7/18, 3:17AM - Packing in the morning: I can't think too straight seeing as I've been exaggerating the liquidity of my already essentially random sleep schedule to prepare for solidification in Japanese time, 13 hours ahead. I ended my time here at Wade Ct. by giving a drunk, alcohol-smelling 18-year-old party girl/teenage mother a ride back to her son in Germantown. Now I'm checking things off on my packing list, listening to Christian bubblegum pop on channel 17, and preparing to culturally flatten the little chain of islands with the raw power of my Gaijin-hood.
A "Gaijin" is a foreigner. The Japanese attitude towards foreigners is strange. It is essentially: "you're obviously not Japanese... therefore... uh... well, therefore, you're not Japanese." However, the Gaijin, especially American Gaijin, are regarded by Nihon-jin (the native Japanese) as having a certain amount of bravado and mystique. It's a half-hour to Dulles, 3 or so hours until takeoff, a 6-hour flight to Vancouver, 2 more hours until takeoff, and 11 final hours in the air to Osaka. About another day. Hee-hee, I almost forgot my tickets. Wouldn't that be a hoot? I have my Armenian string cheese, but not my plane tickets. I guess I could just eat it at the airport; it might be hard to make it last two weeks, though.
Woman on the subway
7/18, 10:04AM - I'm on the plane, and have been steadily expelling gas, to the probable revulsion and mental anguish of the prim little British lady next to me. Behind me is one of those Educational Nazi-mothers, who periodically demands that her child read "just a little more" before the poor thing can go to sleep. I've dozed for much of the flight, making it go pretty fast for 6 hours. I wanted to save my real sleeping for my trans-Pacific 10-hour nightmare. There, I will whip out the eyeshades, earplugs, non-prescription sleep drugs, and maybe extra pillows. On this flight, I asked for another pillow and now the stewardess hates me.
I hope for two other things: that they will allow my huge bag, which was commented on, to be carried-on en route to Japan (it's innards are unprotected from manhandling by baggage-handlers). Also, that Japanese customs don't give me crap about the vast store of psychoactive drugs that I'm sending over. I only have an hour and 45 minute layover in Vancouver. Uh-oh, my sinus medication is making me drowsy.
Our bikes
7/20, 12:05AM - I am exhausted. A 10 hour flight to Osaka, and 3 hours of public transportation with James. Dinner and beer with his school principal (kocho-sensei).
7/20, 6:15AM - Wow, I was tired last night. I had a good rest despite having slept only around six hours. Actually, this is pretty typical of me, Japan or no Japan. Anyway, it seems my scheme to force my time zones into flux worked. As James explained, there's no daylight savings time here, so the dawn comes very, very early. Oh, regarding yesterday:lessee:James apparently lives in the Japanese boonies. It's nice though ; no crowds, and a great deal more character than smaller burgs in Maryland, or at least than Gaithersburg. The people here are absolutely thrilled when one throws the bit of Japanese one has learned at them.
In some ways, I'd think I'd never left the states: power lines, signs, metros, cars, people walking around in Western clothing. I guess it's hard to really get that feeling of the "other"; or rather, one has to hunt for the "other." Everywhere you look, there are brilliant green rice fields, like lawns of blades of giant grass, so green they look fake. Many of the cars are comically miniature, especially a certain type of very common van that James plans to buy in a few days. It looks like a toy. Even passing through the poorest, drabbest sprawl/suburbs of the dullest city (Osaka, by several accounts), I noticed an aesthetic consciousness that just isn't present in America. Maybe it comes from space being so precious here.
Temple spire
My pillow is hilarious ; it's about a foot long, hard as a rock, stuffed with beans, covered in a frilled blue case, and embroidered with flowers. I had trouble looking at it last night without cracking up. It's incredibly humid here, putting Maryland to shame. I should go out and take pictures. Blah. Lazy. James snapped at me for tromping on his bed as he slept.
Dinner last night was fun; it involved placing bits of meat (tripe, tongue, liver, beef) on a table side gas grill and serving one's self. This was followed by bowls of rice and noodle soup, all in the Japanese equivalent to "Denny's" ; very nice, relaxing, and unpretentious. There were two mildly drunk acquaintances of James's principal there, who were impressed (somewhat unduly) with my fledgling pronunciation of Japanese and my use of chopsticks. I'm afraid the world has transformed thus: a huge, globe-spanning America with little rebellious pockets of indigenous culture that one almost has to sniff out. Kocho-sensei told me my smile would pick up lots of Japanese girls; we shall see. He said this in Japanese, of course ; he was shy about his English, a common Japanese trait. English is regarded to be "cool," especially by the youth culture; I suspect western media barrage of being responsible for this.
