Well, I started out on this blog with good intentions. I meant to write something every day, but that trick never works, as Rocky used to say to Bullwinkle. If you understand that reference, I’m afraid that really dates you. (When I write, I seem to go into a stream-of-conciousness mode fairly often, but stick with me. I get back to the point eventually.) And the point is... Oh, yeah. I didn’t even come close to writing every day, or every week for that matter. I’m going to try again, but don’t let the time-line throw you. It’s no longer April or even May. I’ll put in some time references in the future when appropriate, but other than that, it’s going to be just day-to-day stuff.

So, anyway, from the first day back, it has seemed like I never left. I don’t mean that in just a poetic sense. I actually wake up in the middle of the night, thinking that I had only dreamed about being back in California. Of course, the feeling doesn’t last long, but it’s pretty intense for a while and actually rather spooky. When I got back to my old university after 10 years absence, I was given the same office that I had in 1999, there were still tape marks on the wall where I had put up a poster, badly, and I found one of my old tie clips in a drawer of the same desk that I had made so many lesson plans on. I’d been wondering where that had gotten to.

The truth is, I hadn’t missed it that much because I don’t think I’ve worn a tie more than two or three times in the last 10 years. That’s something I’ll have to be getting used to again. I still manage to wear Levis to work, something I’m happy about. Not blue jeans, but black or gray or brown that can camouflage quite well with a suit coat and tie. My Japanese counterparts are almost all in suits and ties, although I have one friend, Yoh-san, the aforementioned professor of physics, who manages to get away with casual clothes as well since he spends a lot of time in his lab. He has a an office similar to mine except his has a home-made particle accelerator in it...

Yoh-san has tried to explain his experiments to me before, but I haven’t got a clue what it is he’s doing. When I see his apparatus, the only thing I can think of is that tunnel in Switzerland where they might be making a black hole that will swallow the universe. My friend the professor scoffs at that. He says if a black hole is created, it will only be a small one. That’s reassuring to him, maybe...

The language lesson for today, children...

In Japan, English has a certain cachet, [I may have said that before - sounds familiar] that goes beyond the actual meaning of the words. Think about it. The people here who make all of the things with English words on them are usually looking for design and thinking about style, not actually sending a message. Their audience, for the most part, doesn’t understand the words anyway, so technically, it doesn’t matter what they say. The t-shirts and other clothing with English slogans on them are cool in Japan and often hilarious to English speakers. [As a side note, I’ve often wondered what Japanese and Chinese people think about the use of their alphabet on American items, including tattoos. I’m sure mistakes are made there as well.]

I saw a young girl the other day wearing a t-shirt that said ’Brigands demand your money or your life’. Yeesss, but why put it on a t-shirt? At least it was grammatically correct and that doesn’t happen often. I have a student in one of my classes that wears a t-shirt that says, on both sleeves, ‘Knowledge and recommendation, my ass.’ Again, correct English words, but I have no idea what it means. I do think it’s very funny, however.

The sign here is a good example. I saw it and thought, "None of those words go together”. Still, I guess it achieves its purpose. It's hard to see, but the photo on the right side of the billboard is of a beauty shop. Go to Fresh Salad Emotion for all your clinic and design needs.

[This was written in the first week of April. It doesn't match the date of the posting and I wouldn't want anyone thinking the cherry blossoms came out in May or June.}

As you can see from the photos here and on the previous posting, the cherry blossoms - sakura- are out. One day, nothing and the next, there they are. They get pretty intense for a few days - seemed like less than a week - and then start to fall. If the wind is blowing, it looks like a snowstorm. My physics professor friend from the university said it's actually called a 'snow storm' of blossoms in Japanese. The ground is covered in pink petals. Then they get swept away and the trees come out green and they're gone until next year, when I have it on good authority that they'll be back. Samurai poets used to consider the short cycle of the cherry blossoms as a metaphor for life and it's easy to see why. Well, I think it's easy. Go ahead and take a poetic view and see what you come up with.

The weather here is not a surprise to me, of course, because I've been through the seasons before, but actually after living in California again for the last ten years, I had forgotten all the problems that come with the weather in Japan. I remembered some of them today because I got caught without my umbrella. This was especially annoying because I have a collapsible one that fits in my backpack and I had made the conscious decision to leave it at home this morning, apparently momentarily forgetting just where I was.

