November 26, 2007
Kevin asked the 6 of us gathered at Thanksgiving dinner if we ever thought about how ridiculous it is that we're here in Japan.
And not ridiculous like, "Wow, guys, we really made it here!" Ridiculous like our day-to-day lives, living amongst Japanese people, sorting our trash incorrectly, pulling our chopsticks apart in a rude way, going to classes and stores and trying to interact with people without speaking a common language, but somehow making it work.
It's amazing that more of us aren't found quivering in dark alleys because we just couldn't take it anymore. I mean, everyday life isn't so bad. It's just sometimes a chore if, like today, for instance, I want to get a new watch battery, because mine is dead. But it's not one I can install myself. I don't want to bother my coworkers furiously filling out spreadsheets and stamping huge stacks of paper at breakneck speed. While I type on my website.
I don't want to look up, "My battery is dead. May I please purchase another that you install?" on the internet, because I've had enough conversations with Japanese people online to know that it will likely come out, "The electricity of mine is killed. Please install a clock in yourself?"
I don't even know if the place I plan to go to after work is the right place to go. I'm just hoping to walk into this watch store, hand them my watch with a sad face, and hope for the best. On top of all that, the Japanese are so accommodating, if, by some miracle, they figure out what I'm asking, and they don't actually do it at that store, I wouldn't be surprised if they hung up their work apron and drove me to the nearest watch store themselves.
Ridiculous is my constant fear that when I make plans with someone and don't hear from them at our specified time, I am terrified that I had been the one to misunderstand and stood THEM up.
Or there's the time when my neighbor called me the day after our awkward introduction (story on THAT later) with a cryptic phone conversation.
Me: Hello?
Neighbor: You have to get up early tomorrow. Right?
Me: No? It's Saturday.
N: Can you drink sake?
Me: Yes?
N: Okay!
< hang up >
Which left me standing, blinking in my kitchen wondering...okay, did I just get invited to her apartment? Is she coming here? Was she just taking a poll?
Anyway, Kevin's statement about our lives being ridiculous was especially true last Sunday. I had planned on having a dinner with the family I tutor in English. I get a text message in the morning informing me that dinner was at 4:00, which was a little early, but okay. Then I get another inviting me to come to Dragon Park with the family at 1:00. Sure! Why not?
And as I strolled in my house at about 7:30, it dawned on me that I had just spent 6 hours with four people who could barely understand a word I said, and I them. And it was still a blast.
I feel most like I belong when listening to music or watching a performance, and I always notice these moments just because it's so weird to feel like I understand something. After a rough day of classes or a tutoring lesson where I feel like I couldn't get anything across, suddenly I pass a music room where people are practicing their scales. Or my tutoring kids play me "Phantom of the Opera" on the piano before I leave, and it's like we finally understand each other.
And playing baseball and badminton with this family at Dragon Park, and later eating dinner with them really proved that there are some things you don't need a common language for.
Unlike getting watch batteries. Although, maybe the clerk will take pity on me, and in his accommodating way, he will just give me his watch.
UPDATE: I cannot, in fact, get my watch battery. After speaking 3 minutes of Japanese to my blank stare, he finally broke down and told me (in English) that it would take 3 weeks and $40 to fix my watch. While it costs $7 and 5 minutes in America. So...I guess I won't be telling time until I come home for Christmas. I hope the plane takes off at half past a freckle.
November 25, 2007
It's tough being a girl who lives alone in a country ruled by bugs. I've had to man up a couple times and defend my homefront from the massive onslaught of 6-to-100-legged terrors.
My friends say that the only reason for bugs is living in squalor, but I try to keep a clean house. Well, okay, it's cluttered, but with papers and clothes and stuff, not like food. Anyway, *I* think it's because I live on the first floor, AKA, the earth, where bugs live. Also my floor is made of fricking straw. I wouldn't blame a spider for thinking he was outside.
I have traps for cockroaches, and I've only ever seen 3. The traps are called "Gokiburi hoi hoi," which is really fun to say. But the fun ends there. I have left them out there since I moved in, afraid to look in or touch it to throw it away.