English is compulsory in the Japanese school system ; by the time students are through, they will have had 10 years of English study under their belts. However, this study translates, in most cases, into little more than an academic knowledge of the language. A typical Japanese will either not know enough of the spoken language to converse, or be too self-conscious to do so, despite competence. Today we go to "English camp." Ok, take photos now, before it gets too late.
Rice paddies
I'm back; there are not really a whole lot of shots around here that scream "Japan." Plus, I realized that my rear bike tire is flat. I wonder if kocho-sensei (from whom we borrowed the extra bike) has a pump? I'm hot. Waiting for James to get up:Damn, there is the biggest spider in Japan outside my window. He might merit a photo, if I can flight my way through the maze of sliding doors that is James's house; I'm not sure if I'm supposed to re-close them all after opening. There are apparently 2-inch stinging centipedes (mukade) in the bathroom, and snakes in the laundry.
James tells me of a nighttime activity here called "bug-listening;" he also tells me the phrase might lose something in the translation. It is supposed to speak to and commune with a fundamental, not unpleasant loneliness of the universe, or something like that. Something else of note: James's intelligent toilet. It sprays your behind, dries it, and washes your hands with the water flowing back into the tank. It also hums to life as you sit down, and has several other buttons, functions, and even a little screen. I want one. It's easy to spend foreign money; you don't associate it with anything other than pretty paper to trade in for fun things, like tickets at a carnival. The dark, evil nature of money is gone.
Huge spider
Leaving the house is such an ordeal. Dear lord, James's alarm just went off ; it's typical of the army of beeping, pinging, chirping devices and automated nymphet voices sweetly ending every robot sentence with "kudasai" ("please") that, along with the intelligent toilets (public squat toilets are even better. You have to bring your own paper) are telling of an aspect of Japanese culture: this is a love affair with technology and gadgetry the likes of which the West has not yet seen. Spider photographed. It's hot. Return from a cool shower amongst the centipedes, and restored the integrity of James's artificial/conceptual doors/walls. The spider remains ; if he comes calling tomorrow, I shall name him "two socks." Stunted little vehicles add to the cumulative whispering roar of the highway that is too big to stop at James's wee town, "Kora-cho." The "Cho" means "town," I believe. There goes James's real alarm ; I don't know what that was before (turns out it was the town bell, which goes off every morning, noon and eve, playing a little tune.)
James in his bed
7/21 7:55AM - Yesterday, James took me to an "English Camp." It is essentially a big gaggle of early-teenaged Japanese girls (and a few token boys) with a boundless energy that, along with a massive overdose of curried rice, knocked me out around 9 last evening. I blamed it on jet lag, which was plausible (and probably partially true). There's something a bit disturbing about the whole situation here: all of these little girls seem to operate with permanent low-level crushes on all of their male teachers, and giggle about asking them if they have girlfriends and such. I don't want to go out there and face the horde. One has to keep one's gaze lowered at all times; the kids have a knack for sensing it and staring at one. Then you have to smile, or wink, or something. Jeez. I've been in this freakish environment for about 16 hours now:James tells me he's buying a car today. Everything at this camp feels as though it is part of a mythical magic land where anything can happen and everything is surreal. My brain isn't working quite right.
The main teacher is this Columbine Dungeons-and-Dragons asiophilic pervert named Kerry, who tends to fondle his pack of 16 year olds as he teaches them English. I bet 80% of the males in the JET program are asiophilic perverts (JET, or "Japan Exchange and Teaching" is the largest sponsor of English teachers in Japan, who are called ALT's, or "assistant language teachers," mainly by each other). I'm sitting here by the air conditioner with the male teachers, all of whom are sleeping, and probably will be for a while. I'm bored, have to pee, and want a shower.
Students at English Camp
7/22, 12:58AM - My lasting impressions of the English Camp turn out to be good. Then, castle/museum/shrine/dinner/home. Hot.
James in bed
7/22 9:53AM - I keep having fantasies of Holiday Inns, Disney Movies, tables you can sit at, and air conditioning. But then they pass. I suppose a bit of "culture shock" is good for one; at the very least, it allows one a greater appreciation and awareness of one's own place of residence. This is problematic in my case, since I hate where I live. Actually, I have a hard time with any strong sense of local culture, which is why Washington DC was bearable. Or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. Anyway, I was quite impressed with the English Camp; everyone was nice to me. It was fun being in charge of lots of happy, energetic kids on the whole, but they did overwhelm my low social and sensory thresholds at times. And I got paid! Y4000. "Travel expenses," they called it, to avoid breaking any laws, since it was, in actuality, payment for labor.
