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Monday, November 29th, 2004
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11:28 pm - "At least you can watch the intro, that's right in front of you"
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One of the people I currently share living arrangements is a... If this person were to be in a movie, people would definitely use the word "wisenheimer", not just because it sounds funny, but also because it describes this character. Case in point: I woke up this morning with an incredible pain in my neck. Please refrain from any "funny" remarks about this, I've had my fill. Come to think of it, I had my fill quite a while ago. Anyway, I can't turn my head left more than like five degrees. So coming home from my one lecture of the day, somebody rides up on that very side of me, gives off something which for want of a better word would be called a giggle, and says "Riiiiiiight, this was the side you couldn't turn to see stuff, now I remember." This same someone had already attacked when I was sitting down to enjoy an admittedly spartan meal earlier in the day. I turn my body left to look, and am greeted by an "At least you can watch the intro to the tv-show, it's right in front of you." Which makes me laugh, which makes pain worse, which inspires uncontrolled laughter in my attacker. As they say in Japan, Shou ga nai, which means "There is no Shou." What Shou means, you'll have to find out for yourself.
In other news, I just did something which at the time seemed very smart, but very likely will end up being very very stupid. That's happened a few times lately. The one I'm referring to involves Da Ladies, another one might be partying till eight a.m. before spending ten hours working on a project in school. Yeah, that would be right up there.
There's a saying which doesn't go "I like a girl who likes a guy who likes a girl who likes me." The reason it doesn't go like that is that that would be a stupid thing to make a saying of. It is however only moderatly different from what I just said, and that fits me so much better. The original rhymes, howeverm but likely in a language you don't know. I say this not to offend you, I am speaking of strictly statistical probability. Suffice to say, I have spent some quality time in the warm company of my 失恋-collection. It's not a collection of 失恋, you understand, it's more something that amplifies that state of mind. Something I felt some strange wish to do, don't ask me why.
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| Wednesday, November 17th, 2004
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1:58 pm - Let them eat cake indeed
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'Soon after the Tiananmen Square incident, three businessmen travelled in China; one North Korean, one Japanese, and one Chinese. A reporter from the Xinhua News Agency wanted to ask them a question, which they reluctantly agreed to answer. The reporter asked each of them: 'What is your opinion on the meat shortage?'
The North Korean replied: "What is this "'meat"'?"
The Japanese answered: "What is this '"shortage"'?"
The Chinese business man said 'What is this "'opinion"'?"'
This is not meant to offend any Chinese or North Koreans (or for that matter, Japanese), but rather, it is quote to illustrate the character of a man I had the pleasure to meet today. A meeting which ended in if not song and dance, then at least song. This man is maybe 55+, and could charm the pants off a rack just by looking at them. He also happens to be a Japanese ambassador.
Now, I've hob-nobbed with the best of them, I really have. I actually have an admittedly shitty, but still picture of me and the Swedish ambassador to Japan I show to anybody who'll feign even the slightest interest in my life. This means that I have now met all of two ambassadors in my life, and I'm beginning to think they're either all like that (like there's some sort of ambassador gene that mere mortals can only gaze upon from the safety of tiny tiny bunkers), or it's just a fluke. It's almost like they're, shock, horror, real people! I know, I know, I wouldn't believe me either.
When my man from today said 'hell', I couldn't help smiling like I'd caught some sort of slip, like those fish in Finding Nemo that go 'He touched the butt.' Well, not at all like that actually. But still, he continued, off the record using the phrase 'pain in the ...'
Ok, he said 'pain in the neck', but it's the context, people, the context. I could see his brain start sending signals to the larynx (whatever that is) to form the word "ass", I really could. Well, maybe "butt", I'm not sure.
Yeah, that's it. Some people idolise, well, idols, not me. I idolise ambassadors. This has muchly to do with the fact that at the end of the meeting, he and my professor went toe to toe on an old tune; a long, and not easy song. They both passed in the court of public opinion. At least the one where I live.
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| Friday, November 12th, 2004
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2:56 pm - "If you hurl, and she bails, it wasn't meant to be"
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I didn't really imagine spending my Thursday night (the traditional party night around here, doubled by the fact that there are no classes today) walking an hour and a half back to the city all by myself. But I digress...
There are two young women, let's call them girl A and girl B, because typing "young woman" isn't really something I enjoy doing on a regular basis. Girl A is... beautiful. I have some strange desire to make you understand this. She is not merely "pretty", "hot", or even "bodacious", if that's even a word any more. She is beautiful of historic proportions. The kind of beauty that, had it existed in great quantities from a couple of hundred years ago, would have spawned "Girl A-jokes" instead of blonde-jokes, because of the depth of our jealousy towards her and her appearance.
But of course, it's not to be, girl A and I. As a spoiler, I can tell you it's (probably) not to be between I and girl B either. There are reasons of this, which I shall endeavour to spare you of, for the sake of... something.
So on the way from our designated warming-up-place (by which I mean "place somebody thought little enough of to let us all party to destruction"), girl B rides on my bike. And manages to get her scarf stuck, not in the wheel, thankfully, but in the... other thing. Nevermind. The thing is, the chain jumps, and wedges itself between the frame and one of them thar cog thingies at the back in an intricate manner. I'm no bicycle mech, however shocking that may be, and I'm certainly no expert at bicycle vocabulary, be it in English, Swedish, or Japanese. Or French, for that matter. Anyway. The point it, it left my bike un-bikable in the middle of the city.
Cut to standing in line at the club of choice. Where girl A starts feeling ill effects of either too much of some legal substance, or that in combination with some unwitting consumption of something not-so-legal. So we bail. Now, at this time of night, there are no trains. There are no busses. My bike is broken down, and even if it weren't, she probably wouldn't be up for a really long ride on it. She definitely wouldn't. So taxi is the only option. Some five sessions of hurling various chunks in various places later, and we make it home to her place, and she goes to sleep. I wait around for a good while to see she's (seemingly) ok, but I really have to go pick up my bike. "Downtown", as it were.
Using my own brand of super powers, I manage to lock the door and still leave her the key for when she wakes up, and head off. It takes about an hour and a half. Walking alone in the middle (or after the middle, as it were) of the night for that amount of time might not seem an idea way to spend your night. But it was actually ok. Until about halfway through, when girl C calls and asks where I and girl A are, which means I have to shut off my MD. Which refuses to live after that, leaving me singing to myself for the rest of the way. I'm sure somebody's happier for it, at least the people I met seemed to be enjoying themselves royally at my expense.
Finally, I make it back, just in time to eat cheese at the after party. Where there is a couch. And the rest, as they say, is history.
The point of the whole story is that even if she hurls, and you don't bail, it doesn't have to be meant to be. Sadly.
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| Tuesday, November 9th, 2004
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12:31 pm - 漢字に負けず、感じに負けず
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Serendipity is a nice word. I've heard of people naming their babies Serendipity, but to me, that's a little bit too frivolous a despcription of the entire conception process. I have recently come in contact with Serendipity (no, not a girl, I just like Capitalising things). For instance, a week or so ago, I found out that it would be scholastically not impossible for me to work at Expo 2005 (some sort of World Exhibiton or whatever) which they're gonna hold in Aichi (think Nagoya) on the very day that man shall record as the deadline for job applications to that very same Expo. Now, I may or may not be the most Expo-ey kinda guy, but it would mean that I would be able to spend some seven more months in Japan, and get paid for the privilige too. Welcome to the working week indeed. Graduation-schmaduation, that can wait. In fact, looking up "graduation" in my personal dictionary, is says "something to be done when you really can't procrastinate any longer. Last resort."
