One Tequilla Two (Part 2)
Now Playing: Bach

We stop by another bar, recommended to us by some more experienced Japan foreigners because everything on the menu is 380 yen, about $3.50. This party of four white people and one Japanese girl sits near us and Mr. Ma ends up pulling them into our conversation through his mad people skills. These are maybe not the best people I’ve met in Japan so far, but definitely the most interesting.

The girls—Miss A and Miss Li—Mr. Ma and some of the people from the other table suck down cigarettes. Everyone but me takes tequila shots over the course of our stay, but I stick to a steady diet of beer and water since it’s a school night for me.

Mr. Tr is from New Zealand, has been teaching English in Japan for four years or so and is a former BMX rider. When I join the conversation, he’s elaborating about his latest injury, where he broke his wrist. He talks about how the doctor had to re-break it twice and put in so many screws and whatever else. He’s broken a lot of other bones too, I guess, I don’t remember because I was tuning in and out. I worked at a bike shop for a long time, so I can fake an interest in what he’s saying. I usually don’t try to talk to people I’m not interested in, but Mr. Ma has discovered that he and his friend, Mr. Cl, practically run the night life here, which is exactly who Mr. Ma has been trying to meet.

I have a gift of either being able to slip out of a conversation unnoticed or dominate the entire thing, so I perk up at this point and try to use whatever people skills I have. Mr. Cl is part Asian, from Canada, and is dating the distractingly attractive Japanese girl at the table, who’s name I forgot as soon as I heard it, but I think it was Miss J. Mr. Cl and Mr. Ma make extra money by organizing parties and as liaisons for D.J.’s and things; I don’t quite understand how this works. They’re also just starting a business that sells the first green tea cocktail in Japan. The idea is unique, but it seems almost a cultural sin to put alcohol in something so symbolic of Japanese culture. Why don’t they just open up a Temple-bar where take shots from Buddha’s belly. Mr. Ma is interested in all their business happenings and is throwing out names of D.J.’s and people who can help them with their work. I’m so utterly lost in this idea, but manage to hold a foot in it all, for fear of not attracting interest of the most popular foreigners in Japan.

Mr. Tr plays metal guitar, and I try to relate, but with no success. The way he talks about everything, it doesn’t sound as though he’s actually interested in the subject itself as much as he’s interested in telling me about it. He speaks quickly and builds up each sentence with such excitement that he can’t wait to get to the next one, like a kid devouring sweets. His eyes dart all over the place when he talks like a coke addict, and one point he mentions that he’s done the drug scene. Everything he answers is either a, “oh Hell, yeah,” or, “no way, man.” I don’t think he has enough attention to read a single sentence. He does mention that he’s learned Japanese entirely from his first Japanese girlfriend, and is proud that he never studied out of a book. I think it’s funny that he admits that, knowing he’s in a land where students are required to study English early on in school.

At this point, Mr. Ma’s drug use comes out too, how as working in music promotion, he’s been on about every drug out there, touring clubs in Europe. Mr. Tr. talks about the drug scene in New Zealand, which he describes as totally out of control.

Everyone does it there. “They do everything—pop X, acid, snort a line of coke before you hit the club.”
But that’s over. He’s a different person now. And he’s not going to do anything crazy on his BMX bike anymore—his hand is too messed up to afford another accident.

Everyone’s had a lot of alcohol at this point, and the fourth member of our new friends, one of Mr. Tr’s friends who’s visiting from New Zealand looks like he’s chasing imaginary fairies with his eyes. Mr. Ma talks to him a lot because he has some of the best D.J. hookups, apparently. Mr. Tr brags about how good Mr. Drunk is at the drums. It doesn’t look like he could even lift a drum stick right now.

We leave for another bar, one where Mr. Cl knows the owner. He knows a lot of bar owners. He calls ahead to get us on the guest list of the most difficult club to get into in Osaka. Yes, he’s that good.

En route to the said bar, Mr. Cl’s girlfriend tries chatting me up, and I get a bit nervous because I don’t want it to look like I’m interested in her. She’s genuinely impressed with my Japanese ability, and refuses to believe I’ve been here only two weeks. This doesn’t help. She wears this orange-brown camouflage hat and smiles a lot. I thank Mr. Cl for getting us in, but he seems to be really happy to have met us, probably because he gets a percentage of our cover charge when he recruits us for clubs.

I get a Bloody Mary at the next bar and everyone else gets at least two more drinks. On the wall there’s a menu featuring the cocktail drinks, “B-52, Cock-Sucking Cowboy, Crazy Dog, Quick Fuck, Dr. Pepper” and so on. The girls and I play Jenga for a while. Later, I try a gambling game in the corner with no success.

We leave and wander the bright streets of the Osaka night. Mr. Ma was talking to Mr. Cl about his attempt at a long distance relationship.

“How long have you been dating, man,” Mr. Cl asked him.

“Ah, like three months now.”

Mr. Cl laughs. “No way man, no fucking way. Not a chance.”

“Hey, man, I don’t know, you know? I’m willing to try it, and if it doesn’t work out, so be it.”

“Dude, you have no idea. There’s just—there’s so many hot girls in this town, man, it’s impossible.”

“Well, she’s coming to visit in three months, so we’ll see,” Mr. Ma answered. Like everything Mr. Ma pays attention to, he’s mildly amused by Mr. Cl’s doubt, and laugh talks about the issue of his girlfriend.

“Well, if you can make it three months in this city, man, I’d say you’ll get married,” Mr. Cl said.

“If it’s going to happen, I’ll text her and say it’s over ‘cuz I’m not going to cheat.”

We get to the club at about 11:30, and it’s dead. We get in for less than half the normal cover charge, and Mr. Cl gives us free drink tickets.

In passing, I mention to Mr. Cl that I have to work tomorrow.

“Man,” he says, laughing—he smiles a lot, “You ran into the wrong people tonight!”

After about an hour, the place is packed. Every single girl is ridiculously good-looking. Mr. Ma points out girls that are dressed a little to enthusiastically, and we both make faces. I didn’t really have a great time, but my companions were too drunk to even care. I was pretty sober, and did a lot of sitting at the side. It was a hip-hop club, so occasionally a black guy would come buy and Mr. Ma would exchange a handshake, and introduce me. It’s funny how black guys have an unspoken brotherhood and just talk to each other—I asked Mr. Ma about that. He said, “I don’t know why, we just do.”

Mr. Ma plays with his phone a lot, and he has a picture of his girlfriend that he checks out and shows me every few minutes.

“Man, look at that. She’s so hot. These girls got nothing on me,” he said. I wondered who he was trying to convince. “Look at that—she’s got no ass—I mean, no ass. These girls are just so skinny—that just doesn’t do it for me, man.”

Just after he says this, he starts smiling at a girl in a lounge room behind us, separated by glass. Of course, she smiles back, so he waves and she waves back, and then he goes to try to talk to her. Language is no barrier for him, and either is a comitted relationship.

Mr. Cl is a really good dancer. The music has quick, syncopated rhythms that make it feel like you’re running all the time. Mr. Drunk is really drunk at this point—he definitely has a problem. He’s classic white trash—he’s wearing a tank-top jersey and earlier he was dancing on a wall behind the dance floor. So ungraceful.

Mr. Ma is getting pretty sick, although he hides it well, so we head out of the club, full-well knowing that the trains won’t start up until 6:00 am. I don’t stop him because he convinces me it won’t cost more than 5,000 yen to cab back, but it ends up costing just under 7 grand yen, and that was after bartering with about ten taxis, and begging one random dude with a van to drive us there.

On the ride back, Mr. Ma’s girlfriend calls him, and he tells her what we’re doing. He seems to have a hard time explaining exactly what we’re doing.

“No, there’s no funny business at all, I swear. We’re just now going back to are town. I’m in a cab. Yeah, I’ll call you when I get there, I promise. Okay. I love you too. Okay, goodbye.”
We don’t exactly know our town that well, so it takes some time to direct the taxi to my apartment. Mr. Ma is wasted and can barely ride his bike back to his place, but he is so happy that he’s met the party liaisons of Osaka that he doesn’t care. I’m not quite as thrilled, as I’m spending cash a lot faster than I’d like to, and I’m not so concerned with the night life of Osaka. It’s a novelty now, but I know it will get old soon. It already is.