Horrors thus far: 1) killing poisonous centipedes with boiling water after discovering them lurking in the bathroom while I showered 2) typing URL's on James's cell phone 3) being asked by 15-year-old insanely giggling Japanese kids: "Can we touch your body?" 4) navigating through James's house: removing shoes and occasionally putting on drastically undersized flip-flops to traverse random stretches of impassable ground, constantly ramming my head on 6-foot door frames, and sliding walls apart like Agent 007.
Boy in Kyoto
7/23 5:21PM - Yesterday, James and I went to Kyoto. We looked at a supposedly famous temple (James read this and made me insert the real name, "Kiyomizu Temple." He also never left me alone thereafter about the "supposedly famous" thing) ate dinner, and went to a public bath. At dinner, I wanted to ask for the toilet (a distinction being made in Japan between bathroom and toilet), and, in my excited ramblings of attempted communication, forgot to make the toilet-bathroom distinction. What's worse, I said "public bathroom." The upshot was that the restaurant owner drew me a finely detailed map, complete with kanji (Japanese word-characters), detailing how to get to the nearest public bathhouse. Rather than stop him, I felt I'd rather he be assured that our communication had been successful, and that he'd helped me in some way. Once all of these unplanned preparations were made, James and I said, "What the hell" and decided to actually visit the bathhouse. We stepped off the beaten tourist trail of Kyoto and into the "dangerous section," where one might be subjected to such horrors as seeing a posted advertisement for phone sex (I sometimes wonder exactly what can happen to one in a country where everyone is 5 feet tall and guns are illegal). Along with hot, cold, and scented baths as well as a sauna, the bathhouse had an electric bath, which turned out to be quite literal: a pool of water with a good deal of current running through it. I tried it and lost feeling in my arm momentarily, then James tried it and his leg spasmed; we were laughed at by the regulars. The baths were refreshing and relaxing on a hot summer night, although it was a little bit strange presenting one's self nude before the young female attendant to ask for a rented towel (50 yen).
Sign in Kyoto
After the soak, I changed into my "Japanese-chick-picking-up" clothes in preparation for a "night on the town." What actually happened was that we failed to find any open clubs, but merely walked and metro-ed for a few miles, back and forth along the same stretch of Kyoto street, me solidifying my addiction to Japanese vending machines and the freakish sodas therein (out in the country, where James lives, there is a vending machine that sells lingerie. It is next to some kind of construction sight and industrial pipes.).
Unsweetened teas are very popular vending machine products there ; I remember one that tasted like a can of "cream of mushroom" soup. Anyway, we missed the train back to Kora-cho, and had to crash at another ALT's house. I only dozed for about 3 hours because it was about 90 degrees F and because I didn't get to take my bedtime medication. Early today, we three went clothes shopping for James, had lunch (some do-it-yourself Japanese pancakes called "okonamiyaki") and trained/biked back home. It's literally 90 degrees F in James's kitchen; "Hell's Kitchen.
7/24 12:23AM - I like biking around. It adds a reality to vacation and travel that is missing with car and plane rides. Tonight, James and I biked half and hour or more to one of those conveyer-belt sushi restaurants that you hear so much about (well, maybe not that much). It was wonderful ; we must do it again. Squid egg sushi that has been on its little carousel ride around the restaurant since the dawn of time isn't so superb, however.
Overall, I give Japanese food two thumbs up, especially for having tried everything indiscriminately; surely, if I did that in America I would come out with a much lower rating (there's some pretty nasty shit in the U.S. too:potted-meat-food-product, for example.) But Japan isn't one of those countries I would go to solely for the food, like India or Iran. Not to say the food wasn't good, which it was; it just wasn't absolutely ambrosia, as one sort of anticipates foreign food to be. However, this may have been a factor of James and I most often spending less than ten bucks apiece per meal.
Pachinko
In the restaurant, I practiced my Japanese on unsuspecting customers by telling them in earnest: "My sister is 8 years old." I got looks as though I was performing irksome psycho-social experiments as opposed to making attempts at communication: sheepish (ba-a-a-a). I discovered something: beer vending machines are more wondrous things than soda vending machines (this discovery was later refuted.) After dinner, I bought a gigantic can of Asahi, which I popped at the machine and carried home via bicycle basket, taking periodic slugs en route. Then we watched "ER" (ALT's are known to desperately watch any programs they find in English.) I like Japanese country life; one can enjoy the benefits of vacation "down time" without sitting for long guilty hours staring at movies in a hotel room between harried sightseeing. Here, the country environment provides relaxation, and a wholesome bike ride gives serenity and fights abdominal fat accumulation, provided the incremental beer purchasing is kept to a reasonable minimum. My bowels are still a bit abnormal. Bed.
