The table I’m writing at is sticky.
But don’t feel sorry for me, feel sorry for the table!
It’s in a godforsaken place: a 24-hour manga cafe….a place where there are private cubicles with a TV, computer, chair that turns into a bed, assortment of pornographic manga and a surreptitious box of tissues.
That box of tissues is presently empty, I might add.
Poor, poor table. It has gone through a lot of trauma, and then there’s earthquakes!
I came back from Kyoto today. Didn’t see much in this final morning, like I was planning to. Sanjusangendo will have to wait until my next visit there. Which should be soon, because I came here expecting to see the autumn leaves that Kyoto is famous for, and it turns out that everything is still green. So, I think I’ll be back in three or so weeks.
Anyway, on the way back from Kyoto, riding on the shinkansen, I was exhausted. I had about 6 bags that I was trying to carry at once and they were heavy bags too. I clambered over the passengers next to me and slumped into my window seat (again, not facing Mt Fuji, dammit).
The young salaryman next to me stood up to put his bag in the rack above us, then started gabbling at me in Japanese. He was pointing to my bags and then the rack, so I assumed he wanted to put my bags up there. Nice of him, really. But I didn’t want to make the poor guy lift up all the crap I had, which was likely to spill out at any moment, and I didn’t fancy trying to get it back down again while the train was pulling into Shin Yokohama at still over 100km/h.
So I repeated what must be my most often used Japanese word since I arrived: daijoubu. I’m ok, thanks.
Giving me a worried look, the salaryman sat back down again and promptly fell asleep, like all Japanese on trains.
Me, on the other hand, I can’t sleep in a sitting position, so I pulled out my book and started reading. Two hours goes past pretty quickly on a shinkansen with a book.
But after a while, I started to get bugged by this strange noise, like somebody flicking paper. At first I thought that maybe I had kicked the bags in front of me, or the salaryman had moved in his sleep. But no, we were both motionless and this flick noise kept happening.
I tried to read again.
FLICK. Godsdammit!
This time I noticed a yellow blob fall into my bag from the corner of my eye. What the hell? I looked inside and there was scrambled egg everywhere! Where the hell did it come from? I looked around and up at the bag rack, feeling only slightly ridiculous. Then I noticed, from the gap in between the seats in front of me, some more egg blob was being pushed through, landing on my bag with a flick.
…the hell?
Some senile old Japanese oyaji decided he didn’t like egg in his bento box, and was sneaking it away and pushing it between the gaps of the seat, like a 5 year old would do to broccoli that he doesn’t want to eat. I guess he didn’t want his daughter next to him to know that he wasn’t eating his vitamins.
Senile old bastard! Got scrambled egg all over my souvenirs! But my Japanese isn’t good enough to yell at him. So I swore in English instead.
I guess what the salaryman was trying to say to me was “You should put bag here, hai, because crazy oyaji doesn’t like egg, hai“.
I need to learn more Japanese.
2 weeks to 50Mbps goodness and counting…
It’s been a while since I posted, and really, I haven’t posted anything meaningful. Maybe it’s this crap keyboard I’m forced to use. Or maybe I’m just lazy.
The company that’s employing me (henceforth known as the eikaiwa) likes to talk about life in Japan, and how to adapt, and what to do when such and such happens.
I was asked, in training, to put a list of abilities in order from most important to least important. I put ‘Adapting to Life in Japan’ last.
“Oh? Why?” they ask, full of genkiness, “it’s very important to be able to adapt to Japan. It’s so you’re happy inside the workplace because you’re happy outside!”
To which I responded: “Sure, I understand that adapting and overcoming culture shock is important for other people, but for me it’s not an issue”.
I feel so comfortable here, it’s somewhat scary. No, I don’t speak the language well. I can barely read katakana. No, I haven’t been brought up in the same, somewhat militaristic way that the Japanese have (which strikes me as odd, given the pacifism clause in their constitution). No, I’m not even a smoker. But I feel like I fit in here. It must be because I’m insane, because I know Japan sure is.
Well, maybe ‘fitting in’ isn’t the best way to describe it. I am a gaijin, after all. An evil barbarian. And, on top of that, I’m and opinionated and domineering woman! Can’t say that fits in with mainstream Japan!