I mean, think of it: even a moron cockroach can tell when his foot is stuck in something. Would he keep walking in? No! His one foot would just barely be stuck, and he'd just chill out there, waiting for me to pick it up and dispose of it, giving him the tiny jolt he needs to wriggle free and crawl up my arm. Gah, I get shivers just thinking of it.
I also have a spray, which I have used for cockroaches I don't want to wait on and other large bugs. I've seen two centipedes, and they walk really fricking fast. They are really, really gross, and I killed them for their insolence. I also just about made my mom deaf, as I was on the phone with her at the time of one sighting.
Spiders aren't my biggest fear, but I probably see them the most frequently. The little ones don't bother me too much -- and by "bother me," I mean I don't feel squeamish about killing them. I feel a little bad, sure, because spiders are our friends, and they eat mosquitoes, but I don't have any mosquitoes and spiders bite just as easily, so, death.
But there was this one...He was a little bigger than the diameter of a pill bottle and had thick, black legs. He scurried across my wall, and I ran to grab the spray can under my sink. This spray can usually takes out cockroaches in one shot, but this little guy was tenacious. I kept spraying and spraying, and it had so little effect on him that, at one point, he actually ran towards me. TOWARDS THE SPRAY THAT WAS KILLING HIM. That guy had some spider testicles.
Finally, he fell behind my table, and all was safe. Or so I thought. My nagging brain couldn't leave a supposedly dead spider out of mind. I guess I've seen too many horror films or something, but sure enough, I finally put the batteries in my flashlight, and saw him under the table. He was slowly moving his legs. I need to say again that ONE SPRAY usually kills much-larger cockroaches, and I had sprayed this guy so much, I was actually starting to feel a little light-headed. Oh, that would just be a great how-do-you-do, wouldn't it, spider? Taking me out with you.
Well, I felt bad for my formidable enemy, and I didn't want him to have a long, painful death. A death, for sure, but I don't want to be cruel and unusual. But I couldn't just squish him with a paper towel, as I wasn't sure I could stomach feeling it under my fingers. He was a pretty big guy. Also, I didn't want a spider mess on my damn straw floor.
So I did what every normal person would do, and I laid a paper towel over him, picked up the biggest book I could find (Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon"), dropped it on him, and then vacuumed him up. It was quite an ordeal.
One of his brethren got me back a few days later, when I was nonchalantly playing DS, and I thought I saw a bug buzzing around. It was fuzzy, but I figured it was because I was focused on saving Princess Zelda. I only learned later, when I felt something on my arm, that it was a spider that had descended from the ceiling on its web, and it was unfocused because it was IN BETWEEN MY GLASSES AND MY FACE, OHMYGOD, EVERYBODY PANIC! Holy crap.
One final spider story. Spiders like to make their webs in the gaijin traps, I mentioned earlier: the 3-foot canals alongside every road in Japan. Of course, falling 3-feet into a spiderweb AND a murky stagnant pool of water only adds insult to injury, but it's clear to see why the spiders prefer it. Every couple hundred feet or so, there will be a cover over the gaijin trap -- for a driveway or something -- and apparently, this is where the juiciest bugs hang out. I assume they fly through the far end of the tunnel, happy as a bug, only to end up in the grasp of a hungry spider.
Now, I'm all for the spider in this Discovery Channel showdown, but as they have proven to me time and time again, spiders are dicks. You remember on "Price is Right" how one guy always does the calculations and comes up with a good answer like $3,000, and the douche after him just bids $3,001? I always hated that guy, and I was always really happy when the next douchette bid $3,002, just because she screwed the other guy who thought he was so smart.
Anyway, that's what the spiders do in these gaijin trap tunnels. One spider does all the scientific tests about windspeed and tunnel travel, and finally spends hours crafting a web right by the entrance. Then some douche spider comes along and decides to build his web RIGHT IN FRONT. And another does it to him! Until there's this gauntlet of spiderwebs that some bug would have to survive in order to make it to the original spider's tummy. Douches!
So that's why I think of "The Price is Right" and John Edward every time I ride my bike.
Anyway, I haven't seen a lot of bugs of any sort recently, and it always makes me think of this Calvin and Hobbes comic. I like fall, too.