Subway doors
7/25 11:42 AM - Yesterday was nearly the same as 7/22; up late, dealings with the school board (they expressed in their roundabout Japanese way that they were pissed that James had bought a car ; he might die and they'd have to do the paperwork), off to Kyoto: bike/subway/train, temple, dinner, bathhouse, club ; this time we found it, and were able to stay for 40 minutes before risking another missed-train fiasco. We were still given a wee scare since the train was having mechanical problems. We got home at 2:30AM, after stopping at a 7-11 for ice cream, drinks, and that unique Japanese pornography (displayed prominently on store racks and read on the trains shamelessly), which only fueled our romantic disquiet. I was moody ; probably medication irregularity after-effects. But James was good about it; I hope he doesn't kick me out. I'd planned to spend some time alone to give him a break, but I'd surely lose my way, being sign-dependant for navigation as well as (mostly) kanji-illiterate.
Subway riders
7/26 12:59AM - More administrative loitering in the morning, which was fun in spite of itself (I fell in love with the home-economics teacher.) Then, I was left to fend as James went to a private teaching session, and then a Japanese class (both in Hikone). This took 3-4 hours all told. In the mean time, I shopped a bit, had a conversation with a woman eager to practice her English in McDonald's (McDonalds in Japan is somewhat disappointing; it seems as though about ten dollars will buy you five chicken McNuggets), and took random pictures around a few blocks of Hikone. Then, during James's class, I slept on the pebbly ground of a shrine as Shinto spirits watched over me. My watch alarm woke me, and I entered the building as James finished his Japanese class.
I got to play a Koto (Japanese harp), which I had always wanted to do, and which turned out to be duller than expected, what with the (mostly) fixed-pitch strings. I met new friends of his, one of whom went to dinner with us, inviting another friend along. This was part of the sort of ongoing dinner I had this evening, from about 5pm to midnight. But I felt a bit less frustrated after tonight, knowing that there are girls out there, and that I can make them laugh. I'd like to invite this particular one, Risako, to go clubbing in Kyoto next Friday or some time, or at least see her again before I leave. Maybe she can be my pretend-girlfriend. Tokyo tomorrow, via Shinkansen (bullet-train)
English Camp student
7/26, 10:39am - I'm on the Shinkansen now, on my way to Tokyo. James and I arrive shortly. There is an indescribably lovely baby girl next to me, sleeping on her mother's lap. I realize that I can never have, never be something so beautiful. This somehow leads me to the conclusion that the beauty, wonder and spectacle of Japanese culture is actually very closely guarded: I will always be Gaijin/outsider here; funny, interesting, treated well, but never more than a circus spectacle. It's hard to be in this country in that respect. Once the novelty and initial culture shock wear off, one feels the alienation. The Shinkansen is very much like an airplane. The speed doesn't strike me so much as the silky smoothness of the ride. About 75% of the passengers are asleep.
Shrine stairway
7/27, 7:24pm - Getting off the Shinkansen yesterday (I'm on it again now), we walked around Tokyo Station a bit and were met by Keiko Miyagi, a friend's aunt. She's very very small and smiles a lot. I also gather that she isn't exactly a typical Japanese. We walked around Tokyo and took a boat ride on which I promptly fell asleep (I thought I'd offended Keiko, but James said she found it funny. Keiko found much of what I did funny.) Impression of Tokyo: big. Intersections are huge, buildings are tall and gray. Again, a distinguishing factor seems to be a subtly pleasing aesthetic, perhaps derived from the crowding and resulting ingenious architecture (no room for trashy vacant lots).
Hikone castle
Other Tokyo observations/activities: 1) in a park, we saw a purple tank-top and spandex clad jogger who was defiantly flicking off both traffic and pedestrians as he pranced across intersections and trails ; very "New York" 2) a trip to the top of the Asahi (at one point my favorite Japanese beer; now it's changed to Sapporo) corporate headquarters, where the view made it clear exactly how obscenely huge Tokyo really is; it's like New York or Philadelphia, but it seems as though some magician has performed a mirror illusion with the downtown, making it extend for eternity 3) A visit to the well known electronics district 4) an aggressively-marketing rickshaw driver whom James accused of being cute, after the driver bounced around and generally hammed it up in attempts to get Keiko, James and I to take the purportedly best tour of a certain Tokyo neighborhood 5) yet another SFT (supposedly famous temple) 6) lunch, somewhere:7) sore shoulders from having my big black blob of a bag strapped to them during the sightseeing 8) I got to practice my Japanese on someone, telling the first of what would turn out to be a number of girls that she was cute (me: "Anata wa kawaii des!" girl: "tee-hee")
Tokyo city-park sleeping man
Anyway, Keiko, James and I ate dinner, and pub-trans-ed our way to Keiko's house in a Tokyo suburb. There, I ate various hors d'ouvres and drank a sizable amount of beer and sake, getting somewhat toasted with Keiko's brother, Masao. James and I slept until 11 the next morning, toured Masao's college where he does some sort of mechanical engineering with wheelchair prototypes, and ate lunch at another conveyor belt sushi joint ; I polished off about $20 of sushi; I went hardcore. By the time we were mobilized and fed it was time to go back to Tokyo station, and Shinkansen our way back to Maibara station in Kyoto. Our hosts were kind, hospitable and loads of fun ; I got to party with Masao, chat with Keiko, and was variously treated to food, homemade or otherwise.