I can’t help but think it’s such a hollow life that some of these “English teachers,” live here. It seems like they’re always sniffing out the next party at the same time as recovering from the last one. A lot of these veteran teachers, like the ones I’ve met tonight don’t seem to really enjoy teaching. It’s as if they have no other aim in life than getting enough cash to eat and party. Maybe that’s why Mr. Tr talked so fast—drowning himself in his own words, parties, women, drugs and metal guitar. That way there’s never any silence or calm, and he can hide from himself forever. Or maybe one day he’ll cut out of a party before the 6:00 AM trains are running and he’ll find himself in an abandoned train station. He’ll remember something—his mother’s meat loaf or the smell of her perfume, maybe even start to cry, and suddenly have the urge to go somewhere—anywhere, as long as he can keep moving.

One Tequila Two (part 1)
Now Playing: Mozart

One Tequila Two Tequila Three

Innocently enough, I confused the name of, “Namba,” with, “Nara,” the latter being one of the older parts of Osaka prefecture, where there’s some temples I want to see. I had my Sunday afternoon clear, and Mr. Ma—this suave black JET from LA who lives not a block away. He just wanted to know what I was up to and we went for a bike ride. I had to come back at two when Yo-sensei would be delivering a fridge to my apartment, free of charge.

“Dude, I’m meeting some chicks I met last night in Namba today—you want to go?”
“How’d you meet them?”
“At this bar, they’re pretty cool. We’re just going to wander around there and take some pictures,” he said casually. Mr. Ma has a way of making everything he does sound like the most relaxing and enjoyable thing you could ever do with your life. And he doesn’t like details. If you asked him to describe the sky, he’d say, “it’s up there.”

“I could be down—yeah, I’ll go. I was only going to go shopping, anyway.”

“Coo,” he says, the “l” in his cool barely vocalized. That made the word, “cool” sound even more cool than it is.

Of course, I thought he meant Nara, since all the names sounds the same to me. I almost made a similar mistake today as well, when I confused, “Chuui shite kudasai” (be careful) with “Chuu shite kudasai,” (give me a kiss), reminiscent of a blunder my sister caused me to make when I lived in Mexico.

As we ride around town, Mr. Ma, who knows maybe five Japanese words, says “konnichiwa!” to almost everyone we pass, and likes to smile and wave at any little kid that is alarmed by his enormous stature and blackness. He has a way with people that I’m jealous of—I thought it was kind of cheesy the way he grins at everyone, but for some reason, everyone smiles back and answers, “konnichiwa!” As I often do with people, I’d judged him too quickly as a superficial, ignorant guy always looking for the next ex-girlfriend, which I think was in his past somewhere, but he’s really a genuinely good person. He’s trying (probably in vain) to keep his girlfriend back home, which I respect.

Whenever we talk, I have to summarize my argument in five words or less, or Mr. Ma’s ADD changes the subject, which is frustrating for me, and I don’t think I get to ever really express myself to him. Still, it’s strangely relaxing, since he’s very easy to talk to, and I could be as open as I wanted with him with no fear of judgment.

We also had a conversation about a JET participant he met that was on the sketchy side. I guess he looked like a military soldier, buff in body and bland in personality, but liked his students a bit too much. He talked about how hot the Japanese school girls are at length.

“He was slimy, dude,” Mr. Ma explains.

“How do you mean?”

“I think he pumped some of his students. Former students, I mean. He was talking about some 19-year-olds that he dated, man, it was sick.”

“Oh,” I said, with a groan. I hate people like that. It’s hypocritical for me to say that, because I also profess to believe that if you could understand everyone completely, you would also love them, but I can’t hold back my disgust. I’d be a liar if I said I’ve never been attracted to a student here or anywhere else, but when you’re someone’s teacher, you play a critical role in their social development, and if you violate that role, you’re messing them up for life. And to me, that’s an unforgivable sin. And yet, with the way some of the suburban, American girls dress these days, it’s hard to bounce your eyes sometimes. But I have the curse of not beaing able to separate my ethics from my physical desire, so I could never have a relationship with someone that young. Most guys I know would laugh at me for saying that, or just not believe me, but it's honestly not something I could do. I know becasue I've already passed the test.

We move my fridge in later, and make for the train station. On the ride over, I do a lot of people watching. Whatever you’ve heard about Japanese people sleeping on the trains is true. It’s funny to watch girls flinch as an old man nods off to sleep in her face. I also tried to figure out my cell phone, which is still confusing to me. My laptop is less complex.

In Namba, we meet up with Miss Li and Miss A. Miss Li is on the JET program as well, and Miss A is her friend visiting from San Diego. We start walking around downtown Osaka, and I try to chat up both of them. Neither is very attractive, but they have a kind of confidence in their character—something I don’t have, that makes me nervous first off. They both went to school there in San Diego, Miss Li an international relations major, and Miss A did one of the party majors—art history, I think.

Miss A took two years off in the course of study—obviously due to sheer academic strain, and is supposedly going to finish this coming year. Whether or not she does finish, I think she is one of those people who never really leaves college. I see those type of people all the time—they’re the ones who never really fall in love, or at least don’t know it if they do, and they wander the Earth as housewives or salesmen, wondering when prince/princess charming will take them to the ball. Well, it's not me, honey.
We’re wandering around the heart of Osaka, one of the craziest places in Japan. It reminds me of a futuristic amusement park that got bought out by Starbucks. The people are the most fun of it all for me. The Japanese seem to have no happy medium in clothing choice. There’s either a stiffly dressed businessman or the most wacked out punk dress imaginable. It’s as if the 80’s hit in a science fiction age, plus striped tights. Always the striped tights. Some of the girls dress like they’re six, and some of them dress like they’re six and got into chest in the atic. A friend of mine mentioned, "Sometimes you can't tell if they're 15 or 25. That's going to cause some problems for me. Some really serious problems." One thing is for sure, while the girls do dress with a certain sexual suggestion, they don’t really expose a lot of skin like American girls do, which is refreshing. I really admire the expression here and it makes me wish I could redo my adolescence.

While I enjoy people watching here, it’s not interesting in the same way people-watching is in America. With Americans, I can take one look at their face and instantly I form a fairly accurate image of what their life is like. I used to play a game with my little sister, where I’d rattle off a brief life story of every person I saw. It would go something like, “He was divorced three times, just got done with a midlife crisis that involved getting into rock climbing, and now he thinks he’s gay so he’s moving to San Francisco.”

Here, I have absolutely no judge of countenance. I look at guys and say to myself, “He could kick my ass…he could definitely kick my ass…I could kick his ass if I got the first punch in,” and I look at girls and think, “Wow…yuck…wow…please come over here…please be able to speak English…but not better than me.”

Speaking of the women here, we were trying to find the canal with this huge Ferris wheel, so I, having the most advanced Japanese ability, which is sad, stopped a girl walking alone, and asked her how to get there. She spoke about as much English as I spoke Japanese, which was no help, and resolved to just show us to our destination, another testimony to the outrageous level of politeness in this country. I forgot her name as soon as she told me, as I always do with pretty girls.

We ate at a restaurant that looked nicer than the food was, and my stomach was queasy from two nights before, when I had too much to drink, so I didn’t eat much. More that once, Mr. Ma finds a piece of food on my face or my clothes out of place and lets me know discreetly with an eyebrow move or a finger gesture. After lunch/dinner, we went in to the sketchier part of town and took each other’s pictures by such novelties as European style strip clubs and the canal with flashing lights on each side.

At one point we found a small shrine, where people waited in line to throw money and pray. Miss A thought this would be a great place for a picture, so she waited in line to take a picture of the idol. I was too late to stop her, and I didn’t say anything.

While we were waiting, Mr. Ma asked me if I was picking up the vibe that Miss A was sending. “You could probably pump her in the week that she’s here.”

“Yeah, I noticed that too,” I said.

“You should have seen her last night, man, that girl is crazy,” he says, in this kind of half-laugh half-talk that he does. He loves to laugh, and although he seems very uninterested in most of the things he says, this rolling laugh comes out of him every now and then. That combined with the hot pink shirt and futuristic sunglasses he wears makes him look like he owns a strip club.