This, of course, has nothing to do with the title of the post. A title which is readable when one is armed with enough computing power to decypher the Japanese characters, and a very passing knowledge of Japanese poetry. Much like myself. Hell, you might get away with paying attention to a specific part of the lyrichs in a song by a not-at-all unfamous Japanese band. But you do need to know where to look for it, I suppose.
What it all comes down to is that if you spend your time kissing a girl on a bridge (a very good way to spend your time, I must say) which is not empty of traffic, said traffic will honk their horns at you. I shudder to think what it would be like if they were to honk something else. So what does this mean to you? Nothing at all.
Did you ever feel like things were moving forward, only that you really weren't? It's like some twisted variation of "the wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead." The hamster, in this case, isn't dead; he or she is merely not doing anything while things in his or her environment keeps changing it up, just to keep him (ah, fuck it, I can't be bothered being politically correct anymore. My hamster's a guy-hamster, k?) on his toes. Or, as it were, off them. In my new post-girlfriend reality, I find myself wondering what I should be aiming for. I know I overthink things, I really do, but it's like a driving by a car crash, you just can't stop looking. Anyway, how do you not-do something which you've been doing all your life? "Yes officer, I gave up breathing ten months ago, I'm clean now."
Right, back to the problem at hand. Say I were to end up with a Japanese girl, something which is not at all impossible, as anyone with the slightest understanding of things Japanese will tell you. (For instance, me.) Can I see myself living in Japan for the rest of my days, working 873-hour days, coming home once a decade to scold the chlidren for not getting burnt out by working too hard in school? Not really. Maybe work for a foreign company here, but still, it would be hard to let go completetly. No matter how much I like the place, it's just too big a change to consider right now. Which is how I prefer my decision making, as little as possible as late as possible, basically. Option: take wonder-woman back home, which would be sucky for her for all the same reasons, only that she very likely speaks as much Swedish as the Swedish Chef. Or possibly less. So I'm looking at living here for a while and there for a while. Which is an ok solution on the face of it, it really. is. The only (?) problem is to find a company to support my extravagant future lifestyle. Blows.
So what I'm basically saying is that if you've invented a teleportation device, or are willing to give me free flights home (not to mention funds to maintain two palaces, one in each country) to use at my discretion, feel free to let me know. I'll treat you to the next Toro-matsuri at Kappa sushi, you know I will.
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| Wednesday, November 3rd, 2004
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4:40 am - This is not a post about an election that you may or may not have anything to do with
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Apparently, there are "Battleground States". Wolf Blitzer seems to have some sort of morbid fascination with them, for reasons which confound mere mortals. He, along with Aaron Brown, Larry King, and the guy who in the commercial for CNNJ says, in something not quite far away from ok Japanese, "Andasaasan Kuupaa desu" are all extremely busy allegedly "trying to make sense of it all". They have at their disposal tv screens larger than several European nations, and number-crunshing power that will in six months be available in any highschool kid's pocket calculator. Were they to have one, what do I know? So why am I watching this? What does this have to do with me? My connection to the US is very well documented in the... uhm... well, I've been there like five times, ok? Get off my back already! Anyway, there was something people in the know call a "poll". It was conducted by the BBC, and tried to measure how the "world" would vote, were it allowed to. In an incredible come-from-behind-upset, John Kerry got something like a gazillion percent. I'm not saying I'd vote for the guy, but of course I would, really. So maybe my American friends (you know who you are, all one of you) should be thankful I don't get to vote. Or not. But in the end, it doesn't really matter, because soon we'll all elect a World President, who will miraculously escape assasination three days before the aliens take over.
So it's all something of a moot point, no? Ok, I just really really wanted to say "moot".
I'll drop the subject, leaving you with one quote from the Economist, and one from a guy who apparently lights up the night sky in a program called "Crossfire". The first one describes the election as "The Incompetent vs The Incoherent", the second purely states that "someone ought to go to jail". I'm down with that. Home boy.
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Yesterday, I undertook a trip to this nation's capital with a companion whom I know quite well. It was a good trip, involving other things than raw fish (although that played an important part as well) and lots of people going back and forth. It involved... fashion. I do not know if what I'm about to say is objectively true, but I'm quite sure that the piece of upper-body-fashion I bought (you couldn't get me to tell apart a cardigan and a t-shirt) was sold at the most expensive department store in all the land. Why am I saying this? Well, I couldn't write an enitre post about an election I have not much to do with, now could I?
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| Monday, October 4th, 2004
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9:12 am - Enough with the trains already
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Generally speaking, I like the Japanese railway system more than, oh, I don't know, the Swedish one. See, in Sweden, there are no cars with free seating. Which means that if you're cheap (or poor, take your pick), and buy a non-specified ticket, there's not a single place in the entire train where you can relax, even if you've managed to come by that precious commodity which is a train seat. In Japan, if you were to do the rude-Gaijin-thing and not get up for elderly ladies (who will thank you a million and one times when you do give them your seat), you can sit as long as you damn well please in your seat without feeling the Dread. The Dread of the next station, where someone with a ticket with your seat number on it will get on the train, look around, seemingly to make sure he or she actually belongs in your seat, and then go "Uhm, excuse me..." at which point you just have to bail. I have yet to see a single Swede go "Sure, I'll leave, if you show me your ticket and prove to me that this seat is yours". It's just not the Swedish thing to do.
Incidentally, had one been slightly more unscrupulous than said average Swede, one could use this tactic to ones advantage. Just get up to a seat and stand there, and if the person sitting there doesn't get up in five to ten seconds, he or she likely has a valid seat-spec. ticket. So just move on to the next car, or whatever. Though of course, I'd never do that, no sir.
Anyway, this means that you can get bumped off your seat at every station, which is incredibly detrimental to any kind of sleep you may have foolishly been planning to reward yourself with. Then again, stations in Sweden (on the main lines, not counting subways) don't come along nearly as often as they do in Japan, so you're usually safe for at least 15 minutes before the next trial. But still, I ask you, would it be so horrible to implement a system in which slackers such as myself could try to outslack each other in a designated car? Would it, really?
Also, there's no Suica card in Sweden either, which is just a shame. It feels soo december 2004 for keep a card in your wallet and just touch it to a sensor upon entering the station, and thus avoid the whole hassle of having to buy and keep actual tickets. Plus, you can get Pocky for the balance on your card, which is always a good thing.
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Of course, there is one good thing about the Swedish railway system. No matter how far out in the country you go, I can give you my 100%-guarantee that you won't find a station name written solely in kanji, which can have any of fifteen meanings and twenty three pronounciations. Sure, some stations may lack names all together, but kanji? No way. Oh yeah, and while some trains may be full, you'll never come accross the group of drunken Salarymen pushing their way onto a train that must have been designed to carry less than half the current amount of passangers.