November 20, 2007
These are some pretty old picture sets that I'm just now getting around to uploading. But YOU don't know that! It could have been taken yesterday for all YOU know. Unless you're some kind of weirdo who contrasts hair lengths in pictures of strangers on the internet.
Yeah, they're short. Shut up. I'm watching Heroes. Someone's about to make a bad decision about something that makes you question their long-term motives. So basically it's any character in any episode of either season.
November 15, 2007
Some new pictures for you today.
First, a few shots of my pilgrimage to the mecca of Costco.
Next, some pictures from my school taken at the annual firedrill.
A fun fact about the firedrill -- when the fire marshal safety guy lectured the students in the gym, he asked them a question at one point. Like almost every time someone asks students a question, they all remained silent for several moments. However, since I had no idea what the heck the guy was saying, I unfortunately chose that moment to scratch the underside of my arm.
The guy brightened up and pointed to me, saying one sentence I understood in Japanese: "Only one person?!"
I have no idea what I answered or admitted to doing by raising my hand. But after that, I did my best impression of blending in to the gym mats, so maybe no one noticed.
November 14, 2007
I do not have a car in Japan, much to my dismay in the sweltering heat of summer and the upcoming dead of winter. But also, much to the delight of my wallet.
I always assigned gas, insurance, and repairs as annoying but necessary side-effects to having a car, and now that I am without one, it's fun to watch the yen stack up. Sometimes I pile all my yen in my spare bedroom and swim through it like Scrooge McDuck. Unfortunately, calculating exchange rates, a room full of yen comes out to about $3.50. Luckily, though, yen are lighter than pennies, and thus easier to exhale during a hearty swim.
So now I bike to school, to friends, to the train station, basically wherever I need to go within a 5 mile radius. I've never really worked out regularly, and I look pretty much the same, until someone drops a book or something on my thigh, and it makes a metallic clang. Yeah! Now if only I had to do sit-ups to get to work on time. THEN I'd be looking buff.
But there are some cons that come along with that, which I will illustrate via use of fancy bullet points. Who doesn't love bullet points?!
- To remember when riding a bike in Japan
- No one wears helmets. Which is worse: bucking the unbuckable system and awkwardly sticking out even more, or painting the sidewalks with my face? Clearly I have chosen to blend in. (Added bonus: possibly blending in...to the ground!)
- You can't listen to music while biking.
- Well, actually, you can, but then you won't hear the car that's about to hit you. Which is always nice.
- If you do listen to music, you don't have the luxury of pretending you're just on speaker-phone when you jam out to your favorite song, like you would in the car.
- Other bikers do not appreciate it when you belt out tunes, suddenly catch sight of them right beside you, stop abruptly, and turn beet red while you wait for the traffic light to change. It makes them feel awkward. Stop making people feel awkward!
- Biking through a swarm of bugs is really, really gross.
- Do not yawn while biking.
- Don't mouth "thank you" to drivers who let you pass. They speak Japanese.
- If you are 1 minute behind schedule, you can't just "step on it." You miss your train.
- There are 3-foot gaping canals on the sides of all roads, hilariously named "Gaijin Traps." This is because you will someday fall in one. Possibly on your bike. I hope you still have some baby teeth you can afford to lose.
- It is really awkward when you come up behind people walking slowly on the sidewalk, and you don't know how to tell them you're there, much less in Japanese, in a polite, non-threatening manner.
- A bike bell is a good way to let people know you exist.
- A squeaky handbrake can also let people know you exist. And it always scares them to death.
- The Japanese word for "biking" is NOT in fact "baikingu."
- The word "baikingu" in Japanese means "viking," which oddly does not mean "king of the Nordic seas." It means "buffet."
- When your English teacher asks you what vikings have to do with buffets, don't answer, "Uh, maybe smörgåsbord is a viking word?"
- He will not understand your American accent when you say "smörgåsbord."
- You will also not be able to spell "smörgåsbord."
- Finally, you will become hungry enough to go biking to the nearest viking restaurant, which serves, oddly...Indian food.