I only had to walk a short distance - far enough to get as wet as I wanted to, thank you very much - to get to a convenience store, every one of which in the country has a supply of cheap plastic umbrellas. Actually, you never have to walk more than a short distance to get to a convenience store in Japan no matter what you want. You often have to decide between convenience stores, there's that many. The umbrellas can run from about $3 on up and really help the stores live up to their 'convenience' theme.

Cheap is the operative word here. No one cares about them once the rain stops so they get thrown away, left in umbrella stands, forgotten on trains and stashed in clusters in closets. I saw a still-life of broken, discarded umbrellas under an apartment stairwell today. My own apartment came equipped with about six umbrellas, plus, of course, my own. I know - you're thinking 'and he still got caught out in the rain'. How dumb do think I felt?

I'm planning to get a motorscooter soon, for the general convenience and especially to save myself the 15 minute walk from the train station to the university. When it rains, it's a wash, pun intended, whether I get wetter walking or riding. When it's not raining, it's humid enough that when I get to my office, I look like I've been walking in the rain. Yes, I'm already tired of the walk. I'm not a person who gives himself a lot of extra time to get where he's going and when I'm already running late, that walk is a killer. Good exercise, true, but I can get that when I get back to my apartment and forget to buy bread.

Meanwhile, back at the supermarket...

I go there pretty much daily, too. I was actually in the store for the second time yesterday because I seem to have a problem these days with my memory and don’t like writing notes. Unfortunately this tendency now results in extra trips up and down five flights of stairs so I may be revising my habits.

Anyway, when I was next in line to pay, the checker was startled to see me. This happens once in a while, but not as often as one would think. I’m pretty much the opposite of anyone Japanese - 6’1” with red hair - and I always expect to be noticed when I go out. However, that very seldom happens. I haven’t been able to decide if it’s because everyone is getting used to foreigners in Japan or they’re just too polite to act surprised. I think I’m still the subject of a lot of dinnertime conversations, though. “Guess what I saw today!”

In all the time I’ve been in Japan, it has only happened a couple of times. Once, a child yelled at me from the other side of a train platform, “Gaijin-san!” (Mr. Foreigner) and once I sat down on the train and the man I sat next to got up and left. That was a shock, but someone told me later that he was probably just afraid that he would have to speak English. That’s what she said, anyway, but she might have just been being nice.

The checker was startled, but not afraid and used the encounter as a chance to speak English.

Her: Hello. Me: Hi. Her: What’s your name? Me: Rick. What’s your name? Her: Mariko. What’s your country? (Someone somewhere teaches this way to ask “Where are you from?” to most of the students in Japan. He must be found and stopped.) Me: I’m from California. Her: How old are you? Me: Sorry? Oh... well, I feel kind of old these days. Her: Are you married? Me: Ummm..., ahh, no. Not at the moment.

Now, back home, this would be considered either pretty direct for an introductory conversation, especially in the checkout line, or as rather suggestive. Of course, she was just practicing the sentences she knew in English with no awareness of the cultural attachments that go with language. I knew that, but even then I didn’t know exactly how to answer her. I didn’t want to answer her, even though I knew it didn’t mean anything.

That’s just one of the problems with learning a second language. Words carry a lot of meaning beyond their dictionary definition and it’s hard to know that and hard to teach that. In more serious conversations in Japanese, I often apologize for my Japanese ability at the start, trying to avoid any cultural misunderstandings that I may stumble into. Japanese, in my limited understanding, has words that are used only in certain situations. Your language depends on whom you’re speaking to and what you’re speaking about. Americans are a whole lot more casual with their language, but it’s still very possible to use the right words to say the wrong thing.

We parted friends. I’ll talk to her again when I can and let her practice her English on me. I’m not going to get into cultural context with her, though. I get paid for teaching things like that.

The cherry blossoms are out. The picture here is from my campus.

My apartment (on the fifth floor, remember) is right across the street from a Yaoko supermarket, a corner of which is pictured here. It's really quite handy.

Most Japanese people, I believe, go food shopping daily and there’s always very fresh prepared food available in supermarkets - fried fish, cooked vegetables and noodles, obentos - boxed takeout meals of fish or chicken and rice and vegetables - and packaged sushi, which must be fresh because no one likes day-old sushi. A lot of people I know don’t even like fresh sushi that much - in the U.S., I mean. Here, nobody doesn’t like sushi, to paraphrase Sarah Lee. It’s one of the questions you’ll get asked if you ever get in a conversation with a Japanese person. They know a lot of the world thinks eating raw fish is kind of a strange thing to do and are a tiny bit defensive about the fact that people in Japan love it. I mean every single person.