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| Saturday, October 2nd, 2004
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11:09 am - 電車の孤独
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It's been a long time since I was on a train for as long as I am/will be now, almost two whole hours. The reason for this is? Well, allow me to put it this way, if you were living in Saitama, you could ride your bike to Ikebukuro and back in that time, as I believe I have demonstrated, beyond a shadow of a doubt, in a previous post. Ok, two hours might be stretching the truth, but an hour and a half each way is so doable it's not even funny.
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I have a feeling this is gonna be a long post, since there's not a whole lot else for me to do while I await deliverance. Bear with me, a lot of it's bound to come out upside down or, quite possibly, inside out.
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What do you do when you're one trains for extended periods of time? More importantly, what do you do before you get on them in the first place. Someone I used to know better than I do now, and who shall go by the telling name Da Pete used to discuss his ideas of a travel boredom survival kit with me. I shit you not when I say that I think that if he developed that thing properly, he'd have it so made it's as not-funny as the Ikebukuro-thing. Of course, people have been putting together their own kits for centuries. I'm sure Hannibal had his... peanut crackers or whatever, Napoleon had his... Legions? Or was it armies? History was never really my thing. Either way, I used to have my MD, GBA, and other acronyms with meanings deeply hidden beneath that which is acceptable human norm. Now, as luck would have it, I have a laptop. God, it would suck so much to have to type this as a title of a song on my MD-player. (Quite aside from the fact that my new cheap-ass one can't record discs...)
Oh, I'm loosing track already? Well boo-hoo. Sorry, I'm really not that evil. Honest. Ok, so what do I usually do on trains? It depends on the situation. It is not uncommon thatI spend my time daydreaming, wishing for nothing more than somebody to start a conversation with me (and no, this does not apply when I'm travelling with friends). Of course, I generally avoid starting them myself. That would just be wrong, you know?
Right now, my wallpaper is a poem my friend Masataka wrote. It was not written for me, nor would I want it to have been, but it is still... nice. And somehow, I keep thinking something wonderful would happen if the young woman next to me would stealthily read this paragraph, see the poem (which is displayed in an overly large font over the half of the screen which is still visible, no less), and... I don't know. It would kill a little bit of the kodoku I described in the headline. Because even if the train had been full (which is not the case), travelling alone is one of the few solitary activities I indulge in. At least I try to, humans are social animals, after all.
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Effin' 'eck, this was her station. Crap station. Remind me never to get off here, no matter that I can see a store selling lawnmowers (!) from the window.
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But hope, as it were, springs eternal. For the very near future, there's the hope that someone better will take pity on me and sit down in the window seat beside mine, preferably right at this station. This does not look like it will happen; the train is already moving again. Stations here are not as closely grouped together as they are in Tokyo, for reasons which are obvious to pretty much everybody.
I guess I shouldn't complain. In less than an hour and a half, I will be met by someone who means a great deal to me, a fact which in itself means a great deal to me.
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It's anecdote time. Way back when white headphones meant somebody'd left their's out in the sun too long, I used to care about being percieved as a foreigner. Therefore, and this will no doubt sound almost as pathetic as it actually is, I used to finger my phone as often as I could, as if to show that HaHA, I have an Alien Registration Card, gotten through an immense effort in working the system. Having this, in turn, means I can get a phone, which I am now showing to you, random Japanese person! This surely means I am one of you!
Of course, there are some problems with this strategy. Number one is that most Japanese people probably don't know that you need an ARC to obtain a phone, number two is that if they do, they won't care. And really, why should they?
Now, on the other hand, I'm doing my best to not give an eff about things of that nature. The more I try to tell myself how different I am from the Americans (because, of course, all foreigners are Americans here, as am I, to almost everybody I meet the first time) who are here for a week to drink sake, buy porno manga while shopping for a digital camera for the wife in Akihabara, pay extraordinary amounts of money to ride all the way to the top of Tokyo Tower, party in Roppongi, and then go back to their ordinary lives, the more I realise I'm not that different. And what's more, I don't mind (too much) anymore. It's just not worth the effort.
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Crap. I have nothing left to write, and the incredible speed with which I type these words means that I'm not even halfway yet. Whatever. May peace favour your sword, if that sort of thing floats your boat.
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| Saturday, September 25th, 2004
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7:19 pm - Tips från coachen
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As I sit here, listening to a Mr Children album that hasn't been new in quite some time, and is, strangely, never likely to become it again, something occurs to me. Actually, that's not exactly true. I happened upon it one night before falling asleep; for the sake of convenience, let's call it "yesterday". That night, the apartment had been filled with intoxicated revelers of the third-to-best kind, which isn't bad by anyone's standards. Two strings of my guitar had been broken, which is record in on sitting, and people were generally quite happy with the event as such.
I, on the other hand, thought about chairs.
Yes, chairs. Some people will try to tell you that man kind spends far too little of its precious time lying on grass looking up at the sky or stars, hell, under different circumstances, I would be one of them. But I shall try to restrain myself. What I'll try to convince you, instead, is to get a really, and I mean really comfortable desk chair. The reason? Because (c'mon, you have to have seen this coming from foor blocks over), "mankind spends far too much of its precious time sitting in desk chairs. Duh. I recently purchased a new one, in fact. The choice of upgrading my desk chair or what I shall for want of a better term call my "cozy chair" was easy. Had I taken my economics classes with any level of seriousness, I would have no doubt told you that since I, sadly, sit in my desk chair more than the cozy chair, and it would also be cheaper to upgrade said desk chair, that the cost/benefit ratio alone would almost make the decision for me. Which was practically the case.
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In a few weeks, a friend of mine is coming to stay for a week. This is a very exciting prospect to me. The reason is I haven't seen her for a little over a month now, and by the time she gets here, that number will have increased to two. When she does, we will talk, and it will be good. The people I live with now are truly lovely human beings, but when it comes to talking about stuff, they all suffer from one genetic defect, in the form of a Y-chromozome (how the hell do you spell that, anyway?), which means that they have to be significantly intoxicated to be able to talk properly. Which lands us nicely right back at yesterday's party. The circle, as it were, is an oval, and all is well with the world.
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| Tuesday, September 14th, 2004
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6:18 pm - Scrupulous man wittingly pays 2000 yen he could have spent on pizza on something he needs even less
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I am generally all in favour of tail wind, as a concept. Not having to do so much work yourself is generally quite pleasing. But there's a certain limit to it. I don't want it to be so strong that you can top out your bike on the plateau before you hit the start of the glorious hill (which of course, when going the other direction, is commonly referred to as the 'Hill of Death'. I shit you not, my land lady even used that expression when I signed the papers); to me it feels like it defeats the purpose of the hill somehow. And yes, I realise your speed still increases as you descend said hill, but that's not the point. Read between the lines, over them or under them, whaddo I care?
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It's been a while, yeah?