Tokyo has perhaps a higher percentage of pretty girls than Kyoto. It's funny how it seems that all Japanese girls are hot. But I'm quite sure that in actuality more Japanese girls are hot than American girls. Might I be turning into an asiophilic pervert like Kerry? Better sign up on the JET program:Here on the return trip by bullet train, I notice the car to be full of smoking, chattering businessmen, the rail to be rougher, and the air hotter. Gonna be a long ride. But I was glad to go to Tokyo; not so much for the sights but for the company. Sight-seeing is a bit overrated, I think. The frantic wide-eyed scramble to suck in culture like a Hoover is often counterproductive ; the sucking is usually better accomplished through relaxed social activity. I don't know what happens when one travels a country alone. Maybe you explode. But seriously though, American women are ugly. This is a problem.
Asahi corporate headquarters
7/28 8:38pm - We woke up later than we should have today, at 9am. Our plans were to watch the Toriningen (Birdman) competition in Hikone (a nearby city of a size roughly midway between Kora and Kyoto), which was to run from 6am to noon. As it turned out, uncooperative wind direction prevented the launching of any planes until much later in the afternoon. The Toriningen competition, by the way, is a contest between teams of engineering students to see who can fly the furthest out over lake Biwa in a glider. The fun part is watching 60% of the planes simply fall off the 50-foot platform into the lake. Some of them fly, though, and surprisingly long and far at that. A plane is launched, flies/drops for between 1 second and maybe a minute, and then the next plane takes about half hour to launch. So it's an exercise in delayed gratification.
Toriningen vendors have provided for the down-time by selling an array of carnival-quality food. Aside from eating, I swam about in Biwa and James expressed romantic upset. Late that night, we went to one of James's favorite local haunts, where I was attacked by an elderly drunken Japanese man who insisted on buying me beers, slapping my forearm and crushing my hand as his inhibitions were washed away by numerous Asahi namas (Asahi drafts). Late tonight, James and I are to go clubbing. I have now sown the seeds of a rudimentary Japanese grammar: (subject) is (adjective) (object). Example: "Mukade wa kawaii shinkansen des." [centipedes are cute bullet trains]
Toriningen competitors
7/29 time of day unknown - Went clubbing. The drunken insane man earlier that evening, between slapping me, punching me, and grunting, managed to fill me with about four Asahis, and I painfully chugged another oversized can outside the club. I danced lewdly with several girls, in actuality squishing together and wiggling more than anything that could, by any exaggeration, be called dancing. I acquired a pretend-girlfriend for the evening who led me around, alternating between sitting on my lap and dancing, tugging me between activities by the hand in her drunken stupor.
The club was a gaijin bar, or simply a place with lots of foreigners in it (reputedly waiting to be picked up by Japanese). I had about three girls in my little harem, and one serious dancer to dance with. Amusing anecdote: my pretend girlfriend, while rather affectedly unbuttoning my shirt in some kind of MTV-style dance move, proceeded to quickly fasten it back up when she saw that my torso wasn't exactly sculpted. James left around 1am; I was worried that he'd had a romantic frustration flip-out and had left me in Kyoto. I only thought this briefly. It turned out that he'd gone to sit by the river (Kyoto is really a beautiful city). I made friends easily this night while high on my own characteristic spastic dancing, including Iranians and Japanese, both of whom bought me Gatorade-type Japanese sodas.
James outside Hikone castle
James and I were in Kyoto all night, myself in the club except for various sojourns to vending machines to buy "Aquarius" (essentially "Gatorade") and James migrating back and forth from riverside to club. At 5am, the lights of the club snapped on, ripping the club's glory and darkness away, and revealing all of the dancers to each other as they were: stark, small, blinking automatons, and not machines of boundless sexuality, beauty and energy the darkness and deafening sound had transformed them into for a night (well, sort of).
Breakfast at 7-11, and an inability to turn off the "pick up girl" subroutine resulted in victims accosted by the river, at the 7-11, and on the metro coming home. This one resulted in a phone number for James, for one or more of three reasons: 1) she wanted to practice her English 2) she wanted to spite me and my sleep-deprived, rude advances 3) she found James alluring. Immediately after the club closed, James had an adventure of his own with a couple of Japanese desperados in their early 20's, who'd been wandering about the riverside all night looking for girls to hit on. James tells me that they went off together and did some more dirty work (while the three of them held their festivities and the sun crept higher, I dozed on a stone bench by the river that was much too small for my supine and semiconscious carcass.) Now, sleep. Later, dinner.