I generalise, of course. There are many independently-minded women in Japan. But many more admit that they just lower their heads and deal with it when some fucker gropes inside their panties on a crowded train! Honestly! Hit the fucker! It’ll make you feel better!
But I digress.
I may not “fit in” here, but I am very comfortable where I am in this quiet Yokohaman suburb. The centre of Tokyo is a 40-minute train ride that way while 40 minutes that way is the amazing Kamakura, former capital of Japan and home of a great big statue of Buddha. Oh, and a colony of squirrels.
The wildlife in Japan surprised me. Admittedly, I knew nothing about the animals here until I arrived. Then I was told by my students that they have bears here! Maybe finally, I will meet one, instead of all those near-misses in the past. They also have monkeys here! And SQUIRRELS! But, and this is even more surprising, they are not an urban animal like in North America or Europe. Many of my students didn’t even know that there were squirrels in their home country. You really need to go into the forests to see them.
There is quite a lot of urban wildlife though, to make up for where the squirrels fall behind. The river near my home is home to some bloody huge carp, herons and even a turtle. The pollution I expected in Japan isn’t that bad after all. I also had a small lizard run across the wall of my apartment block, much like he geckos would in Bali or northern Australia. High humidity, I guess.
Finally, there are the insects. Oh gods, the insects. My nemesis at the moment is this praying mantis the size of my foot, with whom I have constant battles over whether I can open my front door or not. It’s intimidating (read: highly amusing) because it turns it’s head to look at me each time I get near. I can’t threaten to feed him to Errol though. It wouldn’t work. The mantis’d bite Errol back.
More surprising than the animals in Japan are the other foreigners. I’m trying to figure out why these people came to Japan. So far, my theory is that there are 4…maybe 5 types of people that come to Japan:
1. The otaku. That would be me. But it isn’t just restricted to anime and manga like me. These otaku could have an obsession with the language, or the history, or the culture, or the design and architecture (quite a big movement). We otaku came to Japan because it’s Japan and this is where we want to be. Teaching English is just how we survive and feed our obsessions.
2. The people drawn here because of family or significant others. That’s a reason that’s true all around the world. Funnily enough though, some people only stay in Japan because their Japanese girlfriends became pregnant. They grumble that the girls conspired to do it, and they claim they are now forced to marry them and stay here. This revelation made me laugh long and hard, when I heard it.
3. The people that have no other career prospects. These people have career-repelling degrees, like History, which they didn’t have the common sense to at least couple together with Education. Hence, they graduated, couldn’t find so much as a government position, and ended up teaching English in Japan where it doesn’t matter what degree you have, so long as it’s a Bachelors one. These people, from personal experience, are bitter and cynical fuckers whose only enjoyment is yelling at their paying students because the poor ignorant bastards believe that the Rape of Nanking was a story made up by the Chinese. I try to avoid these people.
4. The arseholes. People who weren’t liked much at home, couldn’t get a girlfriend/boyfriend, people who generally treat others like shit. So they run away to Japan where even the most vicious bastard can get a Japanese girlfriend. The women here are lining up to marry a white man. Another reason I cry for them a little, and plead for them to stand up for themselves. I know several of these arseholes unfortunately. I also know a few potential Move-To-Japan-Arseholes back home, which makes me want to laugh with scorn and bitterness.
5. The people who think “Why not?”. There is no real logic here. They usually are just bored with what they do, even if it’s quite successful, and want a change. This group of people is why the range of foreigners living in Japan is so broad. There are 60 year old gentlemen and 18 year old high school graduates. There are former lawyers and even former recording artists. Japan is usually the complete opposite of whatever life you may have lead at home, so it is a refuge for many.
I would write more, but my time is running out. I’m sorry I have no photos to post yet. Matt requested “crazazazazazazy photos” which may mean that he wants some example of bad English, I’m not sure :P
Nevertheless, I promise I will post some soon, “crazazazazy” and otherwise.
p.s. I bought an iPod Nano, a Nintendo DS, a Kenwood stereo system and an electronic dictionary since I last posted.
p.p.s. It’s my birthday today.