Questions and Answers

This comes to me in an email from my JTE (the Japanese English Teacher) at my Junior High. She writes, "I send you some questions from 2nd graders( today we thought "why Japanese do ～?" and " Because ～." Then I asked the students if they have any questions about America or you. Would you answer to these?" I think you, dear readers, should help me think up some good answers. Any assisstance would be--potentially--appreciated.

What sport is popular in America?
Why American is taller than Japanese?
Why does American shooping mall has their national flags?
Why did you come to Japan?
Why did you become an ENglish teacher?
What made you to become a teacher?
Why children in America can go home earlier than Japanese children?
Why many schools in America don't have their school uniforms?
Why American people like to communicate with other poeple?
Why is American's nose high?
Why do you blow your nose with a handkerchief?
Why are you ever-cheerful?
Are there any poeple who is not good at talking in America???
WHY do you call South America continent America?(There isn't America in it)

Some of these are pretty awesome, but I'm having a hard time breaking free of the mental and emotional stress of being here in order to give them good answers. For instance, my immediate response to #s 7, 8 and 9 is something like "because we're not fucking robots like you people, and we value individuality and happiness and interpersonal connection, you unbelievable, unfeeling robot people." Which is not necessarily a helpful reply. Suggestions?

Me and Uke

"Just try to write short posts," Ellie advises me, "don't try to fit it all in, just talk about something cool that happened."

The difficulty is presenting your story without presenting a lot of backstory, and it plagues every wish-I-blogged-more-regularly diaryist, but for me the issue is context, not just exposition. I always feel like there's so much surrounding information that someone needs to know before they can understand any of what's going for me, why things feel the way they do over here. This feels like a pretty alien landscape quite a lot of the time, and even as I accomodate more and more to living here, I become more convinced that so much of it is untranferrable; when context is everything, it feels like my experiences will be lost in translation. But tonight I'll try - TRY - to skip the backstory, skip the context, skip the translation sagas and tell you with no great long preamble or leadoff that...

When I got to band practice tonight, JUST on time, relaxed as the whole thing is (how could you have an uptight Hawaiian band?), the guy who's the main ukulele player and thus the one who's doing the greatest share of the teaching-me-ukulele-during-band-practice, which is what I'm ostensibly there for, thought that I had done a great job practicing this week (little does he suspect) and that I'm learning it all really quickly and really well! This meant that tonight's lesson had a totally different structure than last time. You see, since they all speak in a very colloquial, relaxed, quick Japanese and this old guy in particular speaks very colloquial, relaxed, old-man Japanese, there ends up being very little useful verbal instruction he can give me right up front. We apparently suppose. Anyway, this would contrast greatly with the traditional Japanese method of ukulele instruction, which consists mostly of shouting at you and hitting you when you do something wrong. Which would be intimidating if it weren't so hard to take anyone seriously when they're wearing a Hawaiian shirt, not to mention brandishing a tiny little guitar.
So today's lesson had a lot less of the normal angry/frustrated/yelly kind of ukulele instruction and a lot more of the showing-me-chord-changes kind of ukulele instruction: yay! "Ya'tta," as we say over here: means, "yay, I did it!" And aside from these more traditional pillars of Japanese pedagogy (these being, remember, hitting and shouting), there's also a lot of taking my hands and putting them in the "better" positions on the frets, although this never, never works, and just leads to a great deal more shouting. Shouting which is related to hitting.

For all of the turbulence they're a bunch of really warm and good-natured people and I really really love the idea that I'll get to spend more time with them - it's a whole totally new group of people to get to know, and I get to see and talk to them in a way that is, A) totally new to me and different than any of the way's I've already got to meet and see people, and B) feels really natural and good. Like, we're all living here and we all share this interest, and now we get together. None of the other band people speak English, although one of the ukulele girls seems to remember a little of her JH vocabulary (see, my job does make a difference ... kind of). None are below thirty-five-ish in age. But they like playing music and they also like that I want to learn from them, and play with them. It feels kind of real, despite the Hawaiian shirts. Oh, did I mention that they all wear the shirts? They all wear the shirts. Matching shirts. Maybe "surreal" is a better word for this new part of my life, but if so then I should feel right at home, right?