If you do say you like sushi, the person asking you will be surprised every time. I don’t think the average Japanese on the street realizes how common sushi has become in the U.S. Sushi in Japan and in the U.S. can actually be quite different, though. There’s the standard kind of sushi - maguro, ikura, tamago - but the sushi chefs in the U.S. have gotten a lot more creative. Dragon, Caterpillar, and Volcano sushi plates are among those I’ve seen in California, along with something that included hash browns. I once took a Japanese friend and her parents to a sushi restauarant in California and the sushi was such a surprise to them that the parents took pictures of it to show the folks back home.

Another way to impress someone from Japan is to be able to use chopsticks. They seem to be pretty sure that it’s an inate talent for Japanese that no westerner could ever hope to master and if you can use them, everyone is very impressed and will tell you so. I have actually met a couple of Japanese students that said they never used chopsticks when they were growing up, but that’s extremely unusual. There must be whole forests cut down every day to provide Japan with wooden chopsticks. Koreans use metal chopsticks. This is a much more environmentally sound choice, but those things are slippery. It takes a bit more skill to eat with Korean chopsticks.

Anyway, there are lots of choices right in the supermarket. This is convenient for me for several reasons. First, I’m not a particularly talented cook. Also, I tend to put off meals until I’m hungry and ready to eat and then realize if I actually prepare something, I still won’t be eating for a while, and, as I mentioned, I’m already hungry. Now that tendency results in a five-floor each way trip to the supermarket when I realize I'm hungry and have nothing in the apartment to eat.

Or that the food I do have in the refrigerator may be a little suspect. The deciding factor for dinner recently has been that my refrigerator (reizoko) is maintaining about the same temperature as my kitchen or possibly a little warmer. It’s small by western standards in the first place and not a lot can be kept in it in the best of times, but now I don’t trust leaving anything in it longer than a day. It took me two days to figure out it wasn’t working in the first place. First, the control dial is where I have to get on my knees to see it. Then the markings are, of course, in kanji which is the Japanese writing system - one of four systems used in Japan, including western letters - that uses Chinese characters and they are too small for me to even see so I can't even check the dictionary and try to figure out if colder is to the right or the left. You would think to the right, right? Or is it the left that’s colder in the U.S.? See what happens? That’s the thing about coming here from the west. Things one country would consider logical are actually the opposite in the other country. To open my front door, first, I have to put the key in backwards according to my western ways (the opposite side of the key - not the opposite end!) - or maybe upside down would be a better description - and then turn the key towards the door jam to unlock the door. Of course, the reverse is true when locking it. I mess it up every time because at first it was my habit to do it backwards and I had to remember to do it in reverse of my natural inclination. Now that I’m getting more used to it, I start to do it the right way and then change it because I now feel like the right way is the wrong way. It’s the small things that make me realize I’m not in California anymore. (That’s my second paraphrase of the day.) One of these days I’ll talk about crossing the street here. Of course, that’s backwards, too, and a lot more dangerous than unlocking a door.

Oh, yeah - the refrigerator... So, what I had to do was turn the dial all the way one way and wait for a while to see if the refrigerator got colder. I tend to not think about the refrigerator until I need something from it, so this stretched on into one day because I forgot to check it. It still wasn’t cold the next morning so I just turned the dial the opposite way figuring then it would be okay. The next day it was still just as warm and that’s why it took me two days to figure my refrigerator wasn’t working. Actually, neither is my clothes dryer. That’s even more complicated because there’s a lot more kanji on it and I tried a lot of combinations of buttons before giving up and calling the landlord. Then I had to explain to him in my broken Japanese what the problem was and he explained something to me in his excellent Japanese that I couldn’t understand, but I think he said to just hang my clothes outside to dry and stop complaining. I may or may not be getting a new dryer and a new refrigerator in the next few days. There’s a problem with the toilet, too, but I don’t feel like getting into that again right now.

Trains and Jehovah's Witnesses - English in Japan

English is everywhere.