My Japanese Microwave
Japan is different in a lot of big ways, like the language, for example, but it’s a nation with a great economy, so it’s easy to slip into a routine and not be shocked by much. Once in a while, there’s something that gets in the way of that slide—it might be the way the plastic wrap on office supplies is just hard enough so that you have to bite or cut it to get it to open, it might be the complex garbage disposal process, or it could be, like today, the seemingly metallic shelled insect I found on my porch this evening. I thought it was a toy at first, but it was the remains of some superior insect that reminded me what an alien land I’m in.

It’s almost too easy to think I’m still in America with all the Americans around and the Westernization of Japan—indeed, Japan has contributed immensely to what we now call, “Western.” That is an arrogant assumption. As I relax into place, I find I have to be careful in what I assume about this place and the people.

My apartment alone, which is much larger than I ever expected, is a place that’s foreign to me. The floor is fake wood, but a soft material with a luster that seems too perfect. The TV shows baseball games with skinny Japanese players and kid’s cartoon shows with constant flashing action. The air conditioner has a remote control with buttons labeled with characters I don’t understand. One of the buttons might be a self-destruct ignition, but that doesn’t keep me from trying them all. All except the big red one. My microwave is equally imposing, especially since it’s a combination microwave and toaster oven, no joke. So far, what I call cooking, is putting my instant ramen in the microwave and pushing the yellow button. For some reason, there’s no number pad, so I don’t know how long I’m heating the food. The ramen is really good—it comes with four packets and dehydrated onions and things with the noodles. The packets contain mysterious ingredients: some kind of yellow oil, seeds, a brown powder, and some other liquid.

My bathroom is separate from the toilet—a Japanese feature. The first time I flushed my toilet, I thought I broke it because a faucet immediately turns on above the toilet, refilling the tank with the water you wash your hands with. They sell these toilet room fresheners that fit right in the drain. It looks funny. When I bought one at a drug store run, I got my choice of a free gift. I didn’t know what any of the items were, but I chose this bottle with a cartoon duck head because I thought it was soap, and I needed soap. It took me a week to find bars of soap. It turned out that it was a toilet room freshener, where you pull up on the head to expose a sponge, and it’s head sticks up out of the bottle like an Ostrich. My sister would love it—she loves anything that looks disgustingly cute.

My teachers have been helping me way too much with moving in. One of them is giving me a fridge, a rice cooker and a washing machine. I did laundry at a friend's today, and the Japanese don’t have dryers, so my clothes have to hang outside my apartment. They sell these elaborate drying gizmos that look like mobiles—you can see them at any apartment on the weekend; it turns laundry into an art. This plays into the Japanese care for the environment. It makes sense that a society with roots in Shinto (nature-worship) would actually act on professed environmental concern—the cars are smaller, they recycle everything, they reuse tote bags instead of wasting plastic bags at the supermarket, and their transportation system is more complex than an ant colony. They bike everywhere. It’s actually faster to go by bike in the city I’m in because bikes can avoid car pile-ups at the stoplights. I was wondering why people all ride cheap bikes--grandma style with a basket, and I realized that if everyone had a racing bike, everyone would die because the roads are so narrow and crazy. For example, by my house there's an intersection with 7 different roads converging on it, and that's one of the more simple intersections. You think I'm joking, but trust me, there's nothing funny about it.

There are many things that don’t make sense to me still. The large target-esc store where I do most of my shopping has no organizational sense to me. I spent a half-hour looking for shampoo—I found cleaning goods, toothpaste, razors, etc. but the shampoo was in a different section of the store with beauty products. The odd thing is, all the other stuff was in the, “grocery” section of the store. The thing is, Japanese stores are organized with different departments, and you have to purchase things separately in each department, or it’s considered shoplifting. I read a personal account of a JET who got arrested for just such a thing.

The grocery store is disorienting on its own—I can’t read anything, and sometimes I can’t tell if a package is food or a cleaning chemical. I’m a fan of the prepared food section, and you can get great sushi or miscellaneous assortments with rice prepared four different ways.

The music in the grocery store is seemingly sarcastically happy. It’s like a children’s cartoon theme song. I heard a song about vegetables today. It’s the kind of memorable happy tune that you'd play in a torture chamber, where the victim first develops an eye twitch, and then slowly descends into insanity. So you have to be quick when buying produce.

Invertebrates for lunch and dinner
Now Playing: Working, not playing
It was Hi-chan’s birthday this morning, so I compiled a compilation of the American candies I brought for my students in a gift bag and brought it out as I was leaving. I’ve also been diving uncontrollably into this horde of sugar, which I should be saving, I think because I’m finally crashing after my first week of what I call the kid in a candy shop effect—seeing so many new things—and no sleep. I feel very worn out during the day, and today I noticed that one of my nipples has swollen hard. This happened before during a stressful semester at college, and I thought I had cancer, but the doctor said it was just a stress response.
I gave the bag to Hi-chan as I was leaving. She was outside petting a stray cat. She normally is so happy and excited, I expected her to open the bag and scream, but she accepts it with a smart nod and, “arigaTO!” I repeat, “otanjoobi omodeto!” (happy birthday) so that she gets the idea that she can open it, but she repeats her thanks, standing perfectly still and holding the bag out in front of her.
After I get in the car with H-sensei, I look in the mirror and see her doing some kind of dance and smiling. I found out last night that she’s an only child, and that when she first came to the H residence, she was very shy and spoiled, but she’s loosened up since then. I’ll never forget the image of her grabbing these fearful cicada bugs right off the tree. I got hit in the head by one today—they’re a very massive insect.
In the afternoon, we played a game based on the Japanese Haiku, which my father would love too, but for different reasons than me. Cards are strewn out over the floor, each containing the first character/syllable of a Haiku poem. H-sensei reads the poem, which I can’t understand, while Hi-chan and I compete to find one of the 40 so characters included in the set. The actual Japanese phonetic alphabet is over 500 characters, but these are old poems, so they are limited to a certain few Hiragana characters. She beats me very badly, but I sneak a few grabs in there.
At work, I gave some of my omiyage (souvenir) gifts. I’m supposed to give my best omiyage to the principal and vice principal, and give to them first, but I’m too impatient and give it to the people who’ve more directly helped me. T-sensei got a moose, and they’re amazed with the description of how large it is. To H-sensei I give a calendar of Minnesota, and he had no idea there were such senic places. He asks me if I’ve been to any of the places on it, and I can only say I’ve been to St. Paul, which is less impressive.
Y-sensei gets a triplet collection of Minnesota shot glasses. I don’t think I’d give this to an educator in America, since taking shots seems to be largely limited to college-age people, but he has professed to be a hearty drinker. He’s pointed out a “shot-bar” and asks me about American beer.
We go out for lunch with H-sensei, R-sensei and A-sensei. In the car ride over, they ask me where else I’ve traveled, and also about the other groups I’ve encountered. They really have no idea what Mexicans are like—H-sensei describes a mariachi and the sombrero/pancho look as his stereotype. I explain how Canadians go, “eh,” and how southerners say, “yall,” all very impressive. But the most impressive, is when H-sensei asks me what Germans are like. I tell him that they’re always angry, and do my gibberish German impression—“einaspizenheimernich! Nine!” and everyone loses it.
We go to a Japanese Italian restaurant, and I get squid pasta, which is recommended by H-sensei. It’s a special kind, with the ink sack broken, so the whole dish is black. It’s a lot like a salty, squishy sausage pasta dish. At dinner, I got to have octopus and baby squids, the first time I’ve had invertebrates for more than one meal in a day, and also the first time I’ve had octopus. I’m not sure humans were meant to eat anything with suction cups, but then again, I’m finding a lot of things I didn’t think humans were meant to do are quite rewarding.

