Nothing spectacular to report today, at least nothing spectacular that happened. I sat at my desk for about six hours, picked my nose, stared off into space, slept, picked my butt, slept while picking my butt, woke up to teach a class, then went back to sleep until it was time to go home (a disorienting day, but not surprisingly I feel pretty rested right about now), so outside of the number of stairs in my school (176), tiles in my classroom (12), or urinals in the third floor boys bathroom (4), i can't really say much about my day at school, except for that I now know that whistling in class is most definitely against the rules, even for teachers.
However, I can briefly say something about something cool that is going to happen sometime soon. Cryptic, yes, but it's kind of a secret. I hate secrets though. On Wednesday November 5th, from 5:37 PM until 5:42 PM at a McDonald's nowhere near you, myself and a few brave souls are going to participate in the greatest social experiment to take place in Japan since somebody showed them a white person. What sort of experiment, you say? Well it's largely to see if we can draw out the deeply seeded Japanese belief that foreigners aren't actually human beings but are instead some sort of animatronic nonlifeform with no feelings and no known ability to use chopsticks that might either explode into random violence or shut down entirely at any moment. Well, there's really no way to get them with the random violence thing without having to face some sort of jail time, so we're taking the other route. Have you ever heard of flash-mobbing? I hadn't, but I'm finding out everyday that being from suburban Washington makes you more of a country bumpkin than I had suspected so I wouldn't be surprised if you already knew all about this (except for those of you who also grew up in suburban Washington and then went to college in rural Washington). But, while it comes in many shapes and sizes, it ultimately boils down to a large group of people seemingly randomly engaging in a bizarre coordinated something in what would otherwise be an incredibly ordinary place and situation. A large group of people suddenly freezing in a crowded bus station and staying that way for five minutes before walking away like nothing happened; a mass of people pulling out pillows from shopping bags in the middle of a shopping center and having a huge pillow fight for a few seconds before calmly putting the pillows back in their bags and going back to their business; a huge group of people sprinting down the length of a train platform as if they're late and desperately need to catch one, but then stopping and breaking off into small independent groups to chat once they get to the platform and there's no train there. It's crucial that you catch as many innocent bystanders in the middle of the spectacle as possible, because part of the fun of a flash mob (I'm guessing) is messing with people and getting them to think there's something big going on that they're just not in on. Their everday reality, catching the train, buying christmas presents, eating in a restaurant, gets turned on its head for a moment, and something crazy happens that you would never ever expect to. If it works, if you've done it right, then people leave wherever they were thinking, "what the fuck just happened? Did that just happen?" Not just, "damn kids."
We're going to go with the easy one first, freeze-framing it for a pre-determined amount of time, and then coming back to life and moving on like it was no big deal. Just robots that ran out of juice for a minute, you know? And we're going with McDonald's not to make a political statement about how McDonald's isn't the sort of fuel you'd like to put in your body if you'd like to live a healthy life and not have full body breakdowns every now and again, but more because that's where all the kids hang out, and they might react the most strangely. At any given time you can find elaborately dressed girls standing in front of wall mirrors, doing their make-up or refashioning their hairdos or maybe even doing a little improptu plastic surgery. Boys hang out after school in their uniforms, looking tough in their mullets and mohawks and military themed duds as they sip on a blueberry oreo mcflurry (drink of the month and it's great). If well executed, it could be great. We'll see how it goes, and if we manage to get a video of it, well, you can see it in action. I'm hoping there's a computer hacker amongst us who can hack into the McDonald's security camera system and like divert the feed onto the internet or something, but I'm guessing that's impossible. This sort of thing looks better from all angles, though, you know?
Monday, October 27, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
Beyond International Emo
Remeber how I said I was going to a festival last night and that I might have something to write about it later? Well, I've got loads.