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Why am I wasting your doubtlessly precious time ranting about hills and bikes? It's probably a mental thing. See, I am now in the place I used to be in, but for an extended period of time, I wasn't. I was in a place quite far away from this place, and it has changed me in ways you cannot imagine. That just wouldn't be fair; why should you be able to imagine it if I can't? But I'm back now, studying more than I used to (as it would have been quite the task to take my studying in the opposite direction from where I was before), and with the aid of a friend, trying to get my wireless mouse to work, using thin sheets of aluminium foil in ways the world has yet to understand. Me too, by the way. And the thing is, I don't even really need it. It's a piece of junk I picked up for 2000 yen somewhere in Akihabara on a day when I had far better things to do. The radius from which I can operate my laptop increased by roughly four inches, if the batteries are full. Yeah, that's ass, and yeah, my laptop does come with a touchpad, newfangled technology that it may be, rendering my purchase completely irrational, illogical, and other negated forms of good, solid words.
"Unscrupulous?" It seems to be a word that's slipped away from its non-negated counterpart and left it stranded somewhere in the mists of time. Have you ever met a person you truly, in the bottom of your heart, when push comes to shove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, if all your donkeys come home to lay eggs, have you ever met a person you felt was absolutely "scrupulous?" And if so, was that a good thing? Enlighten me. Aaaanyway.
There is now another in this place I call home. This is not the same person as the foil-friend earlier. This person whom I live with enjoys pizza. Maybe all one of you reading this has a well established working relationship with your pizza delivery guy, I don't know. I don't. But my friend... Well, it came in stages. First, upon placing the call, no request to get a phone number was made, unlike what used to be the case. Then, after yet more times, the pizza guy started smiling when delivering the pies, like there was some sort of inside joke my friend was unwittingly a part of. And now, I am asked to place the call, as well as answer the door, it's just too embarrasing for my friend.
"Unwittingly?" It seems... Oh yeah, did that already. I'll stop now.
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| Thursday, August 5th, 2004
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3:39 pm - Service
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I was at the local post office, which in my case is quite local indeed. It's even closer to the post office here than it is back home, where I don't live in a multi-million-man-and-woman-urban-sprawl. But that (too) is beside the point. The point is that I was there to send a package. To whom is not important, nor is its content, shape, or general purpose in life. What is important, however, is that I didn't have exact change. This meant that the lady behind the counter gave me a 50-yen piece (which in Japan is worth the equivalent of a Russian slap in the face), but she hesitated. She inspected the coin, and with a decisive "No, this just will not do, here's a clean one", she put that back and gave me a new one.
This can with very little difficulty be connected to another incident, which occured while shopping things to keep me alive for a short while. In my basket full of unmentionably wonderful Japanese and not-so-Japanese goodies, I had put a bag of bread. The square, pre-sliced variety that's seemingly ubiquitous around here. (and yay me, I got to use "ubiquitous" Probably spelled it wrong, though) When I shortly after picking up said bread arrive at the register, a clerk comes running:
-Oh no, you can't take that bread, it's old!
-It feels fine to me, though...
-Oh, excuse me, but I'm afraid it's old. Please take this instead, it just arrived moments ago.
-Ooookay. Thanks.
Now I shall go berate myself for selling my amp yesterday. As you were.
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| Friday, July 30th, 2004
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7:14 pm - Hit frappé
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In my life, which as you may or may not know has been of decent yet not overwhelming length (just yet), I have seen a great many sunsets. Of this almost unfathomnable number, the number of ones I have watched can be counted on one hand. Well, both hands, and throw some toes in too, but still, you get the idea. Today was one of those days when I actually watched one. Right now, in fact. I was out on the parking lot, thinking I'd meet the people I play tennis with three days a week to go to dinner, but nobody was there. So I check my cell, and it turns out they'd started half an hour earlier than usual, just like that. (there is a lesson here about... something, but I wouldn't know what it is). Bummed, I turn around only to find this great cloud just hanging there, begging to be appreciated.
As I long ago told my friend from long ago, mankind spends far too little time lying on grass looking up at the sky, and far too much time not doing that.
Around my building, there is no grass of the type you'd actually willingly lay down on, so I instead grab my camera, head up to the seventh floor, and sit out on the emergency staircase for about half an hour, basically just watching this one big cloud drench a part of north-western Saitama. Or maybe Gunma, I don't know. I be many things, the weatherman I be not.
Right about now, I'd like nothing more than to detail all of the deep thoughts that ran through my head during those 30 minutes, but a) they're none of your business, and 2) they were embarrassingly few. Mainly, what I thought about was what the hell I'm gonna have for dinner, now that my compadres upped and left without me. "I've got nothing!" I also thought briefly about the past 314 days in Japan, about the truck going through the neighborhood playing that annoying song from somewhere I don't know trying to make people... do something I couldn't make out, the part-timer riding the KFC-delivery tricycle (yeah, yeah, it's like a motorbike, but come on, three wheels, you gotta work with me, people!), meeting my ex again, and what makes clouds stay together.
What does make clouds stay together? Seriously, why do they just get blown on by by the wind, and not blown apart by it? Allcomers welcome.
I shall post some pictures in the edit. Later.
Edit!
Bonus: things you can do on a train to Shikoku when you're bored:
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In other news: I just blew the high E string on my guitar. This sucks for a great number of reasons, one of which is that it's the third time in less than that number of weeks that I've done that. Oh well.
It also sucks because final exams are here, and I, being something of a rebel, don't really care too much about them. Don't get me wrong, I usually do care a great deal, but I just can't be bothered somehow, not this time. Maybe it's the heat, whatever. I'll stop now.
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| Thursday, July 15th, 2004
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4:37 pm - Shitty cellphone pictures and high pressure locales
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Submitted for your perusal are three, count 'em, three cellphone pics I have taken in the last week, all of which can be described with the above mentioned adjective, shitty. However! I shall tell you about them anyway, because that's the kinda guy I happend to be.
The Batman one... I'm guessing it says "This Batman is super", but my German is a little rusty, having chosen French and Spanish over it in junior- and highschool... Anyhoo, it's from a little cave-place near Mt. Fuji, where I and some of my tennis-playing-chums went over the weekend, apparently to explore very very small-but-deep caves, row equally small boats, enjoy, you guessed it, small fireworks, and also, part-ey like it's summer 2003. Or something. Anyway, during the non-alcoholic part of the first day, we found this old (1960-something?) German movie poster in a museum-like place adjacent to one of the caves, which, in November, apparently, contains a myriad of flying rodents. Now though, they just have Batman movie posters. I'm not really big on Batman in any way (though you'd be forgiven for thinking I am, having written the word "Batman" some 532 times in this paragraph alone), I just thought it... odd.
Second one: Bowling will do strange things to you. Like making you want to enter the "Mystery Zone" (like it says on the cans), when choosing sodas after a game in which you stank to high heaven. I was completely disappointed to find a regular old ---- coming out when I pressed "Mystery". Yeah, I know the odds of there actually being a true mystery soda are slim to none, and that chances are it would just be a button for random selection, but still...
Pizza of Death Records. All I know about them is the location of some of their artists in the Shibya TawaReko (Tower Records, gotta love them thar abbreviations). Oh yeah, and that the name is... intriguing.