Advertisements use English for effect, everyone says ‘bye-bye’ and lots of English words are used just with a more Japanese pronunciation - like ‘ice cream’, which comes out ‘aisu cremu’. I found several examples in a Japanese text I’m starting to study. ‘Koru bakku’ means to return a phone call (‘call back’ for the linguistically challenged), ‘mane kado’ is Japanese for ‘money card’ even though the Japanese for money is ‘okane’. Actually, I’m not sure just what a money card is. It’s not a credit card. Japanese for credit card is ‘kurejitto kado’. ‘Mane kado’ is like English words for a Japanese item without an English equivalent, which makes it doubly weird. According to this book, there’s also a ‘kyasshu kado’ (cash card) which is an ATM card, but I suppose a ‘mane kado’ could be the same thing. The book isn’t all that clear and I doubt if I’ll be using it much. In the clothes section, the book also taught me how to say ‘gabardine’ and ‘pique’ in Japanese (‘gyabajin’; ‘pike’), but I can’t see any way to work ‘gabardine’ into a conversation right offhand and I don’t even know what ‘pique’ means in English, so I don’t think I need to add it to my Japanese vocabulary.

These are some more pictures from my apartment. The building is one apartment wide - my front windows look out over the street and from my back windows, I have a nice view of the New Ace pachinko parlor and a couple of parking lots, actually published in yesterday's post. In the distance, there are mountains on all sides and the view can be very pretty in the evening with the sunset, as here, and in the morning when there's a bit of fog in the foothills.

What I found strange today was that the train that I take to work gives station announcements in Japanese and English, too. Now you may think this is very polite and very handy for English speakers in a foreign land and you’re right. The bullet train to Kyoto and Osaka has English announcements and I’m sure it comes in quite handy for travelers on that popular route. The thing is, I live out in the countryside and as far as I can tell, I’m the only person on the train that the announcement could be helpful for and since I only have to go one stop to get to work, I don’t think I’m going to get lost all that often. But it’s like the whole system was put in place just for me.

Put it in perspective - outside of airports in the U.S., where do you ever hear announcements in Japanese or any other language for the benefit of tourists? Of course, in California, where I’m from, there’s an effort made to include Spanish speakers in the daily signs and announcements. The thing is, I can’t figure out if it’s being polite or being condescending. I was in a Home Depot in California recently and noticed that the bathroom signs were in English and Spanish. What does the management think? If the signs aren’t in their language, Spanish-speaking people aren’t going to be able to figure out what ‘toilet’ means? That’s more insulting than accommodating. That’s what the little universal ‘man’, ‘woman’ signs are for, anyway.

And speaking of toilets, there ARE public restrooms everywhere in Japan. In California, I don’t know how many times I’ve had to sneak into a fast-food restaurant when I’m driving somewhere, pretending to be a customer just to use the facilities. Of course, one reason there aren't many public restrooms in the U.S. is vandalism, which is rare in Japan. How did I get on to this anyway?

Oh, yeah. There was a group of Jehovah's Witnesses outside the train station tonight. They were handing out pamphlets and magazines, of course, but aside from the strange feeling I had on seeing Witnesses in Japan (actually similar to the feeling I have seeing them in the U.S.), they had a sign in English offering to send out free copies of the Watchtower. No surprise about the magazines, but English? Why? I felt rather targeted again, since I was the only person in town that might possibly need to see that information in English. That was a lot of work to go to for... nothing. I almost felt like signing up to reward them for the effort. Almost. I wonder if they know where I live...

Anyway, English in Japan is endlessly fascinating to me and it’s going to pop up here quite often, so stay tuned.

Free Counter

First Impressions - Black Stockings and Boy Band Hair

Day 2

Well, I couldn’t sleep all that long after all. Not because I wasn’t tired, but jet lag makes things kind of crazy the first couple days after a trip across so many time zones, so I was up and out and about fairly early.

The cherry blossoms aren’t quite out yet. It seems a little cold for spring and that might be delaying them a bit. I'm looking forward to seeing them. That's a Japanese experience I remember well.

Everything seems very familiar, but slightly off. I get strong feelings of deja vu, but can see a lot of new things as well, some kind of subtle.

One of first things I noticed is that the fashion for Japanese girls this year is black stockings, sometimes 3/4 length, with short skirts or shorter shorts. If these girls were in the U.S., it would be kind of a hooker look. Seriously... Now that I think about it, there have been variations on this look for a couple years. I remember a Japanese girl at my university in California who dressed like that a while back. She had to be warned that walking down the street looking like she did was going to get her a lot of unwanted attention from guys driving by. The thing is, the cultural awareness doesn't seem to go that way here, so no one thinks like that, or not often, anyway. In Japan, if it’s the fashion, then everyone is wearing it, so it's all right. For Americans, it's a bit of a shock. I'm certainly not the only one to notice this. There are plenty of websites dedicated to Tokyo fashion. Check them out Just be careful what you google, if you know what mean.