Mostly the band plays Hawaiiany music, some songs performed in what may have once been Hawaiian and then others which are sung in Japanese which sounds exactly like it. With the exception of one song which I join in and butcher (it's only my second week), I spend the time they're playing practicing my own set of chords, whatever the hitty shouty man tells me to work on. Sometimes I just sit and listen. Tonight they start up one number and I just sit back to bask in the feeling of it, the thick amateurish bass and deft pedal steel wafting their sounds out behind the big guitar. And I think, "gosh, I know this song." But what could it be? They play through the intro but I jut can't place it until Ya-Chin steps up to sing. Ya-chin is the front man for the group, ubiquitously described to me as "very difficult" by anyone who knows him; I got introduced by friends from the radio station. It's his bar, the place we practice at, and probably it's under his good graces that I've been welcomed into the practice sessions. He plays this enormous guitar. Not like a Miriachi band's swollen, fat guitar, those things are really big. This is more of flat, wide big, with waves that spread out like the thick wings on a manta ray; it's the big kind of big that those huge, low-slung old Cadillacs were. Classy too, two long f-holes and a cherry-wood glow, a professional's guitar. All this classiness seems orchestrated against the rest of Ya-chin's personal appearance, the highlight of which is usually his shaved-on-the-sides/ thick-on-the-top flat mohawk, thick like a tire-tread across his scalp. When he sings it's usually just right for the kind of music they play. Syrupy and sweet, unfollowable and melodic; sleepy, coconut-drink-on-the-beach kind of singing, enjoyable and easy to forget. But this song seems different. And when he steps up to the microphone and starts to sing, he sings:

"Bei miiir bis du schon..."

And this is a great song. My eyes bulge out and my head feels all happy - I look over to the uke guy, who's been watching from one of the bar stools and he beams this big smile at me: "dozo." "Go for it." So I jump up out of my chair to the other mic and pick up the line. I do know this song alright, we used to have this on the jukebox for goodness sakes! It's a great song to sing. I take the main line, as Andrews Sisters as I can muster up, and Ya-chin and the Uke guy sing back up harmonies: ya'tta! They take a long solo-ing break for the pedal steel and then we come back in to close it, and when we stop singing everybody bursts into big applause and cheering. They said it sounded great, and they want me to sing that one with them and maybe more. They loved it. I'm in the band.

I think I need to get some Hawaiian shirts.

A Happyed Couple

One of my favorites, this little one. A ninensei, or second grader from Kuwa Sho, my Thursday school. You can't really tell in the picture I guess, but she has a biiiiiiig gap in her front teeth that makes her just even more unbelievably adorable. Also as I discovered when I picked her up, she weighs like 8 pounds. That's less than a normal housecat. Think about that.

Settling Bets

Ellie comments below:

You know, Josh, you still owe me two towels for losing those bets when I was visiting. (said bets, dear readers, were regarding the questions "are edamame soybeans?" [they are] and "are there squirrels in japan?" [there are]). I know I forgave these debts, but looking at the totally AWESOME towels I brought back with me hanging in my bathroom, I keep thinking that was a dumb move. Towels!

Towit, a response.

For one thing, Yes: that was a dumb move. Towels! Did you all know that Imabari is famous for towels? FAMOUS! But the opportunity has, for you, ELAPSED!!!! BWAHAHAHA!

Now for another thing, NO! I owe you ONE towel for the edamamade bet, which, dear readers, I was wrong about and I hate sis and edamamde equally for as a result.
As far as this unrelenting "squirrels" issue goes however:

1) Never did we make such a towel related compact regarding this persistant "squirrels" claim of yours.

2) As everybody knows, there are no squirrels of any kind in Japan.

The Greater Japanese Banzai Squirrel of Yore, an era that occurred shortly before the Minamoto bakufu and is closely associated with the crucial "Age of Strange New Hats" in Japan was taken from its native habitats by the thousands and shipped across the dangerous straights toward the Korean peninsuela in a well documented attempt by the Japanese Emperors of Yore to avert the impending Mongol invasion as part of a fantastically unprescedented offering of uniquely domestic mythic rodentia and fungus.

Though their destiny may have been to live out a long and noble history as bold and nomadic expatriates in their strange new homeland, languishing under and eventually throwing off the shackles of oppressive Mongol rule and returning to their birthland--as is the case, we all know, with so many kinds of squirrels--sadly, the Greater Japanese Bonzai Squirrels, quite misunderstanding the nature of the role they were to play in the protection of their sacred ancestral homeland, launched themselves from the Nipponese cargo ships even as they neared the rendezvous with the Mongol fleet: a selfless and noble attack which proved however wholly successful. The Banzai Squirrels, skilled in the tradtional arts, sank Mongol vessels by the hundreds and scattered the remainders of the fleet back towards the Asian mainland---but in the course of the battle the Banzai Squirrel was lost to the sea and her wiles: gone to the last squirrel.