I had never been to a festival before. Well, one, but it was just a few food stalls arranged around the "quad" (a rectangular patch of beaten up astroturf with a couple basketball hoops stationed around the perimeter) of the school I went to here a couple years ago, and the main attraction was watching their large cheerleading squad build a couple pyramids to the blare of vintage Brittney Spears coming from an equally vintage boom box. So it was lame, is what I'm saying. As such, I didn't have extraordinarily high hopes for this one.
Going into it I had little to no idea of what to expect. Other than a few whisperings I had overheard in the hallways about a "dangerous" festival coming up this weekend, I'd heard nothing at all. Why was it "dangerous?" What does that even mean? I've come to disregard most everything the Japanese call "dangerous," because 15 mile per hours winds and drinking too much apple juice fall under that category, so when they said the festival was "dangerous" I figured it could be, but only if if a swat team of angry Chinese assassins with Uzis happened to crash it. Even as we were driving there, I had no idea what was going to happen. I asked the Japanese lady driving what kind of festival it was, and she said it was some sort of harvest festival. Something people do all over Japan. Not necessarily the most explicit explanation ever (to be fair she did mention a couple other crucial things I would understand later but at the time didn't have the vocabulary to comprehend), but I did start to get a little nervous that the "danger" involved little slips of paper, a single black spot, and one unfortunate soul getting stoned to death by an angry mob of superstitious farmers.
Luckily my slip of paper was clean. My shoulder is a little sore this morning though.
JK I didn't kill anybody. But here is what happened:
After stopping off at my Japanese friend's house to pick up some happi coats for the occasion, we set off into the night, following the mass of humanity making it's way towards something I didn't really understand. We wound our way through the darkened streets for a while, gradually getting closer and closer to a fuzzy source of light and sound lurking in a grove of trees like a slowly awakening beast. Hypnotized by the interwoven call of flutes and horns, attracted like curious foreign moths to the foggy glimpses of silver and gold revealed in gaps between tree trunks and leaves, we eventually made it to the "fair grounds" I guess you could call them, and then everything made a little more sense to me. Yoshimi, my Japanese friend, had said someting about these things called "yatai" when she was explaining the festival to me, and that's a word I didn't know and one she said she couldn't really explain any better. Well, having seen them, neither can I, put luckily seeing, in this case, is understanding, so this is a "yatai"
Hmm I don't know if this is going to work... And I was going to rave about how amazingly liquid the world becomes when you can translate a little piece of it into pixels of color and light that sit on your cell phone until you email them to yourself and post them on the interent for anybody to see, but whoops, there goes that little ecstatic moment for technology. Fuck you technology for ruining yourself for me. (Unless it actually worked in which case I'm the uber idiot).
It worked (I'm revising and editing right now), but you can't see it very well, so here's another:
But, back to business. The first part of the festival was held on the grounds of a local shrine in what I suppose we could call a cul-de-sac of revelry. At the far end of the holy "U" shape stood the shrine building itself, sitting quietly in the darkness and leaving the spotlight to the real stars of the show, the yatai (which, for that purpose, were lit up with artfully placed halogen lamps and some sort of incadescent article placed inside of lamps attached to the sides of the thing (this festival must have been incredibly dangerous in the past because I imagine they must have put candles in those lanterns, and with the way they get tossed around in the process of pulling the yatai around town (something I will get into later) I bet back in the olden days there were yatai burning down left and right, filling the night with flames to go along with drunken dancing and chanting (which sounds really nice, actually)). Along the sides of the U, where the houses would usually be, were set up a shit load of little stalls selling everything from buttery baked potatoes to candy apples; there were chocolate bananas, yakisoba, takoyaki (fried octopus balls), okonomiyaki, dozens of other sorts of yaki I'd never heard of before, shaved ice, ice cream, probably even ice sculptures somewhere in there, basically any sort of festival food you could ever want, and it was all contained in the otherwordly golden haze that demarcates the realm of memory from the present moment, or just indicates spectacular mood lighting. I'm convinced at this point that Japanese people know how to manipulate light better than any other culture, they've got a really finely tuned photo-aesthetic eye, that's for sure.