James sleeping in Tokyo
(Presumably) 7/29 (so my writing says, I think) 4:30pm - But first (ie, before dinner) grocery shop, food, and yet another SFT; they're like Mcdonald's restaurants here. We did this all in James's car, in which I helped James to brush up on his stick-shift driving skills, on Japanese left-driving roads, no less. I've become spoiled by the car already, and no longer want to bike the 30 minutes to the train station. I've decided that vending machines and metro fares carry the Japanese economy.
The exchange rate is about 125 yen to the dollar, meaning that you can twistedly round a yen off to about a cent if you don't sweat precision. This makes for a convenient way of mentally indexing and talking about Yen with one's English-speaking friends: by simply moving the decimal place over two slots, one can imagine prices in American dollars. Y500 becomes "five dollars," Y50,000 becomes "fifty bucks," etc., something I lapsed quickly and easily into doing, as do apparently many ALT's. For instance, at vending machines, I might say to James: "Hey, do you have a buck? I want an apple "Qoo"." at which point he might pass me a hundred-yen coin. Hundred-yen coins are wonderful; not only do they buy "Qoo" at vending machines, but you can also fantasize that you have lots more money than you do when you feel the hefty jingle of change in your wallet, and fool yourself into believing the 10-yen coins to be 100-yen coins. After all, they weigh the same.
7/30 1:13 (am, I think) - Dinner with James's supervisor and her husband. Japanese people can wear a mite thin at times; when they're not insulting you with their stifling culture, they're refusing your romantic advances. I gave the husband my number and address; it turns out he once lived in Baltimore for 8 months, and might like a contact there. Anyhow, after dinner, we returned to James's house and broke in, keyless.
7/30 11:56pm - Administrative nonsense.
Saw Ms. Supervisor again; she wanted to talk with James about his car.
Socialized with the teachers I've become familiar with at this point.
Toured the school, including James's personal classroom. I gathered some interesting points about Japanese schooling methods, especially concerning the way disruptive and otherwise disciplinarily problematic students are dealt with. Bad kids don't exist in the same sense; the schooling/disciplinary system works differently there. "Bad kids" are those who refuse to do their work, smoke, bleach their hair, etc., and yet come to the administrative office on summer vacation of their own volition, just because they are happy there affectionately torturing the teachers and soliciting attention.
All the teachers do to students who don't do their work is plead and use reward-based behaviorism - I don't think a student can be expelled from public school. As far as bleached hair goes, James tells me of teachers with cans of colored hair spray in their desks. As far as smoking goes, the remedy is more pleading. After junior high (which is what James teaches) it's off to public high schools for those who get in. For those who don't, options are either to pay for a private high school with lower academic standards, or to start your job at the factory.
Ate lunch Saw shrine/local graveyard. Very old Somewhat falling apart.
Invited into James's landlord's house. This was only after I immediately snapped open my sandals as soon as my feet hit the foyer floor - an excellent way to rudely force an invitation. As James said, I was sort of on autopilot: enter a door = take off shoes.
Drank beer, ate dried squid, and played with a 4-year-old and his train set.
Ate at that same first sushi place (wasn't as good this time).
Watched English TV
Vending machine
Rip-off of "48 Hours" and Eddie Murphy in general by some idiot neophyte; Chris Tucker, I think. God, he's bad. Both of us were in a bad mood today. I screwed up my meds again ; this may be why. Might 2 weeks be a bit long of a visit? Tomorrow, we hang out with da girlz (Risako and her friend, Noriko) again. It was a bit of a relief, hearing the American voices on TV; the Japanese commercials made me cringe a little bit. I yearn for "Denny's". I also yearn for girls.
7/31, 1:30am - Talking with James about girls, social situations, romance, etc. We went for a walk at night with the poisonous snakes (really).
Kyoto signs
7/31, 10:28am - Wake up, stiflingly hot. 2.5 more days. I am running out of things to say.
7/31 5:41pm - Ok, punk, here it is:
Mailman-intrusion (yelled in the door, apparently excited by the prospect of Gaijin therein. Told me my body was fantastic and that he used to be muscular; wants English lessons from James. Freak).
Michiko's mom. This caused upset in James when we stopped by; we'd been attempting fruitless communiqués with Michiko all week. Michiko is a semi-crush of James's, who had seemed to hold a lot of promise for him, were it not for the fact that she had (has?) a boyfriend. Sigh.