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The final one is actually shitty for reasons other than being taken with my phone, but I won't go there. What the sign says is basically "beware of strong wind". That's not particularly fascinating in any sense of the word; its placement, may be of interest, however. That would be at the non-revolving door exits of Tokyo Dome. Why are local-mini-typhoons an issue at Tokyo's premier sports arena? For all you budding building engineers out there (unlike myself, I'm not much of a budding anything), I can tell you that without that sign, the whole dome would collapse in on itself. Well, ok, that's not entirely true. When they were building the place, they didn't want any ugly pillars obstructing the action (and being in the way of more sellable seats), so to keep the roof up, they just pumped up the pressure inside. So when they open the non-revolving doors (as well as the others) to let people out after, say, I see Cuba beat Japan 6-5 in baseball much like they did last night, it creates quite the "out-draft". Which makes for a fun 0.5 seconds when your in the middle of your very own little typhoon. And yeah, I know, it's not really a typhoon.
That will be all.
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| Thursday, July 8th, 2004
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9:05 pm - 言葉のない世界
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| Monday, July 5th, 2004
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11:24 pm - "And they think it's all over..."
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"God, I can be such an idiot sometimes. Yeah, yeah, most of the time"
That's a translation of a mail I sent from my phone to my friend at 6:51 Sunday morning, from Shinjuku station. I didn't realise it as such at the time, but the reason I felt so strongly about what had just transpired came to me a few moments ago, sitting out on the balchony, listening to... "fitting" music, sipping Mugicha in a cup with a big yellow flower on it, wearing a cowboyhat that I'd won (by some freak of nature) tilted to block out the otherwise annoying lights Mr Edison seems to bless and curse this part of the world with. The reason, to paraphrase something from my favorite "epic" literary adventure of my junior high days: "the dice had stopped rolling in my head".
This means that I knew something important had just happened, I knew it couldn't be changed, but I didn't know if it was for better or worse.
What had indeed just happened came at the end of a fairly long night, beginning in Shinjuku, then moving on to Roppongi. We were eight people, three girls, five guys, which means the balance was pretty much perfect. It was my first all-night-Tokyo-party since my breakup, and I'd like to think I made the most of it. Anyhoo, that which relates to the above happens at the end. The others (the wusses!) had left for home on the first train at 5:09, but I couldn't leave. I had a goal for the night. To find one girl whom I found attractive, and get her number, just to prove that I was still "out there", or whatever. I set dumb goals up for myself all the time, but that's beside the point. Now, in Roppongi, this is (supposedly) not that hard a feat to accomplish, it's known to be something of a foreigner-filled meat-market of sorts, only I'd left it a little late in the game. The club I was at (now all by lonesome) was rapidly filling up with strikeouts too drunk to wanna go home yet. Not unlike me, I suppose. I was about to give it a miss and head on home, when I lock eyes with this girl (I generally refer to women from between 20 and 30 as girls, as I am of that age and I rarely if ever call myself a "man"), and after an hour or so of trying to communicate in a very loud environment, her friend drags her home, after she gives me her number.
Feeling not on top of the world, but still pretty ok, seeing's how I'd completed my anal-retentive mission of the night, I head for home too. Arriving at Shinjuku station, next to me on another escalator going up from the subway to the train station is another "girl". Another double-escalator up, same thing. Thankfully, the Oedo-line is buried deep below Tokyo, or she would never have told me, in flawless English no less, something which started a conversation, which led to a delayed departure for home. But when we did part on the platform, I was still pretty much in shock that this lovely creature cared to converse with me without even having to "impress" with lines in Japanese that nobody on this rock would ever likely call "smooth", that I just let her go off into the bright Tokyo morning.
I can be such an idiot sometimes.
Of course, there is no way I know that I would have ended up happier in life had I used any part of my brain and not let her ride off on the Chuo-line that morning. I might have become miserable, but that's not the way my mind plays it out, of course it isn't. And it essentially nullifies my victory of possibly finding rebound-girl earlier that night. Having had a shot at something more than that, straight away, just like that, and then throwing it away...
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Apparently, life comes with a certain number of opportunities. Sure, you can increase that number or decrease it in certain ways, but it's still a pretty finite number. I wondered, as I sat out on my balchony in my cowboyhat, watching a spider climb down his everso thinly spun web and then back up again, if he was better off for not knowing that. But somehow, despite myself, I didn't think he was.
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| Friday, June 25th, 2004
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12:48 am - 後悔
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Caution: you are about to read something which lacks meaning, is poorly structured, and could use some extremely heavy-handed editing. It is, however, on the whole, quite likely grammatically correct. Proceed at the risk of... well, loosing a little (spare) time.
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Do you ever look back at a choice you made in at some point in the past and go "Whoa, I'm sure glad I did that. Can't imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't --- right then and there. Glad I didn't bite the bullet of not ---". You do? Good for you. I don't really do that. Well, sure, sometimes I pat myself a little too hard on the back, but most of the time, it's the choice I didn't make that bothers me, the road I chose not to follow that haunts me. I don't know if it's me or just human nature. Maybe it's the what-if-sandwhich of fate I swallowed without chewing enough times. When I look back at my admittedly not overly long existence on this green-and-blue ball people have a habit of calling something, I think about the time in highschool when I didn't tell the first girl I thought I loved how I really felt about her. I think about the time I came so close, so very very close to doing it, while riding through the woods at 4 a.m. in a bus a week before graduation. And I didn't tell her. Instead, I sat there with all the other kids (as well as the driver, likely) sound asleep around me, talking to her about the future, the past, doing everything in my power to avoid the subject I most wanted to touch; the present.
I sit back, and I wonder, would I be a happier man than I am today, had I told her how I felt? The facts of the matter seem to scream no in my face not unlike the first blizzard of a Northern winter. She had a boyfriend. One with whom she later broke up, to be sure, but still. She was also way out of my league in some respects, as all the sad cases out there seem to be. And quite objectively, we had very few common interests, and yet in other ways we weren't different enough to make things interesting in the long run. But in reality, a place I tend to visit once in a while, just to see what's going on before I pop back into the comfort and warmth of my own little world within a world, those facts do little to make up for how I still wonder sometimes, what might have been. In the end, it's the uncertainty that gets you. I think because I have been raised on a harsh diet of truth, certainty around every corner, under every tree, that the thing I fear most is uncertainty.
Or mimes, those things are fucking scary. See what I did there, using a really tired line as a defense mechanism? If I had a therapist, she'd be turning in her 15 000$ bed.
Another fear of mine is death. I sometimes tell myself I fear it only because I love (most aspects of) life so very very much. But that's not the whole truth, nor is it nothin' but the truth. That would be that death is something I just cannot fathom. It is the ultimate uncertainty. It's hard imagining things you haven't tried until you actually try them, at least for someone of my limited imagination. Or rather, I can imagine them just fine, but without actually trying them, how can you know? I look for certainty everywhere I go, I should put that in my interests list in my profile. "Cooking with the tv on, certainty, sleeping way too late". Yeah, I should do that. An on-again-off-again hope of mine is that when I become old (as I hope to), I shall become deeply religious. Find faith. If I were to do that, there would be no reason to fear death. Were I to die, I would either go to the great gumball dispenser in the sky, or to that vending machine in hell where all the good candy is sold out and the machine eats your change. Now, as things stand, I just cannot imagine there not being anything at all where "I" used to be. It's kinda freaky. If you think about it long enough, it starts going around in circles until words loose all meaning, in the same way that happens if you say "lemon" over and over and over again.