So that's my list for you. That's what I've experienced on my bike since I've been here. Hey, at least I don't have a car. I think falling into a Gaijin Trap in one of those would suck significantly more. I'll let you know when I have to rent one when my parents come. Unless I can convince them to sit in my bike's basket...Yes...Yes.
November 13, 2007
It's strange being on the other side of education. I'm constantly surprised by the thoughts and feelings I have as a teacher, and then realizing that my old teachers might have felt the same way.
First, calling on kids. I hate it. Our school uses a point method, which gives students an incentive to answer. Often in Japan, the students know the answer but are too afraid to speak up. Then, some students try really hard, but answer incorrectly. And of course, some kids are just geniuses and have a paper cluttered with points. So when a bunch of arms shoot up, do I call on the one who raised first? Do I call on the shy student who never answers, but might get it wrong and feel terrible? Do I call on a girl, since the last two answerers were boys? Or if it's a hard question, do I call on the genius guy waving his arm around like he's flagging down aircraft, or do I wait for one of the more shy students?
I had no idea the mental torture teachers have to go through.
Then the tests. I want them to do well. I make sure they know points we've touched on. In the review lessons, I hint and wink: "TIPPING is an important word to know for American restaurants. Might want to write that down, HINT HINT." Then I feel so bad when I have to mark something wrong. I want everyone to get A's, even though it would look really suspicious if they did. And that's not the way school's supposed to work anyway, right?
I just never knew that the teachers were secretly pulling for me. When you have a real hardass teacher, you sometimes think they just like to see people fail. Well, I guess I can't speak for the whole world, but what would some 60-year-old have to gain from tricking a teenager for 9 months and never seeing them again? They just wanted you to learn the damn material.
I'm also surprised at the time outside of school I spend on work. I worry in the shower that my lesson plan has flaws in it. I think about how the last one had problems, and how I can make the next one better. I used to get essays back, of course not being so self-centered to think that the teacher had only read mine, but not imagining this person going through a whole grade's worth of papers and that mine was just one thin paper in the bunch.
But coming to these realizations has helped me in other ways. I also know that I'm not their only teacher, and they have other lessons to worry about. I know that they have lives and interests outside the classroom, and maybe they're having a bad day. That while English may seem like their only interest for 45 minutes of my day, they spend the other 7 hours pretending all their other subjects are their only interest.
It's also teaching me to view my life from a broader perspective. Here I sit in the teacher's room, worried about what I'm doing wrong, worried about the fact that I wear hot-pink sweaters to work, while everyone else wears neutral earth tones, worried about what I'm doing wrong, if I'm eating at the right time, if everyone is laughing and judging me...until I remember that everyone else has their own lives to worry about! Everyone else is having their own dramas of finishing work and fitting into the system, being a working cog, trying to balance their work life with their home life. You know, being real people.
And for all the standing out and feeling like I don't belong, it's when I'm level-headed enough to realize this that I feel the most accepted. Or I could be completely wrong, and they're all laughing and thinking, "Well, life sucks, but at least I'm not wearing a hot-pink sweater and eating at the wrong time like that moron." And if so, well, I'm at least happy to be of service in some way.
November 11, 2007
Here are some pics taken from the Halloween party at Morgan's House.
And some accompanying videos.
Quailman Benchpress - I think early '90s theme songs should cheer on professional weightlifters, too.
How Do You Like Nancy Now? - Irish Dave likes constant updates on how you like various things at various points in time.
And just so it doesn't look like I only post embarrassing videos that I myself don't happen to be in, I give you this.
Kappa Andrew Ryan from Bioshock - Yeah, my friends quote video game cut scenes at parties. Don't yours?
November 06, 2007
Something interesting happened a few days ago.
I was out eating sushi -- you know, because the day ended with a Y -- with my friends Jamie and Kevin. We like to frequent a kaitenzushi place between Kevin's and my apartment called Sushi Ondo. Kaitenzushi is an amazing invention where sushi travels around a conveyor belt, and you pretty much grab whatever looks good to you.
But I'm pretty picky, and the conveyor-ing selections of fish eggs and crab brains don't always tempt my palate. Well, there's other "normal" sushi items conveyor-ing as well, but you never really know how long it's been spinning right 'round, or whether or not Young Shota-kun has sneezed/poked/kanchoed your delicious-looking fatty tuna.
