residential architecture. We also saw Mt. Fuji. There was less lava than I expected. Much less. None, in fact. But it was still sweet. Pictures coming soon, I promise.

At the hotel in Osaka, which was significantly smaller than the Tokyo one (check out the picture of me in the bathroom), we had a short orientation meeting. It consisted of us going over the schedule for the next couple weeks and the fun business side of being an ALT—all the paperwork we had to do and stuff. The woman director spoke most of the time, and she had a heavy accent, although an expansive vocabulary, which seems to be the trend with Japanese. They are encouraged to learn to read and write a lot of English to get into college, but they don’t speak much. So she spoke very deliberately and with a very short but very noticeable pause. Still, it was many times over better than whatever childish hold on her language I had. After almost everything she said, she repeated, “Thees-ees-vary impotont. Plees-do-not-loos thees,” or, “Plees, do not-be late- too thees. In Jahpahn. Eef – you – ah – Layt – you wiww – loos – da – toorahsootoo (If you are late, you will loose the trust).” I think I will lose the trust very soon. We signed our contracts and the man said, “Now you are ours. You cannot escape!” followed by a nervous laugh from everyone. Is he joking? This is as funny as Japanese humor gets. Unless you like the guys on Japanese T.V. that do weird dances with sound effects. That’s pretty good too.

After the painful seminar/meeting/orientation, we had a crazy good feast of Japanese food and introduced ourselves to the group, including the prefectural directors—two dudes and a woman. My speech was thus:

“(sigh into mic) I’m --, and I’ve come from Minnesota in America. I’m very dizzy right now, and I’ve been sleeping less and less each night I’ve been in Japan. So if you have a lot of work, please call me, I’ll be up all night, and I’d be happy to help you prepare lessons. Ah, I’m teaching at Kishiwada senior high school (aaa, soo desu ka from the directors) but I don’t have anywhere to live yet, so I’ll probably set up a cardboard box near the school. Feel free to visit.” I don’t know if the Japanese thought it was funny, but at least the English speakers laughed.

Later, Mr. K, our prefectural advisor (PA), took us out to a bar. JETs are not all party animals like myself, but instead are mostly academic or in their own world. This makes socializing difficult, I found. Instead of talking about how I “totally pissed off that dude in the hotel, man, oh, I don’t even believe I said that, you know?” we talked more like, “but did you consider the cultural tensions between and within the groups of South Africa?” which is cool to, don’t get me wrong; I like a little social commentary like the next guy, but usually when people get to topics like that, they tense up and don’t really express what they think, for fear of sounding like—god forbid—they have… a PREJUDICE or BIAS. Such filthy words. I will repress them from my memory immediately.

JETs: a psychological perspective
Now Playing: Japanese Pop still. There's just no other music like it.
I promised myself I’d stop making fun of the people here, but there’s so many head cases here. Then again, I’ve met some really cool people that are going to make great teachers. The odd thing is, we’re all here in this sweet hotel for two days, then we split for separate parts all over Japan, probably never to see most of each other again. I’m using pseudonyms for everyone, just because.

Definitely the most cool and coolest person I’ve met so far is a guy that calls himself Prince, but spelled, “Prins” for whatever reason. He’s a suave black guy from L.A., and the first time I met him was at the large orientation gathering we had in a ballroom. He got this girl angry because he tried to help her when she was putting her dress coat back on. He is sooooo smooooth.

Then there’s one of my roommates, who’s a skinny Asian guy. Let’s call him Mr. T. There’s a lot of people of Asian descent on the program in general, probably out of their own cultural interest. Mr. T is really talkative, but he gets excited about everything a little too easily, and turns the topic of any conversation onto himself somehow. I haven’t quite figured out how he does this. Let’s say we’re talking about, I don’t know…Pizza. I might say, “the pizza is really good here” or something. He would reply, “Oh, man, I can’t believe I’m functioning on 7 hours of sleep. I never knew I was this mentally tough.” And he never finishes a statement without this nasal laugh, “Nyehehehe,” which is particularly charming.