The reason for all this, of course, is that I broke up with my girlfriend of less-than-a-year. It wasn't a bad breakup, it contained all the usual clichés. Moreso than most, actually, in my limited experience. But when I look back and think about what happened, I don't feel sad about the whole thing. I feel happy. I did do it. I took the plunge, and I have "no regrets" because of it. This is one time when I don't sit around and think "If only I hadn't told her how I felt, then maybe I would have met somebody else and would still have somebody." That may very well be true, but it feels inconsequential, somehow.
Finally, I shall offer you my theory on life, as opposed to my complete lack of a theory on death. It's not a contest where whoever's happiest at the end wins. Don't get me wrong, sure it's a contest, it's just that the goal isn't at the end. It's more like some doped-up janitor went and moved it to mid-field on a wicked trip last night, and nobody's bothered to put it back where it belongs. So if you're happy now, that's good, and if you're not, well, by that same token, that's not good. A truer truism may be hard to find, but there you have it. If you don't try to become happy by yourself, there are two possible outcomes. One is that you're lucky enough to have people around you who care enough about you to do everything in their power to make you happy, the other is that you stay the way you are. Fine, be that way. In the end, "life doesn't owe you squat", as I'm sometimes told. You, on the other hand, owe it to life to prove yourself. I mean, come on, you were the one to beat out all the rest of the sperm to get to the starting line, now that the race is on, is this what you're gonna spend it doing?
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This post really didn't turn out the way I thought it would, in any way, really. There are so many things I wish I could have said, but couldn't find the words for, or even the first syllable. Guess that's the way it goes sometimes. You win some, you loose some. Step right up folks, everybody's a winner. There's a sucker born every minute.
I'll be back again to my old self in no-time, trust me. Or rather, my new self. I rather like that.
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| Sunday, June 20th, 2004
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12:29 am - Ancient mysteries
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My highschool kid is a pretty funny guy. I'll stop yappin' about him in a minute, bear with me. His English is pretty decent, though sure, it could still use some work. Hell, that's what I'm paid for. Anyway, he likes himself that rap music, wants to go to Atlanta, and quite possibly become a black man in his next life. Whatever floats his boat, I say. Anyway, this has resulted in two... things. One is that every so often, between his Japanglish wordings of, well, Japanglish words, he'll throw in a perfect "Know what I'm sayin'?", which is a feast for the senses, really. The other thing is that he has a fantastic ability to come up with new words and phrases. Sure, it may have jack squat to do with the music, but I'm sticking it in here anyway, so sue me. This past week, when we were talking about religion of all things, and I told him that not a lot of people go to church in Sweden, he replied "Oh, it's just for the hardcore christians?" Which, in the words of someone sadly more intelligent than I, is "funny 'cause it's true".
Today, I thought I'd share with you a timeline of the events that took place on Monday afternoon, when I and Tomotaka didn't particularly attend our classes. We live some 25 km out of central Tokyo, but since we pretty much have mush for brains, we decided to bike it. And yes, it turns out that it was definitely as good an idea as we originally thought it was, thank you for asking.
14:52 Two guys pump my bike's tires at Eneos (gas station) in Minami Yono (where I live, incidentally). Back home I doubt I would have gotten to borrow a pump to do it myself, whereas here, two guys hop to and do it for me. Only in Japan, kids. The clock starts on the trip to Ikebukuro.
15:06 We pass by a laundromat-place with a Swedish flag, and Electrolux sign. Feeling very... nationalistic today, don't quite know why.
15:30 We pass the Arakawa river, meaning out of Saitama-ken into Tokyo-to.
16:16 Stop at another Eneos to ask for directions, in a moment of weakness. Naturally, we were, as the saying goes "bang on target".
16:37 Arrival at Ikebukuro Station, East exit.
16:52 Get on the Yamanote-sen to complete "the lap". Why anyone in their right mind would choose to ride a train which goes round in a circle for an hour may be beyond you, but it was pretty good, actually. Managed to avoid falling asleep by nuisance-mailing friends from my phone, going "Guess what I'm doing now!? I'm riding in a great big ol' circle!" It's also just such a treat to get to watch an animated dog teach the people on the train how to say "marriage registration" in English, and rate its helpfulness as a word as 4/5. Heck yeah, I don't know how I ever got by without it. Nowadays I use it at least, oh, 0 times a day. Aside from this post, quite obviously. Dammit, that little dog got to me too! Ok, I'll try to steer this thing back on track now, hard though it may be. And sure, I'd post the picture of the cartoon mut (which I actually took!), but I can't be bothered, or "fucked", as some people around here would doubtlessly say.
17:54 We complete "the lap" (Soto-mawari, the clockwise direction. Yeah, that means I still have the counter-clockwise one left to do...), ending up back in Ikebukuro. Not one person in our section of the car did the same thing at that time, sadly.
18:15 Arrival at Akihabara. Disembarkation.
19:11 We find a game which costs 1500 yen more used than it does new. When confronted with this conundrum, the clerk replies "We wanna get rid of our stock of new copies." Stranger than fiction, my friends.
19:39 Tomo leaves his wallet in a toilet in Akihabara Station.
20:00 Tomo becomes aware of this. Sadly, we've already made it to Ike (short for... yeah) to collect our bikes and go home. What follows is a trip to the lost-and-found, a call to Akiba (enough with the abbreviations already, dammit!), a trip to Akiba, a trip to the lost-and-found-there, as well as the bathroom in question, but no luck. We return to Ike, talk to the cops there as well, and then start hauling ass home, so Tomo can get his cash/creditcards blocked.
21:31 Departure Ike. Getting our bike from their illegal parking, conveniently located right in front of the cop we'd talked to was... not fun.
22:48 Arrival Minami Yono Eneos. You will note that we shaved 28 minutes off the total time. I am quite proud of that performance, though my thighs were not my best friends the next day. Not like they ever are, really, but still.
23:37 Got confirmation via ICQ that he'd managed to get all his cards blocked, and that no money had been withdrawn prior to the blocking. "Safe", I suppose, though his cards are still missing, as is the 30 000 yen in cash he withdrew that day. Not to mention all his non-cash-cards, ID-cards, and less importantly, point-cards to all manner of places in this point-card-ker-azy country.
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| Friday, June 11th, 2004
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7:51 pm - I was waiting for a good time to tell you this
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The word ちゃりんこ ("Charinko", and yeah, I know it's just hiragana so there's no real point to putting it like that) in Japanese can mean both child pickpocket, and bicycle. This fact bears little to no relation to the rest of the post, but it's still something that I feel not enough people know. I myslef was unaware of it up until only a few short minutes ago, as a matter of fact.