The warrior monk
Now Playing: Yes.
I waited with T-sensei, C-sensei and H-sensei at the airport, holding a sign for Y-san and someone else. We were waiting for two Korean Eglish teachers to find us, who would be staying with T-sensei and visiting our school as part of a teaching exchange for the next week. H-sensei especially seems enthusiastic about this program, and has typed up a detailed schedule for the next week. I think he’s more eager to share his teaching with them than he is to take in theirs, as I’ve judged him as being arrogant about his teaching ability, but I later heard him timidly ask Yoon, a female Korean English teacher, “Why is it that Koreans can speak English than the Japanese?” She explains that the Koreans incorporate more listening and speaking from the very start, and the college entrance exams require listening and speaking sections, where as the Japanese do not.

We get some food first, and everyone speaks in English, with the occasional digression into Japanese by the Japanese teachers. There is a brief discussion over the written language. H-sensei asks The woman how the Korean alphabet came to be, and she explains that, like Japanese characters, they were modified from the Chinese characters. I overhear Yoon, who is a fairly attractive married woman in her 30s, reading the Japanese menu.

“So you speak Japanese?”

“No. I just know the characters.”

“But you said the right words, that’s Udon.”

“Yes, but I don’t understand!” That seems very funny to me, and we both laugh. How strange would it be to be able to read your own language, but not understand it—sort of like reading German or French for me, I guess.

We drive for just under an hour to some Buddhist temples in a neighboring prefecture, Wakayama. The site is called Negorodera, and 500 years ago, it used to be the center of activity in the area.

In the car ride over, it’s me, H-sensei and Yoon-sensei. She’s immediately impressed that I’m trying to learn Japanese, when it’s not even her native language. White people don’t have to do much to impress these days, but if you’re Asian and you don’t speak accent-free, fluent English, you’re automatically an idiot to Americans. It’s sad, but true, like most things in life.

She’s easily amused with me—I say things like how she speaks English better than my president—which is true, and she loses it. The other thing that cracks her up, is I recite some of the English loan words in Japanese—words like, “suturaikuauto” (strikeout) or “Makudorunarudo,” (McDonalds). I’m not sure H-sensei thinks this is so funny.

Almost as soon as we get out of the car, everyone pulls their camera out and I have to suppress a laugh since I think the site of Asian people with cameras is funny for some reason. They snap shots so diligently and carefully. They seem to be primarily concerned with getting the whole temple or building in the shot, rather than taking an interesting angle or focusing in on anything of interest--like, for example, I later took a picture of some ducks, and they didn't seem to understand why I cared.

On one of the stone sculptures outside, I ask H-sensei what the writing is, and he translates it as, “eternal flame.” The Korean woman also reads it, but she gives me the literal translation of the characters, which is “starlight all through the night.” I think it’s a fun coincidence that it rhymes. I wish I could read them for myself since it seems like a form of time travel to be able to read something that was written 500 years ago. Of course, I’ve read books that old and older, but this stone was actually carved 500 years ago, and the books I read the classics from were made by some venture capitalist’s press. I touch it, like a child might touch a book when his parents read it to him, and I’m a bit jealous of the connection that the Japanese have to their own language, culture and land. I start to think that if America’s youth had this connection, we might not be at war, but I can’t explain why. It just seems that our adults in America are running around like adolescents trying to find something meaningful. They go to yoga at expensive health clubs or buy, “tai chi for senior citizens,” and do ancient traditions from their big screen T.V.’s. It seems so ironic that Americans practice elements of a religion that preaches non-materialism in a society that values cable and fast cars.

Leaving the temple, T-sensei tells me that there was a greatly feared man that lived at this temple, who was both monk and samurai—usually people were one or the other. “Sounds scary,” I said. “Very scary,” he says, nodding and raising his eyebrows.

Before we enter one of the larger temples, H-sensei tells me that I’m dirty, and must clean myself as we approach one of these little water fountains that have a dragon spitting water into a basin. We all take the cup-on-a-stick and pour water over our hands. I watch other people do this and pray. Shoes off, no pictures allowed, and I can smell the incense form outside. Other visitors stop halfway on the steps, pause, bow, and continue inside. I am jealous of whatever they’re feeling and thinking (or not thinking…zen) as they enter. I just try to take in the place and see if any of the energy fields will penetrate my body that the trendy, yuppie spiritual scholars are always talking about. I think the Western people that make money selling books that regurgitate eastern philosophy into bite-size pieces that suburban housewives can understand never really understood what they were writing about, but were so amazed at religions like Buddhism, that they figured if they talked about it long enough, they’d finally understand it. Ironic, but Buddhism would naturally discourage overthinking it’s own philosophy, but rather to clear your mind.

The inside of the temple has the similar sacred feeling that a Christian church has—which some people call the presence of God—a sort of warm stillness; but there’s something else here. I can’t quite figure it out at first, but after waiting, meditating, just taking in the environment, it comes to me: care. I am surrounded by so much care. Christians hire carpenters to build their churches in suburbia, where maybe there was an old Indian mound, or at lest an old farm. The temple was built by monks over 500 years ago. The set up of the sanctuary has such intricate trinkets and statues set just so. I saw a monk weeding the impeccable garden of trees, rocks and water outside, which I’d prefer a hundred times over to the sod in suburbia.

H-sensei demonstrates how you do a prayer by taking a pinch of incense, holding it to his forehead, and then putting into a basket. He also shows me that the 50 yen coin is most appropriate, because it has a hole in the middle, making it into a circle, somehow symbolic of the year to come. He said that he prayed for success in our work relationship in the year to come, and says that’s the most appropriate thing to do. He likes the word, "appropriate." I try my best, but I think of someone else when the herbs fall from my fingers.