It was in this ethereal landscape that the festival operated. For kids it must be the best shit ever. Speaking of kids, this festival was held pretty much right next door to my school, so I was basically every one of my students there, munching on some sort of yummy snack of another. Our encounters followed one of two patters every time: If I noticed them before they noticed me, I would stare at them until they did notice me, and then they would have a minor convulsion at the sight of me, look sheepish, say "hello chado" and then get out of there; if they saw me first, they would point at me, look really surprised, laugh, (this is all according to Yoshimi), poke me, say "hello chado" and get out of there. That was pretty funny to see them out of the classroom setting, I kinda liked that. But yeah, every neighborhood within the Hamamatsu area has a yatai, and the first part of the festival involves the yatai, ostensibly pulled by members of the town with ropes but actually powered by generators secreted within the shrines' ancient bellies, doing a processional from their berths near their stationary superior and out into the streets. I watched this for a while, looking at my kids, rocking out to the tunes of the flutes and the trumpets played by the lucky elementary students that got to ride inside the holy things and the parents that followed nervously behind, and it was good. But then, I found myself being led out of the magical cul-de-sac and into the decidedly prosaic night, and I was a little disappointed, because I thought it was over.
Not so, however. Not even by half. For the next part of the festival, everybody splits off and follows their particular yatai on a merry jaunt around the kinjo (neighborhood) chasing after it like pilgrims following an ark (sorry for mixing up my ideography, I don't can't help but bring everything back westward) past shops and houses empty because their owners are all out enjoying the evening. Along the way, the yatai stop from time to time and people hand out free beer and free food that the revelers then consume while they rest and prepare to revel some more. In between bouts of consumption, while the shrine is still stopped and waiting, somebody pulls out a bullhorn and starts yelling "O ISSHO" which apparently is the signal to dance around like a maniac for thirty seconds. It's like a dance party in the TKE house, except less grindy and dingy and more mosh-pitty. Everybody participates too, young and or old. Fathers dance around with toddlers on their shoulders and beers in their hands, grandmas get in there and raise their hands with the 20 year old dudes and chicks, and everybody is really just getting down. And then it stops, suddenly and without warning. But about ten seconds later it starts all over again. And then it stops. But then it starts again. Then it stops. Then it starts. Then it stops. Then is starts. Then it stops. Then you're pretty sure it's done but it starts and stops at least three more times before the shrine gets moving again. It's a workout, that's for sure.
We ended up following the yatai around for maybe two hours, "dancing," eating, drinking, dancing, and generally just thanking kami-sama for another good harvest. It was great. At one point I got sucked in by these drunk, entirely unintelligible old men who tried to tell me a story about how much they hated Ichiro because he's not good at baseball just fast (not true but whatever) but at the time I was pretty freaked out by them and so didn't understand what they were trying to say until like an hour later. At another point, in the mosh-pit, I found myself getting backed down Andy Huntington style by this random drunkass Japanese dude who spoke a lot of English. That was awkward, so I just turned around and we bumped butts until the crowd cleared and I could get out of there. It wasn't me, because after I escaped he found another victim. When the full moon comes out some people just get crazy I guess. Whoo, well, that's about all I got there, and boy was that ever an epic. Speaking of, the next installment coming soon. Thanks for coming.
I had never been to a festival before. Well, one, but it was just a few food stalls arranged around the "quad" (a rectangular patch of beaten up astroturf with a couple basketball hoops stationed around the perimeter) of the school I went to here a couple years ago, and the main attraction was watching their large cheerleading squad build a couple pyramids to the blare of vintage Brittney Spears coming from an equally vintage boom box. So it was lame, is what I'm saying. As such, I didn't have extraordinarily high hopes for this one.