The it's funny how list:
1. It's funny how quickly you get used to things not being the way they used to be.
I find myself "worrying" sometimes, what will be it like when I go back to the place I came from. Will I be able to get by without raw fish at least once a week? Will I be bored out of my mind not being able to take three steps and find myself in an electronics store that also sells everything from tennis rackets and Fanta Grape to dogs (yes) and pillowcases? Will I tire of not seeing five women beautiful enough for me to want to spend eternity with on an afternoon excursion into the heart of Tokyo? I am told, by a female friend who doesn't exactly fit into that category, but isn't too far away from it, that Japanese women are the most-often hired models in the world. I'm sure it's "in relation to the size of the population" or whatever, but I don't really care. A factoid that came up in the same conversation is that Japanese men are the ones who are the least hired. This presents to me a very pleasant black-and-white view of the world, somehow. I like it. I think I'll stay there.
You will note that the questions above are all negative towards the eventual going of home. There isn't a single one along the lines of "Will I just love it that the sun hardly sets in the summer?", "Will I not find it a lot easier to live in a country the bureaucracy of which I understand?", or "Will I be able to contain all the excitement of seeing my golden oldie friends again, and having them react in the ways I know they will react to the things I say and do?" Strange, that. This doesn't mean that any of those things won't be true, it's just a measure of my perspective from here, make of it what you will.
Another example. I teach English (everybody in Japan who doesn't know me thinks I'm American anyway, might as well use it) to, among others, this highschool kid. When I was returning from this week's session, I caught myself thinking of that highschool kid as just that; a highschool kid. Sure, I'm a few years into my by-none-called "university career", but still, "kid"? And I looked deep into the book of all things me, and found that I did indeed have the right to use that term in that way at that time. I could go off an rant on all the extremely mature, wonderful, and above all, cool things I've done since that time in my life, but I've got other things to do, I hope you will forgive me for it.
I realise that paragraph (/post/LJ) doesn't go anywhere. But who said everything has to go somewhere? You're very likely not the King of me.If you are, however, then I'm sorry, your Royal Highness, I'll try harder in the future. Yes, I give you my word.
2. It's funny how unpleasant things you don't know anything about can seem at a distance, if you haven't yet spent enough time convincing yourself that they're wonderful, and that everything will work out fine.
Before coming here, I'd spent the previous two years of my life (a sizeable percentage, I might add) looking forward to the day that I would once again set foot on the isles of Japan. I, like many others, took comfort in knowing that not only was there indeed light at the end of the tunnel, but we knew what color it was. Everything was nicely ordered, in a way almost defiant to Mother Nature. But what the hell is going to happen to me when I go back? This thought occured to me recently, so much so that I won't have two years of my life here in order to convince myself that going back will be great. Problem.
3. It's funny how quickly you forget, what things you forget, and how the smallest little thing can bring everything flying back to you in bright, shining Technicolor.
Not in the sense of "Oh, I'm sorry honey, I forgot our anniversary. Again. Yes, I realise I have yet to remember it even once. Yes, the monthly ones too, but calling a reoccuring monthly event an anniversary is just wrong, wouldn't you agree? Whaddaya mean 'Have a nice life!'?", but more like... ah fuck it, I can't be bothered with this shite anymore. Ponder that at your leisure, why don't you, and get back to me.
4. It's funny how all my lists (and boy are there a lot of those) always seem to end in the number three.
Maybe it's my character or something. The first one is all fun and games "Wohoo, I'm making a list", but then the excitement fades as we segue into entry number two, and by the time we get to three, my Gen-X attention span is already somewhere else. Much like it is now. Oh wait, crap, that's not three.
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| Sunday, June 6th, 2004
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12:49 am - Don't look down
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There are some things which never seem to cease to amaze/freak out the people around me in this country, which seemingly do little to/for anybody in most other places. One is the fact that I don't know what bloodtype I am. I could be A, but on the other hand, I could be AB. Or maybe go all ke-razy and be all like O+, or some shit like that. I actually called my mom some time ago to see if she knew, but no luck. Never have I been asked what bloodtype I am when in lands Western. In Japan, it is the third question I get, right after name-nationalilty. Or maybe the one after "age", I'm not sure.
Apparently, it is very important what type you are, because you fit in differently with people of the other types. I'm all for putting people and animals and tissues and crap into boxes, so by all means, rock on. Hmm... that would indicate I'm an "A". Apparently. Going by the findings of part of a two-hour special on TV about the whole thing. "Celebrities", soaring production values, prime time, the whole, for want of a better word, shebang. Doing social experiments on preschoolers, putting them all in bloodtype-color-coded little hats, proved quite a few points they were arguing. Apparently. Sometimes, I think I'll never understand this country, or any other, for that matter. Often right before I think of something which changes my mind.
Or maybe it's just good to keep somebody around who's the same type as you, if you were to drive your pearl-grey Nissan Cube Cubic into a cream-white Nissan Cube Cubic on the way home from your local Lawson. I'm not sure.
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Another one of these amazing facts is my height. In good ol' metric, I'm 187, which in that other system would be something like 6'2", I'm guessing. Regardless, here, I am regarded as some kind of giant from the faraway lands across the sea. And sure, I can understand part of that, being a good six to eight inches taller than the average male, coupled with a non-japanese appearance is bound to cause some kind of a reaction. What I am amazed by, however, is the fact that it doesn't wear off. Two months or so ago, I joined a サークル at my university, and at every single party we've had, at least two people have 1) commented on the fact that I am "tall", and b) gone on to call on one of the shorter girls to stand beside me, in front of me, or behind me, for comparison. The result is either another, louder, exclamation of my tallness, or an exclamation of the opposite, the chosen girl's lack thereof. I shudder to think what Akebono went thorugh during the summer holidays away from Sumo school, being 6'10, and weighing what he does.
Shit, he's from Hawaii, right? Nobody probably gave a flying about that, then.
Another hobby of mine, besides being called "tall" in various ways, is trying to make the universe explode by getting too much attention. I came quite close recently when I went to watch my first ever baseball game. Giants vs. Dragons. Tokyo Dome. The top spot in the top league (Central, for those who care) at stake. Being a Dragons-guy, I wore a Dragons jersey, and my baseball-buddy wore a Hanshin Tigers one, despite the fact that they were playing hundreds of miles away on that day. We went on to get tickets in the Giants section of the dome, just for the hell of it. Had it been a hockey game in America or a football game in pretty much any country in Europe, chances are I would be dead right about now. Not so in Japan, my dear friend. No, we were merely looked at in all manner of ways, from businessmen ordering beer from quite pretty Japanese women, to younger guys ordering beer from quite pretty Japanese women, to whole families... doing their best to keep their kids from crying at the sight of horrible people such as us. All in all, it was a quite memorable game, for reasons which don't matter in the least.
Following this, I decided to take a scientific poll, to find out how many people look at me, when I'm not looking at them. Putting on my very cool sunglasses, I trekked down the main street around these parts, applying the techniques of ninja to hide my actions. No, not walking with my feet on top of my hands to minimize noise, looking sideways from behind my sunglasses. Which, as it were, weren't mine at all, but like I've said before, that's neither here nor there.
Getting back on track... now. Welcome, how was your trip?
The results are in: quite a few. Being a guy, I generally only pay special attention to Da ladies, for reasons which are quite obvious, but apparently, others pay attention to me. As well as Da ladies, but that goes without saying. Obviously. Nope, no self-esteem issues here. Although, incidentally, I think that Da ladies in Korea tend to not-look-away for a moment longer than their Japanese counterparts. I shall not elaborate on this point. Feel free to do so on your own, at your leisure, though.