Very important, please do not lose this
Now Playing: Music
8_1_05
“This is very important. Please, do not lose this,” I’ve been told every day since I’ve gotten here about something or other, I forget them all. My alien registration papers, insurance forms, bank account, work contract, hanko (stamp of my distinctive characters for my name), and this time it’s for my cell phone receipt.
Japanese cell phones are an overwhelming combination of computers, game systems, cameras, stereos, radios, and technology that there is not yet an English translation for—it’s that complex. I think you can control your car with your cell phone and maybe even do your taxes, but I have a hard enough time dialing on them. They make me feel like I’m in a science fiction movie, so I half expect William Chanter to answer when I use it.
My translator is T-sensei, and we’re trying to sign me up for a cell phone, one of the many tasks of settling in a foreigner. I feel like I represent a series of never-ending chores for my coworkers—there’s so many things we need to do to settle in a country these days. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to pull out my passport. This time I also need a credit card. Earlier I opened a bank account, where I needed these items and also my alien registration
When I hand the salesperson my passport, a young girl, she does a half-bow and takes it in both hands—all the Japanese do this with something important, and say, “arigato,” as they receive it. She passes it back the same way. When T-sensei listens, she says the Japanese version of “yes and yeah,” many more times than Westerners do. She sometimes says the, “uun,” with a nod, not making eye contact as she listens. More frequently, she does a three note scale in rapid succession, descending “uun, uun, uun,” with the accompanying head nods. Occasionally, there’s a single, short, “hai.”
The salesperson, on the other hand, always says, “hai,” about every three seconds as she listens. I’ve noticed the informal, “uun,” (yeah) varies with the men. They make more of an “oh” sound.
On the way back, we stop at the 100-yen store (dollar store) to buy a case for my hanko, which the Japanese use like a signature—a distinctive stamp. This is also very important, and I shouldn’t lose it, but they don’t bother to tell me what will happen if I do lose it. I’m terribly afraid of losing this in particular, since it was made especially for me. I remark to T-sensei that they should call it the 105-yen store, since it costs that much with tax. She laughs, but it’s not very satisfying for me. Getting people to laugh here is much easier, and if I try to crack what I think is a really clever joke, people are usually just confused or take what I’m saying literally, which can be much worse. For example, today I told my host, H-sensei, after his wife served us an amazing dinner, “If you’re trying to get rid of me, you’re doing a bad job.” He stared at me, probably upset that I had said, “bad job,” since you never say anything but positive things to your superior. I explained what I meant, and he got a chuckle, but it’s something I’ll have to get used to.
We ride bikes through the crowded market street, which gives me a very peculiar feeling. There are people everywhere, on bikes or on foot. No one makes eye contact or makes an obvious effort to get out of the way, nor does anyone shout or ask anyone to move. And yet, the crowd seems to open up for us like an invisible, chaotic path. I see one of the other ALTs coming the other way, who doesn’t have to report to school yet.
“Hey,” I shout.
“You going to school?” Mike asks.
“Yeah, I guess, why not.”
“See ya then.”
“See ya.”
It’s about as short a dialogue you can have with someone, but it’s the most relaxed I’ve felt all morning. It makes me realize all the subtleties wound up in a language. I’ve been speaking with people who’ve been studying English almost their whole lives, but I speak so differently with them: mechanically, formally and for the purpose of conveying information. There’s so much more music, emotion and creativity I can express in my own vernacular style, that I wish I could share with the Japanese.
“He is one of the new ALTs at another school,” I said to T-sensei from my bike.
“What?” She asks.
We ride our bikes back to the school—really old, heavy, bad bikes, but durable. There’s rust and cobwebs in mine, loaner bikes from the school. Teachers in America wouldn’t be caught dead riding these, but we smile and wave to students when we get back. The students all ride bikes as well since the legal driving age is 18. I can’t imagine what a driving test must be like here—the streets are like an elaborate pinball machine.
We return our keys to the utility room in the school, where there are some custodial/secretarial staff. I met one of the women there yesterday, and she’s enthralled that I remembered her name, which is particularly hard to say—ikeiuchi. I can’t do rote memorization very well at all, so I have to come up with visual or musical representations of things. For this name, I use okay-house. Okay = ikei and house in Japanese is uchi. I used that same kind of techniques when I was in some of my more difficult chemistry courses, but more often I use very perverse or violent names and things to remember, because for some reason they stick better. If you could hear what’s going on in my head during a chemistry test, you’d think you were in a Quentin Taratino movie.
Earlier this morning I saw the principal for the first time. I was escorted to a waiting room by H-sensei, and waited for about five minutes, looking at some of the Japanese paintings. They have a beautiful minimalist style, like the Chinese, but this painting had less color and less stylistic elements that a Chinese painting. It seemed very realistic, and yet upon closer examination, there were wide-open spaces on the paper with no brush strokes that my mind filled in unconsciously. The two visiting Korean professors came in with some of the Kishiwada English staff, but only a few of the Kishiwada English staff were allowed with me into the principal’s room.
“This is a very formal occasion,” H-sensei explains to the Koreans, who rise to follow, “So you are not allowed.” He follows the explanation with one of his smiles. It’s the smile he uses whenever he’s not sure how to react—it’s out of nervous tension, I think, since there’s no other way he can think to react or express his discomfort. It’s a very controlled, purposeful effort—the smile—like I might do holding the door for someone, or pouring a cup of coffee. The only translation I can think of is very simple, as the smile itself doesn’t really express anything specific, only discomfort. “It’s okay,” the smile says to me.
I was escorted into the room, where the principal, a man of average Japanese height and nearly bald, but not as old as H-sensei. The principal doesn’t smile the entire time, but he isn’t strict—he’s very relaxed, despite that everyone is standing. I stand at the center of a long time, H-sensei on the side with the principal, translating for me as the principal reads a summary of my position. It is awkward listening to the English portion, because the principal is staring at me, and I’ve never met him until now. When it’s finally finished, I accept the document with both hands and sit down to discuss the position further. I’ve read you’re never supposed to put away a document someone has just given to you, unless you have made the effort to read it, and writing on is considered impolite as well, so I leave it sitting in front of me. At one point, the principal tells me that if I have any complaints about the job, I should come and see him. I decide to slip in some humor at the risk of confusing him, but my judgment is that it will work. I think I can say it in Japanese, but I use H-sensei as my translator.
“Tell him, that I don’t think he will see me very often then,” I said to H-sensei, who stares at me, afraid to translate. I elaborate, “I won’t have many complaints, so I don’t think he will see me very often.” This of course would make the joke to often to get a Westerner to laugh, but the principal seems genuinely amused. Looks like I won’t be fired just yet.

Hina-chan
Now Playing: Shakira
I’ve been running every morning while staying at H-sensei’s house, and I thought a week off would have gotten me out of shape, but I’m fine. The whole experience of coming here has actually been strangely energizing—probably from the stress (mostly good stress) of the adventure of Japan. I haven’t slept more than five hours at night—if at all, and that’s just catching up with me now.

I came back from my run to find a little girl playing with a ball-and-cup in the living room. It was the cutest thing ever. She is the most out-going Japanese person I’ve met so far. Although she usually doesn’t look at me when she talks, she chatters on and on. I played the ball-and-cup game with her—she’s intensely competitive, and she does nothing but smile and chatter. She gets so excited that her voice cracks in a kind of half-laugh half-talk that I couldn’t begin to detail the mechanics of. She reminds me of the girl, Chihiro in Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, one of my favorite movies.

H-sensei and I took her for a walk back by some ponds and small “farms.” As a side note, I haven’t seen a Japanese “farm” that’s bigger than half-an-acre. She immediately takes off running down the street—huge smile, looking back to see if we’ll actually chase. We don’t, but it’s just as much fun for her. She comes running back holding one of the many locus that are out. They emit a near deafening sound from the trees that sounds like a choir of men going “Reeeeeeee.” It’s surprisingly loud. One of the other male ALTs I ran into said how discusting he thought they were. That only made the picture I have of Hina-chan holding the insect even more beautiful. Y-sensei later told me that the sound they make is symbolic of summer in Japan. Hina-chan doesn’t want to hurt it, but is surprised that it won’t fly away when she releases it. So, she picks it up and throws it into the air again. And again.

Our walk continued through a bamboo forest, where Hina-chan immediately tried to uproot a small bamboo tree, unsuccessfully. I’ve never seen anyone so eager and happy to exert their will seemingly without any purpose in mind. She comes running back to show us the bullfrog she found swimming in a trough, and then spots baby turtles sunning themselves on some rocks by a pond. Then she tries to hit them with pebbles. She sneaks up behind H-sensei with a furry grass clipping that reminds me of Pompous Grass—soft, cottony strands that flare out like a horse tail, and she uses it to tickle his neck. When that’s not enough, she dips the end in water and returns for attack two. I'd forgotten what it's like to be so unselfconscious.

When we return after school, H-sensei is helping me study Japanese, when Hina-chan comes home with Mrs. H from school and immediately disturbs my studies. She tries to read what I’ve written with a proud, announcing style, smiling wide as usual. Then she pulls out her first grade writing book, with cartoons and all sorts of colors, which beats the hell out of my black-and-white grammar book. She’s a lot more advanced in writing Japanese than I am, so I just watch while she shows H-sensei and I all the Kanji (complex Chinese characters) she’s learning. Then we play a game of identifying the Japanese name of parts of the body. Someone says “ears (mimi!)” and it’s a race to see who can touch their ears first. I change it up to try to get a leg up by saying, “book (hon)” or “TV (terebi),” which is way across the room, so we both go diving for it. She won.

Another morning, she came up to my room and she started laughing about how I had my clothes strewn out over the floor. I couldn't understand her, but she was intensely amused. Then she started describing something about four people and downstairs. I went down and discovered that she wanted to play cards--specifically, memory, althought the Japanese version is called, "nervous breakdown," and they don't put the cards in a nice square order. We all lose horribly to Hina-chan. THen I teach her slap-jack, which they have to call slap-eleven. She seems to like the game, but I beat her horribly.

At school on Friday, Y-Sensei, the karate master, took me out to look for an apartment. It’s kind of the duty of the English teachers to help me get settled, but they’re so damn happy to do it. I’ve been driven around in cars, taken out to eat and put up in someone’s house for multiple days and it hasn’t cost me a dime. Or 10 yen.

Y-sensei takes me to the real estate office, where the air conditioner is broken, so it’s hot as hell. As anyone selling something will do in Osaka, they yell, “Irasshaimase!” which is roughly translated as, “welcome,” but literally as, “Your honor us with your presence.” They bring us iced green tea, by far the most popular beverage here, which I’m still getting used to since Lipton spoiled me with sweeteners. This is unsweetened.