Going into it I had little to no idea of what to expect. Other than a few whisperings I had overheard in the hallways about a "dangerous" festival coming up this weekend, I'd heard nothing at all. Why was it "dangerous?" What does that even mean? I've come to disregard most everything the Japanese call "dangerous," because 15 mile per hours winds and drinking too much apple juice fall under that category, so when they said the festival was "dangerous" I figured it could be, but only if if a swat team of angry Chinese assassins with Uzis happened to crash it. Even as we were driving there, I had no idea what was going to happen. I asked the Japanese lady driving what kind of festival it was, and she said it was some sort of harvest festival. Something people do all over Japan. Not necessarily the most explicit explanation ever (to be fair she did mention a couple other crucial things I would understand later but at the time didn't have the vocabulary to comprehend), but I did start to get a little nervous that the "danger" involved little slips of paper, a single black spot, and one unfortunate soul getting stoned to death by an angry mob of superstitious farmers.
Luckily my slip of paper was clean. My shoulder is a little sore this morning though.
JK I didn't kill anybody. But here is what happened:
After stopping off at my Japanese friend's house to pick up some happi coats for the occasion, we set off into the night, following the mass of humanity making it's way towards something I didn't really understand. We wound our way through the darkened streets for a while, gradually getting closer and closer to a fuzzy source of light and sound lurking in a grove of trees like a slowly awakening beast. Hypnotized by the interwoven call of flutes and horns, attracted like curious foreign moths to the foggy glimpses of silver and gold revealed in gaps between tree trunks and leaves, we eventually made it to the "fair grounds" I guess you could call them, and then everything made a little more sense to me. Yoshimi, my Japanese friend, had said someting about these things called "yatai" when she was explaining the festival to me, and that's a word I didn't know and one she said she couldn't really explain any better. Well, having seen them, neither can I, put luckily seeing, in this case, is understanding, so this is a "yatai"
Hmm I don't know if this is going to work... And I was going to rave about how amazingly liquid the world becomes when you can translate a little piece of it into pixels of color and light that sit on your cell phone until you email them to yourself and post them on the interent for anybody to see, but whoops, there goes that little ecstatic moment for technology. Fuck you technology for ruining yourself for me. (Unless it actually worked in which case I'm the uber idiot).
It worked (I'm revising and editing right now), but you can't see it very well, so here's another:
But, back to business. The first part of the festival was held on the grounds of a local shrine in what I suppose we could call a cul-de-sac of revelry. At the far end of the holy "U" shape stood the shrine building itself, sitting quietly in the darkness and leaving the spotlight to the real stars of the show, the yatai (which, for that purpose, were lit up with artfully placed halogen lamps and some sort of incadescent article placed inside of lamps attached to the sides of the thing (this festival must have been incredibly dangerous in the past because I imagine they must have put candles in those lanterns, and with the way they get tossed around in the process of pulling the yatai around town (something I will get into later) I bet back in the olden days there were yatai burning down left and right, filling the night with flames to go along with drunken dancing and chanting (which sounds really nice, actually)). Along the sides of the U, where the houses would usually be, were set up a shit load of little stalls selling everything from buttery baked potatoes to candy apples; there were chocolate bananas, yakisoba, takoyaki (fried octopus balls), okonomiyaki, dozens of other sorts of yaki I'd never heard of before, shaved ice, ice cream, probably even ice sculptures somewhere in there, basically any sort of festival food you could ever want, and it was all contained in the otherwordly golden haze that demarcates the realm of memory from the present moment, or just indicates spectacular mood lighting. I'm convinced at this point that Japanese people know how to manipulate light better than any other culture, they've got a really finely tuned photo-aesthetic eye, that's for sure.