After hearing news of the tragic and noble sacrifice made in battle at sea, Squirrels of the Greater Bonzai type who had remained in Nihon during the affair, these having been for the most part busy looking for nuts or meditating naked under waterfalls when the call had gone out for volunteers, one year later would gather together at a little-used shrine on one of the smaller islands in the Seto Inland Sea that seperates Shikoku and Honshu, a location that is now a part of modern-day Hyogo prefecture, to commit ritual suicide in a massive, grisly autopurge remembered yearly during one of Japan's many untranslatable summer holidays.

For centuries following this sad time squirrels of any kind were rarely seen in Japan, often being mistaken for rats, pigeons, small children and okonomiyaki (see my Blogger profile picture for an example of okonomiyaki). Their numbers dwindled through the ages. Rumours circulated among sea-folk that yearly more and more squirrels were being seen sailing small ships to a mysterious island in the Seto sea, grim-faced and chittering lowly to themselves about bushido, never to be seen or heard from again.

Finally, with the collapse of the Tokugawa bakufu and the turbulent changes that the Meiji restoration brought to traditional Japan, the Japanese squirrel met its last. Commanded by Imperial edict to cut off their puffy tails, these always worn in the traditional style of their fathers and denoting their honorable rank and revered station in Japanese society, some squirrels rebelled and were wiped out with the last of the samurai in an epic but unwinnable fight that marked the end of one era and the dawn of a new day. Other squirrels tried to rejoin the new, modern society, but these were summarily hunted down and eliminated by a highly trained order of secret attack pigeons, bolstered by a new ability to supercede the old class lines and seething with centuries of jealousy over the affection that widespread confusion had unwarrantedly garned for squirrels in the pigeons' rightful stead. Still many other squirrels committed seppuku, taking their estates and families with them. In 1867 the last remaining squirrels in Japan made a final migration from all corners of the nation to meet at the famous shinto shrine on the outskirts of Kyoto: Ise. They were the first living beings to enter the inner sanctuary in millenia, but they arrived only to depart. Once inside the main shrine, they unearthed and boarded an ancient space vessel, made entirely of acorn shells and macrame, setting foot aboard the very ship that had brought the Squirrel to Japan in the first bygone days of civilization. They blasted off from the Japanese mainland and began their long, sad voyage back through the cosmos towards whatever farflung star from which they once had come to rest on earth.

Radio 1, for You: The Viewer

At a Christmas party here in Imabari, shortly before Allison's and Ellie's arrivals and the start of the then-real--yet now quickly fading--Holiday Season, I was sat down talking with a woman named Akiko and my friend Hiroko; Akiko is head honcho (do we think that's translatable into the Japanese?) at the admittedly meager Imabari Interntaional Association and Hiroko is my number one pal at the FM station that graciously and somewhat ludicrously, I have believed, welcomes me to their ranks as a bonafide Disc Jockey with a regular weekly showtime (though sadly, no Podcast). It's true I lack a cool DJ name as of yet, but seeing as how no one here can pronounce my real name anyway, "Josh" probably does me just fine as a top secret alien code word for what is in fact my own birthname; the show is proudly called the Kessel Run, nomenclature derived from the esoteric but memorable line from Star Wars, Han to Luke and Ben: "You haven't heard of the Millenium Falcon? It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs." And, accordingly, my opening tune every week is none other than the music from the Mos Eisley Cantina scene. BA-BA--BA-BA--BA-DA-BAM ... anyway, you remember. The name of the program, it must be noted, is taken with a big thanks to bigsis for the infallible advice back in September: totally her idea, and a great one.

We three, Akiko, Hiroko and I are chatty and having an OK time; the party, not bursting with people, is stacked mostly with the other Imabari gaikokujin that I tend to avoooooooid: wearying, boorish folks, teachers at one of the English language education chain-franchises that are quite successful throughout the country. These, the other foreigners here I kind of disdain, somehow take control of the stereo and they're playing a lot of the not-quite-right-for-the-mood party music on the stereo; it's not a drinky dancy drinky party, boys, it's an eat-too-much-holiday-food/sit-and-act-civilized party, and much as I do genuinely like rap from the early 90's, it wasn't helping me or anyone else to digest their belly full of Nog and Cheesecake and Yakitori.