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There is a researcher living next door to me now. Since she moved in four months ago, I have seen her all of two times. I do not know if this is because she is locked in her... place of research, or her room, or out partying all the time. At any rate, she's not going into or out of her room a lot. Or maybe I'm just not stalking her door enough. I think I shall go do that now.
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| Saturday, May 29th, 2004
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9:09 pm - Kissing in the shadows
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As they teach you in journalism school, first the facts, then the opinion. The reason for this may be that by the time people wade through the facts, they're so bored they'll buy just about anything somebody tells them, I don't know. But here are the facts.
1) Japanese people wear seatbelts only while riding up front.
2) There is a car from Kumamoto cruising the streets of Saitama as I write this.
3) My electricity bill for the month of April is 2339 yen.
Now for the part which is fun for me. Regarding factoid number one: On a recent excursion to a local restaurant, I was nestled comfortably in the back seat the late-model Japanese über-mobile, not yet having the social status of the person occupying the seat next to the driver. Below is an approximate transcript of a conversation I had with my back-seat-confidante.
BSC: "Wow, you're wearing your belt in the back seat?!"
Me: "Uhm, yeah, why don't you have yours on?"
BSC: "It's not necessary."
Me: "Huh?"
BSC: "You only have to wear seat belts when you ride up front."
Me: "But won't you be just as dead sitting in the back without a belt as you would have been sitting in the front without one?"
BSC: "なかなか面白いなぁ、お前。"
This made me think of something. A thing with a Seinfeld-connection, as it were. He once said "The only thing dumber than not wearing your helmet while riding a bike, is the helmet law", and yeah, I know he phrased it better than that. "Do we really want people so stupid that they don't protect their own melons from harm to procreate, do we want more of them in the genepool?" I can see the connection with seat belts, but maybe you can't. That's one of the things that make life interesting. When I was in the place I was before I came to this place, I always wore my seat belt. It was not that I was afraid that the two police officers on duty covering the entire county would, in some weird freak of mathematical coincidence, stop the car I was riding in and chastise me, or possibly give me a ticket. It was more a feeling of I-don't-wanna-die-I'm-too-young-to-die. I'd like to say I did it because I wouldn't wanna be the one who killed the person sitting in front of me in the event of a collision, but I'm not that selfless. It's just a basic tenet of my existence: "Eat, sleep, survive, reproduce".
In Japan, however, they don't really see it that way, apparently. Maybe it's the whole status way of thinking they've got going on here. "I'm not worthy, I'm sitting in the back, I might as well die. My better is sitting up front, and through the grace of whatever diety he/she subscribes to, I'm sure his/her exaltedness shall spare him/her from any physical pain in this life." Though it would probably have been a "he", at least in the car I was in. Or maybe it's the classic Western view of the Japanese view of death. The lone samurai who just doesn't give a fuck if he lives or dies. More likely, people who sit in the back are just too damn cool.
Another thing I realise is that in most ways, almost all of the ones that count, I'm so far off base in this post that it's not even funny for most people. As for the rest, well...
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I don't really have any opinions worth expressing regarding the New Beetle which came here all the way from Kumamoto on Kyushu just to be seen by me, so I'll just leave well enough alone.
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My electricity bill, however, is another matter. 2339 yen. Rarely have I been so happy to get a bill. Back in December (or rather, January, when I got the bill for December), it was over 8000 yen. This in spite of the fact that I was out in the world, doing my best immitation of a backpacker for two of those weeks. Which means that it would have been something like 16 000 had I been here the whole time. The reason for this is that there is no insulation to be found here, nor anywhere south of Hokkaido (which means that despite having the heater on full blast all winter, I spent a considerable part of my evenings with my jacket on. Inside). The reason for this, like the above, is shrouded in mystery. The Japanese have seen insulation, they use it all the time up north. A friend in Sapporo felt the need to make this clear at every opportunity this past winter. Maybe it just has to do with the property prices, every square inch counts (eat that, metric system!), so you can't waste any inside a wall. Even if it would keep you from freezing to death.
I've been told that before the bubble burst, the land (no buildings included, no purchase necessary, some assembly required) the imperial palace was built on (in central Tokyo) was valued higher than every single property in Cali-fucking-fornia. The world's third largest economy, if you believe in that sort of thing. Statistics, that is.
以上です。
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(comment on this)
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| Thursday, May 20th, 2004
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8:58 pm - Look at me, I use commas
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Recently, I took part in a gathering at my local Kappa Shushi. The reason I'm telling you this is because I am here, and I cling to my conviction that all people who are not here, hell, even those who are, have a craving for stories which involve rice, in some form or another. Had I been back home, I would not have told you I went out and had potatoes in some form yesterday. Partly because I wouldn't have gone out and had potatoes yesterday, partly because why on God's Green Earth would anyone care about that? I'm talking rice here, people.
Along on this expedition to lands foreign came my friend, 友. Yes, that is a real name, and yes, there is a delicious pun in there if you look for it hard enough. Although it's not quite delicious enough to start learning Japanese in order to gain enlightenment. Feel free to do that anyway, it's not like I'm stopping you.
Upon entering this hallowed hall of oriental delicacies, we were directed to take seats at the counter. This was not because the tables were all full, actually, as is normally the case. No, it was merely the arbitrary ruling of the girl whose other バイト allowed her that night off, so she could work at Kappa that night of the week. What happens next is... something. I don't know. "Two men walk into a (sushi-) bar..."
Sorry about that, I'm back now. If that's any consolation, though I somehow doubt it is.
The two 30-something "salaryman" (yes, that's singular) sit down next to us, and promptly start grabbing every single damn plate that any of us were planning to take, had any of them been given enough time on the conveyor to make it to us. I say this not with hate in my soul; it is merely an objective statement of fact. They also eat very, very quickly. Not only that, right after they sit down, one of them pulls out a standard porn-in-any-country-other-than-Japan magazine, which is passed between the two throughout the course of the meal. Both men constantly... do something with their cellphones. I don't know quite what, nor am I sure I really want to. Here is the mystery to me, the still-not-naturalised-foreigner. How can they do it? I start having problems if I'm forced to walk and hold a conversation of any kind of quality at the same time; some days, I have problems just doing the easiest one of those. And yet, here are these two ordinary Japanese men, eating at speeds which defies the logic of men, taking in porn, working their phones, and yet, their minds still have enough excess capacity to allow them to maintain functions like breathing. They finish up in ten minutes, and leave, the only hint of their visit being the four drops of soy sauce one of them spilt on the counter in his most fierce attempt at multitasking.
And yes, I do realise you don't use the same part of your brain for breathing and discussing the abysmal state of the Lotte Marines this season. At least not while eating.
I guess that's how this country's managed to get where it is in such a comparatively short time. It has to do with the porn, quite obviously. Either that, or the fact that the two men together probably had all of one week off from work last year, and neither of them had a single thought in their heads in the direction of using one of those days.
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I shall now listen to a song about Saitama, mainly because, well, it's about Saitama.
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