It was in this ethereal landscape that the festival operated. For kids it must be the best shit ever. Speaking of kids, this festival was held pretty much right next door to my school, so I was basically every one of my students there, munching on some sort of yummy snack of another. Our encounters followed one of two patters every time: If I noticed them before they noticed me, I would stare at them until they did notice me, and then they would have a minor convulsion at the sight of me, look sheepish, say "hello chado" and then get out of there; if they saw me first, they would point at me, look really surprised, laugh, (this is all according to Yoshimi), poke me, say "hello chado" and get out of there. That was pretty funny to see them out of the classroom setting, I kinda liked that. But yeah, every neighborhood within the Hamamatsu area has a yatai, and the first part of the festival involves the yatai, ostensibly pulled by members of the town with ropes but actually powered by generators secreted within the shrines' ancient bellies, doing a processional from their berths near their stationary superior and out into the streets. I watched this for a while, looking at my kids, rocking out to the tunes of the flutes and the trumpets played by the lucky elementary students that got to ride inside the holy things and the parents that followed nervously behind, and it was good. But then, I found myself being led out of the magical cul-de-sac and into the decidedly prosaic night, and I was a little disappointed, because I thought it was over.
Not so, however. Not even by half. For the next part of the festival, everybody splits off and follows their particular yatai on a merry jaunt around the kinjo (neighborhood) chasing after it like pilgrims following an ark (sorry for mixing up my ideography, I don't can't help but bring everything back westward) past shops and houses empty because their owners are all out enjoying the evening. Along the way, the yatai stop from time to time and people hand out free beer and free food that the revelers then consume while they rest and prepare to revel some more. In between bouts of consumption, while the shrine is still stopped and waiting, somebody pulls out a bullhorn and starts yelling "O ISSHO" which apparently is the signal to dance around like a maniac for thirty seconds. It's like a dance party in the TKE house, except less grindy and dingy and more mosh-pitty. Everybody participates too, young and or old. Fathers dance around with toddlers on their shoulders and beers in their hands, grandmas get in there and raise their hands with the 20 year old dudes and chicks, and everybody is really just getting down. And then it stops, suddenly and without warning. But about ten seconds later it starts all over again. And then it stops. But then it starts again. Then it stops. Then it starts. Then it stops. Then is starts. Then it stops. Then you're pretty sure it's done but it starts and stops at least three more times before the shrine gets moving again. It's a workout, that's for sure.
We ended up following the yatai around for maybe two hours, "dancing," eating, drinking, dancing, and generally just thanking kami-sama for another good harvest. It was great. At one point I got sucked in by these drunk, entirely unintelligible old men who tried to tell me a story about how much they hated Ichiro because he's not good at baseball just fast (not true but whatever) but at the time I was pretty freaked out by them and so didn't understand what they were trying to say until like an hour later. At another point, in the mosh-pit, I found myself getting backed down Andy Huntington style by this random drunkass Japanese dude who spoke a lot of English. That was awkward, so I just turned around and we bumped butts until the crowd cleared and I could get out of there. It wasn't me, because after I escaped he found another victim. When the full moon comes out some people just get crazy I guess. Whoo, well, that's about all I got there, and boy was that ever an epic. Speaking of, the next installment coming soon. Thanks for coming.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Something about an International Language
That's right, music. We're going to do another of these I post a video of myself doing something embarrasing with a guitar in my hands things. This is a little different from Garden State and T-Tones covers, however. Well, it's still most definitely a cover, but this time I'm not singing in English. This is a Japanese song that I think is pretty sweet. I'm trying to think of what I would compare this band to, and I guess I would say that while they have the sartorial style of Pearl Jam, they are more musically aligned with a band like Lifehouse or something like that. They're totally a product of the mid 90s, though, that's for sure. It's nice to know that we were all going through the mushroom cut, sloppy flannel-phase at the same time all over the world. It's a point of unity, you know? So here it is. I'll translate the lyrics below, though I can't be entirely sure of a couple parts...