Bookstore, in which we saw CDs; video games ; "Gauntlet" and an arm wrestling game in which I beat the high score by about 400%. Ha-ha.
Hikone castle grounds (same as always ; bugs and stones).
Department store, where James bought blinds to help reduce the intensity of his house/furnace, and I bought an industrial-sized "Qoo."
I am running out of dough.
Installed blinds, wary all along of enormous avocado-sized spiders. It is my contention that the Japanese Mother Nature felt she had to compensate for the lack of any really dangerous animals in Japan by filling it with some truly putrid insect life.
Hot.
Castle silhouette
8/1 1:20am - Blah. Dinner (unidentified fried things) with Noriko and Risako, then Karaoke, during which I threw out my voice singing "Purple Haze." James and I carried some nice harmonies in "Puff the Magic Dragon," however. It's a very strange thing to see a shy Japanese girl singing sweetly and softly, with perfect intonation, "No, don't want no scrub; a scrub is a guy who can't get no love from me." The whole karaoke thing was a bit bizarre; it's not like American Karaoke, where one sings in front of the entire establishment. Here, your party rents a room and you sing to each other. Our room was set up in a traditional Japanese way, with floor cushions and a low table.
The songs were instrumental, watered-down, 'verbed-out, Casio versions of originals, with lyrics appearing on a television screen against videos of young Japanese couples grinning at each other over ice-cream and such. We had only four people in our party, one of whom was absent for a while, so the bizarreness-factor increased. I imagined a single person renting a Karaoke room and singing "Puff the Magic Dragon" to himself for an hour. Risako is sweet; she is very maternal, and was concerned when I bumped my shin on the table ; I was endeared. I've now sort of half-heartedly fallen for James's home-economics teacher, his friend, and two other English teachers (plus my various dance partners) ; maybe I can take 'em all home. One more full day, then I have to go back to my life in Baltimore. Take away Jerry Springer, NASCAR, the Lottery, and there goes the Baltimore economy and culture in one fell swoop.
Kyoto street
8/1 10:20am - Awake:familiar daytime heat seeps into the room and my skin, the oily resin of sleep settling like oil slicks on new shallow ponds of sweat. I need to take a shower; I've only seen that one mukade early on in James's bathroom. My fear of James's bathroom has diminished, but I'm still none too fond of the pill bugs therein. Problem with visiting James: he makes me miss Serena. Other than that, there aren't too many problems, except those spawned simply by living in someone's house for 2 weeks; it can be a little hard on both James and me. 10 days might be the perfect length for a vacation; after that, it becomes like living your life in a new place. Maybe the solution to life is to move every 10 days.
8/1 2:30pm - Stepped on what I thought was an evil mukade in the bathroom (shower), and uttered a shamefully high-pitched effeminate shriek. It turned out to be only a very small lizard.
Temple guardian
8/2 1:03am - Today, we wandered around department and grocery stores in Hikone, waiting for the fireworks of that evening to begin. Today was one of those days of continuous eating, including a 6 o'clock meal at an empty member of a restaurant chain called "Hallo Egg." There, we were given a selection of magazines to read while our omelets were being prepared (we both opted for Japanese women's fashion magazines). An ALT named Amy joined us for the fireworks, which were massive for a city of Hikone's size; thick sulfur filled the air and little bits of shredded cardboard and soot rained from the sky:authentic, to be sure. Later, Amy remained in our party for a bike ride back to parked vehicles, and a stop for chatting and "Qoo"- drinking at some vending machines. I've drunk literally gallons of "Qoo" since I've been here; I shall miss it. 15 hours until my flight leaves. James is sitting here next to me on my bed, reading my MAD magazine.
James eating
8/2 12:20pm - Last night, my last night, I was as hot as I've ever been in Japan. We had just returned from the fireworks where I had eaten two buckets of fried chicken chunks, a squid-on-a-stick (quite literally - it was an entire squid torso, fins and all, that had been dowsed in oil, lightly fried, scored into ringlets, and impaled on a sharp stick, like a head outside the gates of a medieval town) and about a bathtub-full of "Qoo". Thus, my flaming metabolism, the breezeless 90 degree F night, and soaked air made it actually impossible to sleep. Pools formed on my lips, nose, and forehead as I fought wakefulness, sprawled and naked on the damp, bare mattress. It was time for the air-conditioner.
After a series of essentially random button-pushings on the remote-control, generating a corresponding series of characteristic Japanese-style beeps in the night (this was all at about 3am ; James uttered a piteous moan), I managed to construct a refrigerated curtain of 17 degree C air aimed steadily at my head and blasting relentlessly through the night, freeze-drying my closed-off room in a matter of minutes. I bet it was about 50 degrees F in there at the height of the climate-control jihad. So I was happy, and had to make the freon-onslaught a little bit less ferocious (it actually got too cold after an hour or so ; I was snuggling in a futon sheet before deciding that this was ridiculous.) So I slept well, from dawn to about 10am.