The real estate agent sat down with us, and Y-sensei began describing the kind of apartment I want. “What do you need in your apartment?” he asks me. I tell him I need to be able to lie down somewhere (there are apartments where I can’t do this) and that I want a bathroom and kitchen. He talks with the agent for about five minutes, while I sit and sip tea. The real estate agent says a well-rehearsed, “Hai,” every three or four seconds when he’s listening. The, “hai” (yes) must be completed with a head nod, even putting a little shoulder action into it when he really means it.

Finally, Y-sensei turned to translate for me. “He says, he will take you to four apartments around town. What about location? Do you want it close to the station?” (the train station). “Yes.” “What about the school? Do you want it close to the school?” “Yes.”

The agent takes out some of the building floor plans and some pictures, smiling a lot and pointing at them. It’s all in Japanese, so I can’t tell what rooms are what, so I just smile and nod back. Y-sensei wraps up the conversation over the next ten minutes, and then translates for me. “He is busy today, but tomorrow he can take you out to see them.” “Okay.”

When we go to see the apartments, they’re all much bigger than I thought I’d be getting. One of them was big enough for a family. All of the prices were about the same, though, about 6 man a month or roughly 550 bucks. At two of the apartments, Y-sensei said, translating for the agent, “it will be very difficult to describe how to get here if you have any friends coming.” At another apartment, he said, “He says there are men that get paid by the hour for construction over there, so they can be loud. But they are not dangerous.” Another one was prone to crime and had the train not ten feet from the window. I finally decided on one that was perfectly near the station and the school, and also in a safe part of town, although it was a bit smaller than the others. Talking with some of the other ALTs later, I found out that they were paying the same rent as me in an apartment complex not a block away with rooms that were less than half the size. I think I owe it to Y-sensei, since I read that real estate agents don’t like to find housing for foreigners. They often jack the price up too.

After the apartment search, we picked up Hg-sensei and T-sensei and went to a nice restaurant. Parking is difficult. Everyone cheers when Y-sensei scores a spot right in front of the restaurant.

What's being white got to do with it?
Saturday, July 30, I’ve got the day free and so after I run and have breakfast with the H’s, I head out. Check out the pictures for this outing—I did a lot of novelty shots, and also some of the temples in town. After studying the Japanese map for at least 20 minutes, I figured out how to get to my apartment-to-be. I start wandering over to where the mall is supposed to be, when I run into one of the other ALTs I met at orientation in Tokyo. He’s this tall, suave, black dude from L.A., Mr. M. We chat and meet up with another ALT who’s been here a year, Ms. C. We go to buy a bike for M, and I come back later to buy one at the same shop. The bikes are pretty crappy, but they’re only about 50 bucks, and they’re great for commuting since they have a basket, generator light, and are of similar style to everyone else’s in town, that no one will want to steal it. You need your address and phone number to buy the bike because they register it, and the cops, as C explained, will come and check the registration randomly. She’d been checked twice. All that for a 50-dollar bike.

We checked out town and ended up going back to an apartment complex where two of the JETs where staying. Ms. C said something about how hot it was on our way up the stairs to the apartment, Mr. M leading the way. I said that I had a real problem going to my school the first time, dressed up and sweating like Michael Jackson at a playground. “I mean,” I said, “I sweat a lot, even for a white guy.”

“What’s being white got to do with it?” she snapped back.

Time out. Ms. C is of Asian descent and Mr. M is black. I admit I voice my own generalizations about races and cultures all the time; I’m not afraid to admit them—anyone who is uncomfortable speaking about these things is usually not improving their attitude toward people of other ethnicity or race. However, when I mentioned sweating more than other races, I honestly thought this was a physical characteristic. There exist different races because we evolved separately for some time. I refuse to simply not acknowledge the physical or cultural differences among people of different races. If I had said my skin burned more easily in the sun that a black person would she have taken offense as well? If you refuse to realize that humans are all different, then you’re repressing the problem of prejudice instead of throwing it into the ring. We all harbor our own messed up bias and preconceptions, but people nowadays like to think their perfect and we’re all the same, like that’s the final solution to our history of racism. I say, in the most eloquent terms I can think of right now, fuck that.

“I thought Europeans sweat more,” I answered.

“I get sweat blotches all the time,” she replies, but I’m the one with pit stains and a stomach stain for some reason. I don’t know why my stomach is sweating. I drop it at that because I can’t afford to piss off any English speakers in this town. Pity. It would have been one sweet telling off. The one time my multicultural education could have paid off.

We lounge in the apartment for a while and talk a bit. It’s a weird, superficial kind of talk since we all barely know each other. We just talk about what we brought for school. Well, they mostly talk about what Mr. M brought. Every time I try to relate a story I get cut off or ignored. I got the feeling that Ms. C had a thing for Mr. M, and so they’re trying not to talk to me. I’ve been in this situation before; it’s very frustrating. They need me there to keep things from getting awkward, but they’re deliberately ignorant of me, which is a disgruntling feeling. What I really hate is the people that flirt right in front of you, but if you hint at leaving, they both insist that you stay until they actually start kissing. That’s happened to me countless times.

Later, we meet up with another new ALT, Mr. M2, who I met at orientation. I click with him a bit more and we start trading stories about our positions. His predecessor said his placement was really tough. He’s in a junior high school where there’s been a lot of fights. His predecessor was punched by a student outside of class once, and I guess he responded by throwing the kid to the ground. In a separate incident, the ninth graders ganged up on some of the seventh graders, and soon the school was in complete chaos. Mr. M2’s predecessor went around throwing kids into bushes and swearing at them in Japanese. He threw one particularly violent student up against a wall and repeatedly bashed him into the wall. The principal later summoned him, and he thought he would lose his job, but instead, the principal thanked him since that student had a bad history of violence and “needed some discipline.”

This story makes me feel even more like I’m lucking out with my placement in the most advanced high school in the area. And there’s a freaking castle in the front yard. Mr. M2 explained to me that there is some selection in the JET program, where I had thought it was just randomized. I guess each prefectural board of education gets it’s pick of JETs, Osaka getting one of the top priorities. Next, each school within the prefecture takes it’s pick. Given this information, it would seem that I was one of the top picks in the JET program, so there’s more than luck to my placement, I guess.

I went home for dinner and met up with them later since Kishiwada city was having a festival that night with fireworks. I missed the fireworks—and I hear Japanese fireworks are pretty sweet, but I got to see all the women in traditional dress. Over half of them wore summer kimonos, I forget the name. It makes me wish my culture had a stronger support of our traditional dress. At American cultural events, women pay a bunch of money for something a Malaysian kid labored over that shows off their chest. Here, there’s a very intense and authentic connection to the past in the traditional dress. I’m impressed that the youth take such an interest in it. Almost none of the men are in traditional dress—I didn’t see any.

I met another ALT, Mr. C, who’s also new. Mr. M, Mr. M2, Mr. C and I all go to a nearby bar and have a few rounds of beer. We quickly have a beer before going in too, from the vending machines. It’s a little easier on the pocketbook. The guy that owns the place has an impressive hip-hop collection on display, one of the more chill albums playing when we enter. Mr. M, the black guy, later requests an album that I haven’t heard of. He tries to get us talking about hip-hop, but the other two ALTs and I don’t really bite on it. I tell him I like 2Pac, which he’s “down with,” but that’s the only lame connection I attempt.

I surprised myself how dominant of the conversation I was in the beginning—I had more stress from to work off than I realized. I mostly talked about my experience with the school so far, bragging about the students, since they haven’t been to school much at all. My school is much more advanced, so the students are there every day for supplementary lessons or club activities.

I also try to explain how much fun it is to spend time with Hina-chan, who made a fan today with dolphins, whales on one side, and trees and bugs drawn in detail on the other, but they don’t seem to care.

“You should start charging the parents,” Mr. M2 says, when I tell him that I’m trying to teacher English too. I smile. I guess you can’t really explain what it’s like to gain the trust and admiration of a child if they’ve never done it themselves. The secret is to give them your trust and admiration. And love.