Apropos, Akiko asks me about music - what kind of music do I like? This, the music question, is always an Ok conversationy topic, and one you can converse in reasonably well reasonably early on in any course of foreign language study (although both Akiko and Hiroko are extraordinarly adept English speakers), and I was all set to try to answer her when Hiroko snaps to life and cuts in:

"Last week on your morning radio show," she asks, excited, "what song did you play at 10:55AM?"

This plot thickens, but it will have to be continued (and probably edited for flow) tomorrow, when, after another long day, I can tell you all about it. But enjoy this teaser, in case there were any desperate fans out there waiting for their kick. To see why I might think so, check for the rest of the story later! NIGHT!

Toilet Slippers

"Ellie," whispers Josh. "I have a secret to tell you." I am busy reading e-mail and try to ignore him. "It's not really a secret, is it," I say.
"No, actually it's not a secret at all," he says. "It's kind of like the opposite of a secret. Here wait, let me write it down and show you."

Before continuing, dear readers, I feel it's important to give you a quick overview of certain aspects of etiquette here in fair Nippon, in particular shoe etiquette--outside shoes go off once you are indoors to be replaced by slippers, and even said slippers are removed to walk on the tatami. This you probably know. In addition to these house slippers or inside shoes, there are also toilet slippers, which live in the bathroom and for which regular house slippers are exchanged upon entering said bathroom. In the hotel where we are staying right now there is thus a pair of slippers in each room, to be worn around the hotel, and a couple of pairs of toilet slippers in the bathroom. When it comes to faux pas, Westerners are notoriously gauche when it comes to the shoe rules. We're barbarians. Then there's the tangled web of general toilet etiquette--although the Japanese have the strangest, fanciest toilets ever and obviously put a lot of thought into their design and use (with the exception of the squat toilets, which I have decided really aren't that bad, except on moving trains, when they seem rather alarmingly perilous), they are obsessively paranoid about people knowing when you are actually using one, which explains the fake birds-chirping sounds some toilets play when you are doing your business.

So when Josh hands me back my notebook and I read what it says, you can imagine my mortification. "YOU'RE WEARING TOILET SLIPPERS," it reads. I look down and yes, there they are on my feet: the toilet slippers. I have been wearing them for god only knows how long, down here in the lobby. It's sort of like discovering I've been walking around without any pants on, but maybe worse. I make Josh walk in front of me as I sidle to the elevator, though of course everyone has probably already noticed my enormous, bright fire-engine red slippers that have the word TOILET printed on them in big white letters. Where are my regular slippers? They are in the bathroom, of course. God damn this country's arcane rules.

The moments after realizing that Ellie is wearing the toilet slippers in the hotel lobby, in fact, in the crowded computer lounge area filled with Japanese and foreign tourists alike as well as the hotel staff, are hysterical for me and embarrassing for her not just because she has found out that she's just committed a disgusting social blunder, but more so because I remind her that she is trapped, with every passing second, into continuously committing that same disgusting terrible terrible social blunder with every step she takes in her shiny red squeaky TOILET slippers all the way to the bathroom.

The best part is, of course, that it's not like this was the first time Ellie has made this blunder with the toilet slippers. Not even today. In FACT it was about, oh I don't know, a good hour, hour and a half prior to the incident she descibed that there, a knockin at my door was Ellie, clad in self-same ruby toilet slippers. "Josh!" she says. "Quick! Take a picture of me wearing the toilet slippers!" I tell her to squat down some, so I can get her face in the shot also as well as the bright lady-bug red slippers and the T-O-I-L-E-T lettered across them. "Oh my god, hurry up! Someone's totally gonna see me wearing these outside of the bathroom!" Just like yesterday? "Just like yesterday!" And there she is, photographed and everything, squatting in the tiiiiiiiny rectangle of shoe-wearable space in my doorway, safe behind closed doors, until immediately afterwards going downstairs in them. Did we mention that they're bright bright red?

What Josh still doesn't know is that back at his apartment in Imabari before we set out on this journey, there was at least one time that I forgot to remove my toilet slippers before leaving the bathroom. I wore them all the way into his (tatami-floored) bedroom before I noticed. Also, I might have sort of stepped on his bed.