The song is called "Sora mo Toberuhazu" which roughly translates to "I Feel like I Could Fly," and here's the best I can do on the English translation
While unable to make my little fever go down,
I feel afraid of God's shadow
The hidden knife eased my out of place self
with silly songs
As the color fades,
as it all starts to break apart,
I call out for a sparkling escape
I feel full of the miracle
that was meeting you
For sure, I ought to be able
to fly right now
When the tears that soak my dreams
wash out to sea
I want you here smiling next to me
I'll tear up the transparent lies
I used as the aces up my sleeve
on the evening of the full moon
To the smell of hair
fluttering hollowly in space,
I wake up from a deep deep sleep
My heart is full
with the miracle that is meeting you
For sure, I ought to be able
to fly right now
Even though this world glittering with trash
rejected us,
I still want you here smiling next to me
Oh yeah. That translation sucks a little bit I realize, but it's Ok. It's a trickier song that I thought. Ok, I'm off to a festival, maybe there'll be some more to come later.
The song is called "Sora mo Toberuhazu" which roughly translates to "I Feel like I Could Fly," and here's the best I can do on the English translation
While unable to make my little fever go down,
I feel afraid of God's shadow
The hidden knife eased my out of place self
with silly songs
As the color fades,
as it all starts to break apart,
I call out for a sparkling escape
I feel full of the miracle
that was meeting you
For sure, I ought to be able
to fly right now
When the tears that soak my dreams
wash out to sea
I want you here smiling next to me
I'll tear up the transparent lies
I used as the aces up my sleeve
on the evening of the full moon
To the smell of hair
fluttering hollowly in space,
I wake up from a deep deep sleep
My heart is full
with the miracle that is meeting you
For sure, I ought to be able
to fly right now
Even though this world glittering with trash
rejected us,
I still want you here smiling next to me
Oh yeah. That translation sucks a little bit I realize, but it's Ok. It's a trickier song that I thought. Ok, I'm off to a festival, maybe there'll be some more to come later.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Coming out of a Dry Spell
My posts were really few and far between last month, but it's a new day and I guess I gotta get the update train a running again. This one's mostly for you Dana, though anyone else who has been foolish enough to attach this blog to their google reader (here's lookin at you Michael) can give 'er a look too.
Today's topic is the adult english conversation phenomenon. All over Japan you can find different establishments whose sole reason for existence is to cater to old people who want to come in and speak a little English with a foreigner. They come in all shapes in sizes. You've got your standard, somewhat formal English schools for adults, which seem to be fairly reputable and worthwhile for the people who come in to polish up their conversations abilities. You've also got your more informal "conversation groups," which equate to a few old people, one English speaker, one hour, and a lot of inane/unintelligible babbling. I've never done one of these before, but apparently the old people just like to tell people they've spoken English with a foreigner, while any fly on the wall at one of their meetings would have to disagree, and say they've spoken at a foreigner in Japanese about their cats or perhaps the local weather patterns. There are also these things called English Conversation Cafes that employ a resident foreigner or two to come in and chat with patrons. A lot like hostess bars, except for that the company you provide comes in exotic (culturally and linguistically, not sexually, though there probably are English Conversation Hostess Bars) flavors. Last time I was here I was propositioned by a man in a black van to work a couple hours a week at just such an English Conversation Cafe, and even though I am a little leery of the potential link between the mafia and english conversation in this country, I regret to this day passing that up that opportunity.
Which is probably why I was so ready to accept a similar invitation this time around. Granted, it came through more official channels(straight from the local Coordinator of International Relations), but I still felt like this was fate offering me a second chance. I said yes. To be fair, I don't have much else to do (the most entertainment I get on a standard weekday evening is watching strange people lift weights in skimpy clothing at the gym (there's one guy who I'm convinced is the gay ancestor of the Norse warrior Sigmund (look him up, then imagine him doing calf-raises in booty shorts), but nonetheless I was excited about this.