Leaving the hotel
Now Playing: Greenday
The next day, we were supposed to meet our supervisors at the hotel and then go to our schools to meet the rest of the staff and begin the settling process, which I found is a very, very long process. In fact, by the time I’m settled, I should be ready to leave. So the meeting room in the hotel is all set up, air conditioned and a Japanese dude is running around giving all the ALTs glasses of water. There are seating charts, so the supervisors will not have to waste time going to meet the wrong ALT. We all sit facing forward, away from the doorway. It feels like I’m playing a game of hide-and-seek or something, where I’m waiting for someone to come around from behind to meet me. This next part is fitting for me, if you are aware of my habits concerning punctuality. Everyone’s supervisors begin to arrive and the meeting starts at 9:30, and everyone’s supervisors have come except mine. The director of Osaka prefecture, who had dinner with us last night, rattling on and on in Japanese, occasionally saying something in English, but almost exclusively in Japanese. So I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

I had been really nervous about meeting my supervisors, so I was practicing my polite Japanese phrases that you use to introduce yourself. I had even attended an hour long session on business manners at Tokyo orientation. It’s complex to explain, but there’s a lot of bowing. So about 25 minutes into the meeting, this young, attractive Japanese woman—hair still wet from the shower—comes in and offers me a weak handshake. “I am T, pleased to meet you,” she said, and sat down. I said, “Hajimemashite,” (A fancy hello), and skipped the rest of the routine. Immediately, she pretended I wasn’t there and began reviewing some of the papers set on our table. I think she was embarrassed, as punctuality is a huge thing in Japan. Soon after her, Hg-Sensei arrived, a man I had had email correspondence with prior to coming. I later said my, “Doozo yoroshiku onegaishimasu,” which is Japan talk for “you are awesome, I suck” or “you are very good looking, I am not attractive.” You get the idea.

They had thought the meeting started at ten, so they were very sorry for being late. I did my best to be polite and was very scared of offending them. I’m always very self-conscious about my manners, since my father has helped me realize how rude and ungraceful my social discourse is. That’s one thing that’s unique about me: I hate manners. I was excited to see that Shakespeare agrees with me: “The prince of darkness is a gentleman,” (Twylfth Night). If I ever act sloppy around someone, it is intended as a complement—it means I trust them and my way of showing my honesty. Usually, if someone is offended by my relaxed manner, they’re not someone I want as a friend. I didn’t think that the Japanese would jive with this, but later, I discovered I was wrong.
Hg-Sensei asked me if it would be all right if we stopped for coffee. The Japanese are big fans of iced coffee, “aeesu cohee.” He also asked if he could smoke, and I of course said I didn’t mind at all. T-sensei avoided making eye contact with me and sat up straight in her chair, apparently taking interest in the floor and the table. Her cheekbones were out of control. She must have drinken plenty of milk growing up. Hg sensei sat back in his chair and tried to blow the smoke out of the way. He spoke very relaxed English, with a mild accent. He reminded me of my Uncle Jim—never in a hurry and seeming to enjoy everything he was doing, as though he were forever sitting in a Jacuzzi.

I bought my first train ticket with them, which wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be. At the train station, one of the mechanics was fixing the ticket machine that you use to enter the station and it looked like a Rube Goldberg experiment inside—pullys, wheels and all sorts of gizmos. All that just to eat your ticket and spit it out on the other side. I think I impressed them with my manner, and even got a few chuckles out of them. They seemed to be very easily amused. The key was not to try to hard. My only flop was trying to describe a Saturday Night Live skit where Will Ferrel walks in wearing a Speedo with the U.S. flag on it.

Walking from the train station to the school was maybe a ten minute walk, but it was hot as hell and humid too, and I was wearing my backpack, so my pit stains had wrapped all the way around my shoulders, and there were blotches of sweat on my pants too. I was wearing a long-sleeve shirt and tie with slacks to make a good impression, but I was only impressing them with my sweating ability, so I gave in and rolled up my sleeves. I was dripping sweat off my nose despite my efforts to wipe my face dry.

I dropped my bags in a room by the main office, where my other two bags had safely arrived. Whew. Then we met the rest of the office, and I said my fancy Japanese phrases to all 8 of them. I also met H-Sensei, who I would be staying with until I found an apartment. He had initially wanted me to move in with him. He actually had built a new addition to the top of his house with a separate entrance that was recently finished, which was to be for the new ALT, as my predecessor told me, and also warned me not to take him up on the offer. He lowered the rent significantly, compared to other apartments, but she said he would try to live my life for me if I did. I told my prefectural advisor, Mr. K, who acts as a sort of go-between with the prefecture board and also as a kind of hold-my-hand guy for the other ALTs. I found out that he gets no additional income for doing this, and he’s a really nice guy in addition to being the only black, English guy I’ve ever met. So he advised me to lie about having an American girlfriend that was going to visit me very soon, and that I also wanted my privacy, and I did. Later.

All but one of the 8 English teachers went out to eat with us to a really nice and what I found out was a very expensive Japanese style restaurant. I rode with Y-Sensei, who is a really nice guy. He’s about 5 feet tall and speaks English like a game show host who’s flexing his stomach. He puts on a station with American rap in the car. I love this guy. He’s the only guy 40 plus that cranks the beats.

At the restaurant, we slip our shoes off and sit in our own separate room. Y pulls me aside and explains the Japanese garden in the middle of the restaurant to me. “You, see, it has trees and, ah, stepping stone? Do I make myself clear? Stepping stone?” “Yes, stepping stone?” “Ah. And, the arrangement is…ah…creative.” “Artistic?” “Yes, yes, that is the word. Artistic.” “With those trees, it must take many years to make the garden,” (I have to speak slowly and very clearly, which is very unnatural for me, and I also filter out large words and idioms). We go back inside and he tells me about a garden in Kyoto that’s made entirely of stone. I don’t quite know what he means.

The table we sit around is low to the ground, but there floor beneath it is cut away so that if you don’t want to sit Japanese style—crosslegged—you can drop your legs in. About half the people sit like me. In the center of the table, there are round grills. Y-Sensei recommends some things to me, and I don’t really know what they are. I know I’m getting some kind of beef and a vegetable dish, which turns out to have a raw egg on top when I’m served. I observe table manners, and I remember that you can’t stick you’re chopsticks in the food because that’s what is done with rice at funeral ceremonies. I look around and see people set them across bowls or with the tips up on the chopstick stand provided.

I entertain the guests with lame stories about America. I explain that we have a similar grill that we use when we have barbecues. Y-sensei asks, “Ah, so you do the barbecue on a…on a deck?” “Yes,” I deftly reply, and everyone gasps, impressed with my vast, expansive knowledge of American culture. Whenever I speak up, which is rare, the entire table stops their conversations and hang on every word I say. It’s a bit disconcerting, but I use my public speaking skills to slow down and make eye contact with everyone. One strange thing, is that there are frequent gaps in conversations, and everyone will sit in silence, staring at a spot on the table, waiting for someone to say something. If that happens in America, someone will almost immediately say something, make a joke about the silence, or make a stretching noise or something to avoid the dreaded silence. I like that they’re comfortable with the silence.

The food is amazing. The best beef I’ve ever gotten. The vegetable dish has a more discreet flavor, but also good. When we’re finished, I hear them discussing the bill, and, although my Japanese is shaky, I think I heard 12 man en, which is about $1200 dollars. Yikes. What a welcome meal.

At the end of the meal, T-sensei said they had gone in on a gift for me—a hanko, which is a stamp the Japanese use in place of a signature. You don’t want to loose your hanko. Usually, foreigners get their name in katakana, the phonetic alphabet for incorporating foreign words, but they had gotten me an actual kanji hanko. I later told other ALTs this, and they told me that was very rare to get. The first character, “bu” means warrior or samurai, Y-sensei explained. “This character is, ‘rai,’ which means ‘to come.’ So it means, ‘a warrior is coming!’” This got a laugh from everyone, and another when I told them that I am a descendant of the Vikings.

Back at the office, H-sensei has some lessons and texts that he has me look over. Another English teacher that I don’t know comes in and apologizes for missing my dinner. I notice several mistakes on H-sensei’s lesson, but I don’t mention them, since I was warned by my predecessor that he’s pretty arrogant about his English ability. I smile and say it’s very good. I get the feeling that that’s half of my job—saying, “Very good.”