So there's a handy touch-screen ordering system just perfect for the gaijin on the go, who feels awkward making various social faux pas by ordering food from a waitress. My friends and I were chatting there, having a great time. Kevin was politely nodding at the waitress who kept trying to talk to him, despite the fact that he has proved time and again that he does not, in fact, speak Japanese, even though he is of Asian descent.
We were almost finished with our meal, but we were going to go for one more round, when the screen went blank. Because I like to pretend I'm an exotic space captain from the future who pilots her ship somehow by ordering fish, I was at the helm of the touch-screen when this happened. Naturally I thought I broke it. It was still plugged in, but the light on the monitor was off.
Hesitantly, we rang the waitress call bell, which is another genius invention that should be implemented in restaurants across the country. Maybe not at tables that hold jackass teenagers, because I could imagine that becoming a problem. But in Japan, it's a delight.
We gestured towards the machine, and the waitress seemed to understand, grabbed the handheld part of the monitor, and retreated to the back of the restaurant. And we just kind of chilled. For a really long time.
It soon became clear that...we weren't going to be ordering any more sushi. Now, no one can be sure what REALLY happened. Even paranoid as I am, I can look back with a level head and know I didn't actually break the machine by using it for its purpose. And, sure, maybe the machine just really was broken and required a while to fix it. What I found a little weird was that no one tried to communicate to us to sit at another open table, no one said to wait a few minutes, no one said to just grab whatever was on the belt.
You may think that they finally realized we didn't speak Japanese and declined to explain the situation because they knew we wouldn't understand it anyway. You may be a fool. They did exactly what I have done when, say, someone calls me in Japanese and continues speaking Japanese, even when I tell them in broken Japanese that I do not speak Japanese -- namely run and hide in another room and don't come out ever.
But here's the interesting thing. I didn't care. I didn't bat an eyelash. Sure, I wanted my cake (yes, conveyor-belt-sushi places have cake), but we all kind of shrugged, looked at each other, and just knew that that was the end of our meal.
It didn't occur to me until the next day that I never would have acted that way in the States. I'm far from a bitchy customer, especially having worked as a waitress myself. But if I didn't get my food, I would still be a little confused, weirded out...hungry. I would find it really odd that a waitress chose to avoid making eye contact with me just because of a glitch that was neither of our faults, and one that I could actually totally understand. Things happen, whatever. All you have to do is come back to the table, make an X with your arms and point to the empty monitor cradle, and I'd get the picture. I wasn't going to flip over the table in anger. Was she scared of us?
I don't know, I did look pretty scary in my hot-pink cardigan.
But it got me thinking. Did I not find it weird at the time because I knew there was nothing I could (linguistically) do about it? Or do I just feel more comfortable in my own country, where I know it's okay to ask the management what happened to my dream cake, and I won't shame the waitstaff or make a big deal about it; I just want to know the Cake Status.
I remember when I went alone to Switzerland in 2003. I saw a movie in a theater there, and there were some really loud, obnoxious Italian moviegoers taking up the other side of the theater. I was about to shush them, as I would in America, or at least give them the stinkeye, but it suddenly occurred to me that *I* was the outsider there. I was the weird one in *their* territory, and maybe it was *me* who needed the stinkeye for not having a raucous and rowdy good time like them. I let it go and kind of stuck out the annoying experience to the end, although the movie was "The Incredible Hulk," so there wasn't much I was really missing. With my moviegoing sixth sense, I was able to infer that the bad guys shouldn't make him angry, and that they wouldn't like him when he was angry.
So in a way, I was proud that we all kind of shrugged and paid and went on our way and didn't really dwell on how weird it was that the waitstaff were whimpering under tables, hoping we left without incident. I think it means that we're learing to do what Japanese people would do, not questioning the hurdles on our path to cake, but accepting them and getting over it.
It means we're adapting to the society around us. Also, I bowed to a vending machine earlier today for giving me a grape soda. Maybe I've adapted a little too far into the culture, and I need to back up a little.