It doesn’t take too long off the plane to start spying the similarities in style, especially among the high school and college-age kids. A lot of the guys have got a long hair thing going on, usually all in the same cut. Being different together.. I’ll try to get a picture because my description wouldn’t do it justice. It's like a boy band look and I'm sure the pop scene has a lot of influence on the style. Not all the guys have it, of course, but I’ve noticed it often enough to sense a trend coming. Of course, I just got here, so maybe I’m witnessing the tail end of the style rather than the beginning... And don't get me wrong. I have longer hair than most of them so I'm not criticizing, just commenting.

Free Counter

Back in Japan

April 1 - Day 1

And I’m back. I spent some time in Japan in the 1990s and recently got the opportunity to return to my former teaching position (at a university that shall remain nameless for at least the time being). After some consideration, I decided to pack up my stuff, again, put my California life on hold, again, and head back to my old life in the Land of the Rising Sun.

I slept most of the flight over because I had worked myself half to death getting ready to leave. I won’t get into the details here, but I was working on about 3 hours of sleep a night the last two nights before the flight and I still didn’t get done. Right now I’m paying rent on an apartment in California just because I couldn’t move out in time. Long story, but I guess the plus side is that the 10+ hour flight flew by, no pun intended. When I got to Narita Airport, I was a little concerned because I had to come incountry on a tourist visa until I could arrange my work visa, but since I was actually moving to Japan, I had two big boxes of clothes and books and personal items with me, as well as a suitcase and a guitar. I was trying to think of ways to explain the situation to immigration, but needn’t have worried. The guy behind the counter barely glanced at me and I was through the gates and into Japan.

Narita is more than an hour outside of Tokyo, so I made my way to the train and promptly fell asleep again on the way into the city. I had to be woken up at the last stop - Ikebukoro - by four guys in blue suits and hygiene masks. Those masks, by the way - kind of like a doctor’s mask in an operating room - take a little getting used to. They’re worn by people with colds and are very common, very courteous and actually a good idea, but strange-looking to a foreigner. I can’t recall seeing them outside of Japan. I think wearing one in L.A. or New York might get you arrested. [NOTE: This was originally written in pre-swine flu days. I understand the masks are a little more common back home these days.] They were also wearing white gloves which for some reason makes it okay for them to put their hands on you, not that they did that to me. They just politely woke me up and told me to get the hell off their train. I have seen them, though, physically pushing people into train cars. What happens is that the trains get sooo full in Tokyo during rush hour that some people aren’t able to squeeze in through the doors. Then, of course the doors won’t shut and the train can’t go. So what the guys with the white gloves do is give the last few people the extra shove they need to get inside. People manage to get on trains in Tokyo a long time after you’re absolutely positive no one else could possibly fit. A long time...

So... I met up with a friend about another hour after waking up on the train and he gave me a ride to my new apartment, yet another hour plus outside of the city. It was by then about 11 p.m. and I had some serious jet lag kicking in on top of the general weariness as described above. When we got to the apartment building, I found out my place is on the fifth floor and there’s no elevator. Now, I ask you - who designs a five story building without an elevator? That may give you an idea of how old the building is. I’m going to be walking up and down these stairs at least once a day, hopefully only once a day, for the next two or more years, so I imagine I’ll have more to say on that later on.

A quick tour of the apartment, which is pretty comfortable, and my friend said good night, leaving me to pull out the futon and crash on the floor. I’ve been sleeping on a futon since my early years in Japan, so I’m more than used to it. A real futon is not the convertible sofa thing that you find in Bed, Bath, and Beyond or Ikea, but a couple of pads on the floor for a mattress, covered with a sheet. On top you have another sheet, a light blanket and a heavier comforter. Japan is still cold enough in April to make all that feel nice and cozy. The floor is made of tatami, mats made of rice straw, traditional and still common. Almost every house and apartment in Japan that I've ever been in has had a tatami room. Mine has windows that make the bedroom the first place to get the morning sun. This works both to wake you up and warm you up. I may get warmed up by the sun tomorrow morning, but it’s going to take more than that to wake me up.

Free Counter