High Tech

"I was trying to figure out if she was plugging in some crazy computer, but it was a hot plate."
--Josh at youth hostel, Osaka

Into the Buddha's Nose

Day 2 of Ellie and I together in Osaka, or as we say, OOOOOOOOOOOsaka. I guess it's day one-and-a-half; we got in last night and haven't really been in the city proper very much yet; but we've still got tonight and tomorrow to explore and have fun before taking the overnight ferry back to Imabari. Now is downtime; we're POOPED! I'm pretty pooped anyway; I should really be napping but it's way colder in our rooms than it is in the lobby here in our hostel, so I'm down using the internets instead of snoozing. Ah, yes, so: here we are staying in what might be close to the perfect hostel - it's cheap, reasonably-to-very clean (actually it's fine aside from the lingering cigarrette smell everywhere, but that's just Japan for you), there's freeeeeee internets, free coffee in the mornings (which we missed this morning, thank you), an Asahi beer vending machine, and a good selection of videos to watch in the rooms, also free. We're staying in Japanese style rooms, small and boxlike with tatami mats on the floor and futons for to sleep on, the only drawback being that it is slightly drafty, shall we say windy, inside. I wonder if the Western Style rooms are also as drafty inside. What do you think, do they insulate those ones for authenticity? Do they know?

What Josh forgot to mention is that this hotel is right next door to another hotel, which has the same name, and also they share a building. When we tried to check into the other one, the unfriendly front desk guy was stymied by our claim that we had called earlier, and only after a lengthy, complicated interrogation did he finally direct us to try next door, at the other hotel with the same name at the same address. Go figure. We're pretty sure we got the good one though since there's free video rental and we borrowed the Addams Family and something called "Bassing," a fishing video. --Ellie

So yes, we're back in the hostel after deciding we're pooped and a bit overwhelmed with seeing beautiful things and being in new surroundings; after a recharge (boy I should go nap soon) we'll hit some nightlife maybe, get something to eat, see what's around. This morning we went to Nara and saw the Daibutsu, the Giant Buddha, encased in the fourth monument we have seen labeled as "the largest wooden building in the world." It was pretty unbelievably amazing; about 1400 years old or something, bafflingly large and perfect and awe inspiring, much as the complex around him is. AND, Ellie and both got into paradise! That's right folks, you can rest easy now, because me and sis have been assured our eventual ascension thanks to THE BUDDHA'S MAGIC NOSE! Behind the statue itself there is, in one of the temple's the supporting pillars, a floor-level hole carved that is said to be the exact diameter of one of the great statue's nostrils - make your way through it and your place in paradise is assured! Woohoo!! We watched as a long line of parents shoveled their young through the hole like torpedoes; children from infant- and toddler-age up until young high school students were being rammed one after another through the tiny gap in this pillar, one child pulled straight from the stroller and BAM head first into the pillar with a big resounding THUNK before the father re-adjusted his aim and threw the kid into the tube, to be recieved, a dazed but blessed bundle, by mom and the picture taking grands on the other side. And of course, eventually, Ellie goes and says something like, "man, you'd never even be able to get your shoulders through there." And friends, it was no sooner said than there I was plunging headfirst through a one-meter square wooden hole the size of the great Buddha's nostril in the largest 1400 year old wooden building in western Japan, and into nirvana. Pictures to come.

Wilkommen!

And we're off! In a scant 6 hours, Ellie and I will board a bus for Hiroshima, to begin more adventures together. Last night I organized a welcome party for bigsis with all my Tamagawa friends as well as two new friends, a girl Yukiko and her cousin Gouki. When I say "I organized" I of course mean, "I made Mami-chan organize for me," referring to Mami-chan, my handler and sometime slave, who is amazing and strangely does kind of whatever I need her to do, like, all the time (but no, not like that. eeeeewwwwww). She's pretty amazing. So for last night she got together a whole posse of my Tamagawa townspeople and got us a reservation at the nice Izakaya located conviniently exactly across the street from where I live.

Oh, and when I say "welcome party" I mean "surprise party." I told Ellie that I'd made a reservation for us at a restaurant nearby. Just the two of us, you know: go, have some nice food, just a quiet night, catching up. Then BAM! Twenty people waiting for us at a steamy, noisy, super crowded Izakaya, set to welcome us in with a very big un-Japanese "AAAYYYYYYYY!!!!!"

A perfect surprise welcome for my sister. Many many dishes of small mostly deep fried mostly seafood, lots and lots and lots of drinking and eating (Ellie fell in love with something called Chuu-Hai, a fizzy fruit flavored girly drink based with Sho-chuu, an awful kind of vodka like drink. Ellie's was Lychie flavored ... uuuuugh!), lots of fun half-communication and question and answer, and I think a really good time had by all. OK, for now we're off to parts unknown!!!!