The other roommate I have, Mr. N, is a really nice guy. He has a goatee and hair down to his shoulders. He does have one habit I think he should change. This has to do with the cute Japanese school girls that have some tables set up by the orientation rooms in the Hotel. Someone commented on how cute they were and he said, “yeah, don’t you just want to take one home with you?” He said this more than once. Sometimes unprovoked. Some things you just don’t say out loud. Like that last phrase, or, for example, I would put this one on equal par with it, “I’m a convicted sex offender.” Maybe I’m being overcritical. I guess I’m old fashioned that way.

During the senior high school seminar, there was a current JET teacher that demonstrated some team teaching with a Japanese English teacher. He spoke in a comatose inducing calm voice and had a series of catch phrases he would repeat to avoid saying anything of substance like, “All right,” “good stuff,” “How are we feeling?” “It’s awesome,” “So cool.” I could have said anything to him and he’d be floored. Example: I could have said that the sky was blue; his response would be something like, “Whoa, yeah, I never noticed that before! All right, that’s good stuff. Definitely cool, definitely cool, it’s like I have a whole new perspective on life. Thanks, man.”

I went out with some of the other Osaka people last night and met some nice people. Ok, I met one nice girl, some ok people and a few head cases. One man I will mention is Potatohead, who’s younger than me, but looks 40. When he coughs his whole face flushes red. It’s kind of creepy. He was a history major, but he knows a little about everything. And by “ a little,” I mean everything. He puts his mouth on autopilot and periodically checks to see if you’re still sitting with him. If you want to actually respond to something, you have to hit the table and yell. He still won’t take notice or stop talking, but when I used this tactic to get him to pay his part of the bar tab, it worked.

There’s such a diverse collection of people here, I sincerely wish I had more time to get to know people. Even though there’s a lot of immature people and idiots, there’s also some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, which makes me sad that we all split for other ends of the country tomorrow. There’s Andrew 1, who is my age, and I just found out he starting his own web-hosting company and may host pizzaninjas.com in the near future. He and his friend Andrew 2, who’s one of the most genuinely funny people I’ve ever met. Andrew 1 and 2 both met at a summer camp in Japan last year. They’re going to be awesome teachers.

I thought I would be one of the more immature people here, but I have been sadly mistaken. I’m not easily offended or one to demand respect, but we’re being put up in a hotel that’s nice as hell with people going way, way out of their way to help us with anything, so I feel there’s some order of respectful behavior due. I’ve overheard people talking about anything from “doing Japanese girls,” to “smoking a shit-load of pot.” If that must be done at all, at least do it at the bar or in a hotel room, but there’s Japanese staff and even young Japanese school girls in the halls. At the banquets, where Japanese hotel staff wait on us left and right, there’s people that criticize the free food and become complete asses. For the most part, people are pretty cool about it, but this dude next to me at lunch today was yelling across the dining room to his “homie” and doing these ridiculous gestures. What an ass. People are treated like princes, so they think they’re kings. I almost took my belt off and had at him.

Mushy
Now Playing: Guess. Japanese Pop
There was a big reception after the first full day of orientation, and I ran into an Olaf classmate—Gretta something. This story is testimony to my smoothness with the ladies. This beautiful blonde walks up to me and says, “I know you…” She looked very vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why I knew her or what her name was. On a side note, the best relationship I’ve ever had with a girl started out this way, ironically. I replied, “good for you.” Anyway, it turned out that she was friends with one some of my closer friends at Olaf. And as my luck with women goes, she was just getting out of the JET program. Every good-looking woman I’m interested in has the habit of leaving the country I’m currently in. For the record, women have gone to the following locations to avoid me: Guatemala, England, Mexico, Australia, Spain, Ireland, Bangladesh, Alaska (it’s practically a country), and now I proudly add to the list, my own home country, the good ol’ US of A. Hey, you may be laughing, but it takes some very strong feelings to leave the country in order to get away from someone, and I am the proud perpetrator of those emotions. I love Japan.