Later, Y-sensei and T-sensei show me around the school. I feel a bit awkward walking because Y-sensei leads me and T-sensei seems to insist on following behind me. I?m used to walking next to people, so I try to wait up for T-sensei or to let her go before me in doorways, but this turns out to be awkward. Y-sensei excitedly approaches any group of students he can find, and explains that I am the new ALT in English. Then he asks me to introduce myself. I slow way down, and speak loudly and clearly to the point where it feels like I?m singing a Broadway musical in slow motion. We approach several groups of students and make our way to the gym, where girls are playing badminton and boys are playing some intense volleyball. This is the biggest group I?ve spoken to yet. ?Heeeelllloooo! My na?? I?m cut off by students trying to answer, ?Hello.? So I repeat it, and gesture for them to answer with a deafening, ?HELLO!? I introduce myself and then Y-sensei approaches a student and says, ?I know you have many questions for Mr. Bly. Please, ask him a question.?

There is always a long pause after he asks them to ask me a question. It feels awkward to me because all the other students are quietly standing, waiting, not one whispering to another or anyting. At last, the girl speaks. ?Eigo de?? (In English?). ?Yes, please,? Y-sensei asks, and I wait, smiling. Another long pause.

?How old are you??

?Ahh, a very good question. I am 25 years old.? This is very exciting to them, and deserves a brief conversation.

The next question is always the same whenever it is a girl. Without fail, it has always been, ?Do you have a girlfriend.?

I panic?this is a critical moment. Through my experience in teaching, I know there is no right answer to this question. Both yes and no are equally defeating.

?Yes, of course. I have many girlfriends.? This is very funny to the girls.

Y-sensei picks up my lead, ?Oh, yes, there is Lucy, Mary, Jenny??

We were a hit.

When it?s time to go, I say my formalities to the staff, ?Oisogashi tokoro arigato gozaimasu?Shitsurei shimasu?? I try to remember the phrase you use when you leave early, but I can?t. I hit my head getting into H-sensei?s car, and he says to me, ?You have come to a land of dwarfs!? and laughs. Whenever he laughs, he waits for me to smile first, and then tenses up his face, his eyes disappearing in a mass of wrinkles.

At their house, they put me up in a nice room upstairs and shows me around the house. It is a beautiful house with both Western and Japanese elements. He also shows me the apartment that was intended for me, and says that if I have friends or relatives that they are welcome there. He really is a very nice man, if a bit arrogant.

Ms. H?s wife is a very neurotic woman. She chatters on and on in Japanese?speaks no English, and I can?t really catch any. One morning, H-sensei told me that she doesn?t sleep very well at night?sometimes only 2 or 3 hours. ?That is why your laundry is done this morning!? he says, doing his odd pause-smile-laugh. I appreciate that she speaks Japanese to me?sometimes people will not speak at all if they don?t think I can understand, but she speaks so quickly and repeats herself over and over. I don?t think she realizes how poor my Japanese is.

My first night there, immediately before dinner, I tell H-sensei that I?d like to go for a run because I?ve been caged up for the last week. He is very excited and asks, ?Oh, running is your hobby?? ?Well, yeah, I guess it?s one of them, yeah.? ?Do you have a good sense of direction?? ?Yes. Yes I do.? ?Ah, I will accompany you on the bicycle. How far would you like to go??

And so he takes me to a large manmade pond and to some nearby temples through the crazy streets of Kishiwada. Japanese streets don?t usually have names, and the city isn?t laid out in a block pattern, so anything goes, really. I don?t remember street names anyway, so it?s no better or worse for me. The streets are ridiculously narrow. Our one-way alley is about as wide as their two-way street?no exaduration. Of course, are much smaller. They remind me of Bonsai trees?just like the normal thing but smaller. In fact, I?ve found everything in Japan is smaller, faster and has Internet access.

We wind around lots of streets and I memorize the way by spotting landmarks. Right by the vending machine, straight by the lady with the hose, left when a dog crosses the road, etc. I?m blown away by the temples, when we arrive. They are beyond description. H-sensei leads me through the temple area and I feel like the white, American slob I am in shorts and a shirt half-soaked in sweat. People are praying at these small shrines that look like wells. When they approach a temple, they pause in each doorway and bow very purposefully. I came back with my camera, and that seemed very ironic to me, that I would take pictures of Buddhist temples?Buddhism preaches nonmaterialism, and my camera is the opposite, a relic of the information age.

It?s hot here. I take as cold a shower as I can before eating, but big blotches of sweat appear on my thighs, back and chest.

My Japanese level is probably at the most frustrating level it will get to. When I listen to the H couple talk, I can pick out just enough words to completely misinterpret everything. Example, I might pick out of a one minute talk, ?Bly-san?bicycle?work?jump?green.? So I figure H-sensei said, ?Bly-san rides bikes to work and jumps over a fence that is green,? when really he said, ?Pass the soy sauce.?

He and she both are intensely into nutrition, and H-sensei explains that this is because they see lots of T.V. shows in Japan about health. He drinks a shake in the morning with leeks and other vegetables, takes plumb extract supplements and other witch doctor supplements, and they make their own yogurt.

His wife is an excellent chef. She was worried about what I would eat, but I say, ?Whatever you cook, I will eat.? A funny thing about Japanese culinary customs: They take the utmost care in preparing a meal that comes in tiny, neat packets, organized like an obsessive compulsive man?s (or woman?s) suitcase. But when it comes time to eat, it?s really time to eat. Slurping noodles, spilling off the plates and picking up dishes to get that last bite of rice. Mrs. H burps frequently and without embarrassment. This is very relaxing for me?I hate the Western standards of good manners. It?s an ironic pattern that reminds me of how I used to play with Legos as a kid. I would set up a beautiful structure, stand back to look at it, and then my sister and I would scream, ?Let?s wreck it!? and suddenly we were Godzilla or King Kong. You say, ?Itadakimasu? before eating, and then you destroy your food. I have no problem adjusting my eating habits to this standard.

The Spirit of Japan
Now Playing: Rachel Yamagata
On Friday, July 29, my third day at school, Y-sensei takes me to the real estate office to sign some paperwork. The A/C is still broken so it’s hot as hell, but people are smiling and serve us iced tea again. I sign where they tell me to and the agent photocopies a map of the city and where my apartment is, which turns out to be a lifesaver in helping me find my way around town.

We go back to school, and Y-sensei does yet again his favorite activity—showing me off to the students. Among other groups of students, I get to meet the Ju-do club, the ken-do (sword dance) club, and the dance club. I’d never seen ken-do, and I guess students have to practice moving with the sword for years before they begin actual sparring practice. They look very professional in their robes. The dance club is by far the most intimidating, and Y-sensei asks me if I’d like to see them perform. I can’t say, “no,” but I’m not quite comfortable getting a private performance. “Yes, of course! I love dance!” They do their routine and we move on.

We pick up H-sensei and T-sensei at the office, and go out for food. We go to a noodle place, and Y-sensei recommends a dish of cold Udon noodles of some kind. I can’t read the menus yet, so I go with it, even though it doesn’t sound to appealing. He gets me the hugest size possible—everyone thinks I can eat like half my weight at meals, but he gets the same size too. I ask Y-sensei about the martial arts, and he launches into his explanation about them and what they mean to him. They also talk about flower arrangement and the tea ceremony, both being clubs at the high school. He asks me if I understand flower arrangement. I don’t really know what he’s asking, so I say no. He says T-sensei is an expert and tells her to explain it. She smiles, mumbles, and puts her had on her forehead.

“I think if you have interest in one of these,” Y-sensei says, “you should study it, and you will discover the spirit of Japan. I started Karate-do with my son eight years ago, and I have liked it very much. I will probably do it until I die. You see, most people, ah, foreigners think it is just an activity, just a sport. But it is…ah…”

I interject, “There’s a philosophy?”

“Yes, yes. A philosophy. Each do (study) has it’s own philosophy or idea, and if you study it, you will understand.”

Everyone finishes their meal before me. I don’t know how—I was slurping as fast as I could.

On the way back, I saw my first Japanese car accident. As we’re approaching the cars, Y-sensei grabs at his seat-belt, for fear that the cops will see him. The roads are so freaking narrow, it’s no wonder they don’t have more accidents. Maybe if I study philosophy of Japanese driving, I will understand.