Passing power-lines on the train
I made James his final maid-service breakfast (cheesy scrambled eggs, a kiwi, bread with cream cheese and jam, and a big mug of orange juice ; he had trouble finishing it), packed, delivered my bike and a package of chocolates to kocho-sensei, and commenced the journey home (with James in tow, of course, guiding me through the sea of kanji). We're on the train now; James is very cute over there, pressing the buttons on his keitai's (Japanese cell phone/computer) numeric keypad: once, twice, three times to generate characters excruciatingly slowly for the phone-to-phone emails that have so solidly infiltrated Japanese culture and now constitute it along with trains, vending machines, and the odd, white, bunched-up leg-warmers/socks that schoolgirls wear in order to make their legs look thinner, but which in fact make them look like little Clydesdale horses in pleated black skirts.
8/2 4:50pm - I hate airports. I'm always afraid I'm making some drastic mistake. James held my hand all the way to the (gate?) and then went home (presumably). Japan is full of brotherhood and a sort of inoffensive, reassuring socialism, none of which seems to apply to the Gaijin, who are the glittering and lonely movie actors that have jumped off the screen to entertain the Nihon-jin and provide them with fantasy. I am a little bit sad to be leaving; not only James but Japan too. I get a weird feeling as the plane begins to taxi; like I'm forgetting something important. Honshu is so small I'll be over the Pacific before I know it.
Subway riders
8/2 6:16pm - I just spilled rice crackers all over the woman next to me, and then proceeded to tell her I was a cute bullet train - such is the vigor of the times. The ocean is patchily covered in bubbly patches of solid clouds, and is a misty purple. The horizon is on fire with some wispy strings of soot winding around it, and the sky above is a deepening blue. A sunset over the ocean in an airplane is dramatic; the horizon has spectacular colors I didn't know were allowed in a sunset: aquamarine and magenta pull the waning fire-strip into the quickly blackening blue. I smell dinner. Air Canada from Japan to Vancouver and from Vancouver to Japan are 90% Japanese, as are the meals.
The sunset is less of a fire now, and more of an orange-sherbet. Dusk is here ; it comes fast flying against the globe in an arc over the northern hemisphere. More conversations with my Japanese flight companions. It is now utterly black out the window; all I can see is the yellow ghost of my reflection. I am making myself unpopular on the plane, per usual: I mentioned the cracker explosion (there are trampled crumbs covering the floor under my and my flight companions' feet), and now the stewardess admonished me for lighting my call button and squishing the poor woman behind me with my seat (I have to entertain myself somehow). At some point, I'm going to read Schopenhauer (I think). Only 6 more hours to go! What I need is roughly 2 rows to myself, and a private, naked female chef.
8/2 7:34pm - This damned flight is too long. I just saw a Keanu Reeves chick-flick, and I have to take a shit.
8/2 7:24am - Over the Aleutian Islands somewhere; a milky, sleepy dawn came about 3 hours after sunset.
8/2 12:16pm - In the Vancouver airport ; it's freezing cold (a condition not helped by two icy Cokes at an airport bar). I also had an Italian bagel. I spotted Keiko at customs, standing across from me in the other line! She's going to San Francisco to visit her family and my friends. Neither Keiko nor I were really together-headed enough to chat properly; both of us had had about 3 hours of light sleep. Waiting for boarding time to arrive for the Washington-bound flight.
Collage in Kyoto
8/2 2:09pm - I don't especially care for these smug little Canadians who are just bursting with their gleeful presumptions about loud, swaggering, American idiots. I hope my bag gets to Dulles ; I was told to abandon it in a suspiciously haphazard herd of luggage. My new plane, bound for DC, is an "Airbus," and doesn't look like it will make it to Calgary, let alone across the continent.
8/2, sometime after 2:09pm - Ok, here I am, aboard the "Airbus." Priceline.com has crammed me, on all four of my flights, into the corner of the 1st class divider wall; hee-hee. Someday when I grow up and make a million dollars, I will fly 1st class (why?). It rains a lot in Vancouver, and San Francisco is too expensive. What's left? The stewardess I spoke to was immensely proud of her little European airbus: "MUCH better than Boeing." How dare she slight the American military-industrial complex in her sick, neo-colonial, Queen Mum-suckling way? Four and a half hours flight time! That's nothing. I am reminded of Canadian language politics as the announcements are repeated in French to passengers who clearly don't need to hear them that way.
8/2, 10:15pm - Flying over near the junction of Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland, 90 miles from Dulles. We land in about half-an-hour. Bye-bye
James on the train