I’ve concluded that Tokyo orientation could have functionally been replaced by a morphine shot or an equivalent tranquilizing drug. By that I mean that no real valuable information was given, but it was mostly to calm the nerves of people that have never taught before, or never traveled to Japan before. As a teacher of some experience, I know that no matter what you learn in a classroom, especially a two-day classroom, there are only two things that can make you a good teacher: strength of character and experience. Of course, there was the formality of the ministries and other parts of the government that support or are involved with JET welcoming the participants. I’d explain the details behind the government support, but it would involve a complex diagram and some SAT level words, so just imagine the complexity. I love Japan.

Throughout orientation, I was in a daze. I slept between 2 and four hours-a-night, on top of dealing with 14-hour Jet lag. I need every short-term memory cell I have, and this health deficiency didn’t help. When I speak to people, I often begin sentences without an end in sight, which fuels my sense of humor. You see, I’ll let you in on a secret about my personality. Most people are funny because they have a creative and intelligent comment to share. I am funny by chance—I wade into a sentence like a kid into a pool and just see where it goes. Most of the time: nothing. But once in a while, someone laughs, so when I say something funny, I don’t know it beforehand, and I don’t know why people are laughing, although a lot of the time they’re laughing at me, not with me. Under the conditions of JET lag, this posed a significant problem for my social skills, and instead of finding witty ways out of my rambling, I just trailed off or just didn’t make any sense. So I felt that I had to explain to people that I was usually an interesting person, but my personality was currently in the repair shop. I came up with all sorts of cheesy lines like that—you know, the ones that aren’t funny enough to make you laugh, but not dumb enough to make you groan, so you just stare at the person blink. Among other things, I popularized a pun for dismissing oneself from a meal: “Well, I’m goona jet.” To pull it off, you have to point at the person you’re addressing with both hands, smile and raise your eyebrows. I won’t end my paragraphs with “I love Japan” anymore. I promise. Even I was getting annoyed with that.

Now comes the mushy part. And as I write that, I know all you guys are thinking, “oh, he meets a hot girl,” and all the girls out there are thinking, “oh, he meets a hot girl,” and my mom is thinking, “oh, he misses me,” but sorry, I’m not that exciting. Maybe I’ll lie about that later. Being at Tokyo orientation was actually very disorienting. I don’t consider myself a naturally social person, and I was trying to give a good impression to some of the English-speaking people I’d be spending the next year or more with in a strange land, so I was pretty drained. When it came to bedtime, I really was looking forward to finally beating JET lag (pun intended) with a solid ten hours of sleep. I was very, very tired and dizzy, but sleep would not come. I just lied awake on my bed, constantly changing positions. I’m one of those people that will keep moving until I’m perfectly comfortable, making even the slightest adjustments, but I couldn’t do it. I felt very strange. Not lonely or sad, but insecure—like I forgot to pack something. I’d left a lot of things behind me, and brought only two suitcases with me to Japan. Meeting so many people without anyone you really know around makes it easy to lose track of who you are. I found myself acting different personalities as the situation required, and that really drained me.

Coming back from the bathroom, I stopped at the window. I could see Tokyo from the 16th floor of the Tokyo Reio Plaza Hotel, a spectacular clutter of buildings, lights and more lights, which is a very alien and imposing sight, but also very beautiful. Since I first saw a certain girl, at a certain time and a certain place, not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of her, as every cliche romance novel begins, and I thought of her then. Not for any particular reason, I guess, I just did, like I do every day, and that’s what makes this different from those cliche romance novels. They always have some over-thought-out reason for a guy remembering a girl, like, “the moon reminded him of the way she slipped her shoes on” or “the swirl in the peanut butter made him remember the cute creases in her smile." No, in my life I have remembered her many times, but not for any reason at all that I can tell. I might be walking to my car, folding my laundry, or doing my taxes and I think of her. And that’s all this was. Buildings, lights and her. I went back to bed. And one of my roommates snored. And one of my roommates tossed and turned. And then I slept. I love Japan.

Tokyo Reio Plaza Hotel
Now Playing: Two words: Japanese pop
Arriving at the hotel, I was in awe of the politeness of the Japanese. I’d heard stories, but nothing can you prepare you for it, really. I’m uncomfortable having people wait on me normally, I think it’s because I like people to be very informal and relaxed with me. Not in Japan. Spotless uniforms complete with hats and shiny buttons, there’s always a smiling Japanese staff member nodding and gesturing the right way to go. They led us upstairs to a room with our room key and a couple bags of books, pamphlets and papers. In addition to teaching guides and orientation materials, there were books on U.S. history and other books ready to make up for the obvious gap in my under-qualified American education. I love Japan.

The hotel rooms where actually pretty big. The toilets had many buttons. I pushed them. I don’t recommend pushing them. I no longer push them. Now let us never mention the Japanese techno-toilets again. The showers, on the other hand, I give the following generation x assessment: awesome. More water pressure than a fire hydrant. On the down side, I explored the ‘fridge in our room and found a very large selection of drinks. I was desperate for a beer—it was the same day as the flight and about 7 am Minnesota time, so I reached for a dark colored bottle, which turned out to be the Japanese version of Red Bull. I later found out that people are huge into these so-called “genki drinks” (Genki is Japan talk for happy/fine/well/no repressed emotion out of control at present). Apparently, since so many Japanese get hung over during the workweek, there’s a huge market for companies that make hangover cures or pick-me-up drinks charged with vitamins and semi-legal herbal ingredients. By semi-legal, I mean they are legal in Japan, but maybe not elsewhere. I tried to put it back, but a plastic shield had slid into place, blocking the return, and later costing me 5 bucks. I love Japan.

We were on our own for food, so I met a couple acquaintances in the lobby and hit up Tokyo. The streets were lined with large, flashing, fluorescent light signs that seemed to yell at me, “you’re illiterate now!” We ate at a restaurant and forgot about the shoe rule—off as you enter the table area. The menus had no pictures, so I tried to order what I thought was a rice and chicken dish, but it turned out to be a rice soup with some weird chopped up fixin’s that you put in it. It’s legal to drink in public, so my friend Mr. Z and I got some beers from a convenience store and just walked around the rest of the night. The best sight was a Japanese rock band that featured a Japanese chick rocking out on a guitar with a confederate flag while she screamed random words in English. Awesome. I love Japan.

The hotel provided most of the meals, which were amazing. Breakfast was easily the best breakfast I’ve ever head—a dazzling banquet, except that they served French fries. I suppose with the high obesity rate in America, they must think we eat those things 24-7 to maintain the weight. The coffee cups were so small, I had to go back 6 or seven times to get more. The same Japanese girl did the beverages every day. I think I offended her the first time because I filled it myself. By watching other people get coffee, I gathered that she felt it was her duty to fill my mug for me by reaching around from the back of the coffee dispenser and dispensing the coffee into my mug while I held it. The next time I got the hang of it—pouring coffee is a team effort. I love Japan.

The jet
Mood:  vegas lucky
Now Playing: What is this
The stewardess was Japanese and we all tried to impress her by ordering the Japanese option at meals. They didn’t have free alcohol, and I later learned that American Airlines is the only one that doesn’t. However, I did get my own touch-screen console that allowed me to watch Harry Potter 3, Kung Fu Hustle, watch our flight process on a GPS screen, and listen to Japanese Pop. Japanese Pop seems to be a continual contest to mix as many instruments and styles such that the final product sounds like three songs playing at once. You have to hear it to believe it. Also, I’m sure Japanese girls have many talents that I’m not aware of, but singing is not one of them. If you’ve heard the highest note on a bugle, then you have some idea. And as far as Japanese guitar solos, their musical quality is not dependant on what notes they play, but how fast they can play them. Why didn’t I think of that? So awesome. At this point it’s good to mention that many people I’ve traveled to this great country with repeat the mantra, “I love Japan,” as we come across these seemingly strange foreign cultural elements. I love Japan.

In the Narita International Airport, everything went very smoothly. Nothing like crossing, say, the Mexican border, where everyone is a drug trafficer until proven innocent. I present my passport, and I pass through immigration. My friend Andrew remarked, “Can you say, ‘Japanese efficiency’?” when we found our entire flight’s baggage lined up tightly by the baggage carosel. After that, there were current JET employees in orange to smile and point us the right way to go. On the bus to the hotel, I gawk out the window like an adolescent in an R-rated movie. There was a lot more green than I expected. It’s the little things, really, as many have said before me, that I got a kick out of. The way buildings have seemingly random styles, or how close their packed together. The city itself has no structure as I’m told and observed. It’s as if God decided to make a city, but was in a hurry, so he just dipped his hand in the skyscraper bin and threw it at Tokyo. The streets often don’t have names either. The advertisements were equally amusing. The Japanese advertisers use as many clashing colors as possible in an advertisements, as well as some cute cartoon of an animal, even if the animal has absolutely no connection to the product. Let’s say I owned a Japanese chicken company. I would obviously advertise with a pink billboard and a Kowala bear that barks. I love Japan.

Bye
Now Playing: Play what?
I spent the days proceeding my departure for Japan by saying goodbye to friends, including a small going away party, and not packing. I was very nervous about all the things I had to do before I left. I’m not normally nervous about these kind of things, but I had to sell my car, take care of financial things and business type stuff. It wasn’t like any of the individual tasks were very difficult, but I stress about anything that has to do with the government or a paper involves me signing my name. I was also finishing school the day before I left. I woke up one morning with a swollen jaw from grinding my teeth—I don’t consciously do this and the only reason I know is because an old roommate told me about this tic. I’ve developed have a click on the left side of my jaw when I open my it to wide because of the grinding.

It’s weird saying goodbye to people who you won’t see for a year and probably more. I had done a good job of isolating myself from people, mostly my former college friends, so the process wasn’t so bad. I actually feel embarrassingly bad that I didn’t sense I would miss most people. The girl I broke up with was not really upset, but then we had started dating with the end in sight since I was planning on going to Japan when I started seeing her. The three or so friends I’d kept up I wasn’t very attached to, except for Lawson. He's just one of those people you have a onceinalifetime understanding with, and you don’t know why, but you just click. I can talk about anything with him and it’s instantly amusing. I think we had a conversation about sidewalk cracks once and it was awesome. Leaving the continent makes you realize these kind of things.

I’m not very good at hugging people that are related to me, except my older sister, but she was in Hawaii. So saying goodbye to grandma was strange. I don’t really know what to say at goodbyes, since saying goodbye seems so superficial to me. The way I envision a perfect goodbye is me saying, “alright, I’m going,” and the other person saying, “ok” and then both of us walking away. Liv, my younger sister understands this. She was also in Hawaii at the time.

I eventually did pack, and looking back on that now that I’m in Japan, I did an awesome job. I had researched multiple sights on what I would need and wouldn’t. The best things I packed were cds, my cd player, my computer, camera, dress clothes, and 3000 dollars. I have to say, carrying large amounts of cash around is an excellent diversion. If I’m ever board again in my life, all I have to do is withdraw a few G’s and take a stroll in a public place. Dramatic action movie music starts playing in your head—you know the kind I mean; it starts with some strings and then a thick beat drops and an electric guitar plays a counter-anti melody. I think I just made up that musical term “counter-anti melody.”

The orientation at the hotel was pretty pointless. The only helpful part was chatting with some people going to my prefecture and getting our visa and plane tickets.

My mom really held it together until the last few seconds of my leaving, which really impressed me. I didn’t cry, regrettably. I wish I could break down at times like that—it’d score me a few more points in the Will I’d wager, but for some reason, my Norwegian ancestors have endowed me with iron nerves. I thought she was going to make it—we hugged and she just said, “Bye, Brendty,” but then she pulled in for a second and lost it. Hugging my dad is always weird—I always go for the handshake and he goes for the hug and the result is an awkward side hug.

They brought us to the airport in a bus, with our luggage in a separate truck. I won’t detail the airport procedures, but it was a lot of waiting and hauling large suitcases. I don’t know why, but I always think it’s so amusing to watch a skinny, attractive girl try to pull her ridiculously large bags. It reminds me of a wet cat for some reason—the way they sulk. Even more amusing are the guys that are not in their league that try to help them. That last image sort of encapsulates the male misconception of relationships—we have no idea what women want from us, but that’s no excuse to stop trying. I’d be a liar if I never did something nice for a girl I knew would never look at me again. And I am a liar, so I’ll say that I haven’t.