It's officially termed an "English Conversation Exchange," this thing I'm doing, and it certainly falls on the unofficial side of things. After I agreed to participate, Bonnie (the coordinator for international relations) gave these two men looking for a chat my information, and from there it was up to us to determine the where when and how of our exchanging. I wasn't sure exactly when to expect a call from these guys, but promptly a few days later I received a call from an unknown number that I was pretty sure was from my new Japanese friends. Well, actually I received about 4 calls within about a 20 minute period (I was working at the time and couldn't really answer my phone). I guess they were really excited to start the chatting. Well, later that day they called when I was actually able to talk (I believe I was sitting on my toilet at the time) and after a quick exchange of Japanese we made plans to meet the following week.
Well, the following week came up yesterday, and at a little before six I stepped out my apartment to go meet my new friends Gonda and Yoshida. Ten minutes later I found myself in a smoky little cafe, the three of us arrayed around a cozy corner table like participants in some strange Omiai without so much as a whiff of a bride. Plenty of cigarette smoke, and I guess we did discuss girls at some point, but, well now that I think about it I'm not exactly sure how it was like an Omiai (which is the first step in an arranged marriage where the dude comes to check out the chick and see if she's worthy of him) I just liked the idea of the metaphor, and it did seem a little homoerotic at first. Two older men take a young man out for coffee so that they can chat and get to know him a little better. Sounds like ancient Greece except for a little classier. Can you imagine Achilles taking Patroclus out for a cup of... what the fuck, did they drink anything except mead and wine those days? to discuss his hobbies and educational history? I can't either.
But back to the topic at hand. It was supposed to be "English" conversation exchange, but it Japanese was most certainly the main meal. I think there was about a 3 minute garnish of English thrown in there for coloring, but mostly it was Japanese all the way. Which is perfect, as far as I'm concerned. It was awesome. Sweet dudes, sweet practice, sweet everything. They asked me most of the awkward questions I had always been told I would be asked but never had been (which are more beautiful, American or Japanese girls (a stupid question for many reasons, one that I was able to manage with the eminently diplomatic response "well, there are pretty girls all over the world, but of course my girlfriend is the prettiest" (sappy blog shout-out to girlfriend count: 1)) how much money do you make? how much do you pay in rent (not that awkward I guess)? how many centimeter is your penis). Just kidding about that last one, but they did ask me (well after we had been through whether I was a butt or a breast man) if there were any hot teachers at my school, to which I replied, "go fuck yourself." Luckily they didn't catch that and the conversation proceeded without much of a hitch.
Whoo, yikes, I realize I'm trying to make up for a month hiatus with one massive post, but bear with me even though most of the good shit has already passed. But yeah, we really hit it off which was great. It's pretty impressive that you can have an hour and a half conversation with total strangers in a foreign language and it's not awkward or strange at all. All the credit to Japanese people on that account. I was trying to imagine my dad and his boss or somebody taking a 22 year-old Japanese guy out for coffe and conversation, and try as I might I just couldn't see it happening. I'm certainly not giving my dad enough credit here, for even though he probably couldn't hold up the Japanese end of the conversation as well as these guys held up the English end of ours, he's a great guy and could easily flow through such a conversation. But the fact is, we just don't do that kind of stuff in America, which is one of the really cool things about Japan. They're willing to take in random foreigners off the street and invite them to play volleyball with them on Wednesdays (I'm doing that with Gonda next week), which is crazy! I've also been invited out to drink sake with them and eat food at their respective homes, so shit I guess they liked me. Or maybe they just thought I smelled good.
Today's topic is the adult english conversation phenomenon. All over Japan you can find different establishments whose sole reason for existence is to cater to old people who want to come in and speak a little English with a foreigner. They come in all shapes in sizes. You've got your standard, somewhat formal English schools for adults, which seem to be fairly reputable and worthwhile for the people who come in to polish up their conversations abilities. You've also got your more informal "conversation groups," which equate to a few old people, one English speaker, one hour, and a lot of inane/unintelligible babbling. I've never done one of these before, but apparently the old people just like to tell people they've spoken English with a foreigner, while any fly on the wall at one of their meetings would have to disagree, and say they've spoken at a foreigner in Japanese about their cats or perhaps the local weather patterns. There are also these things called English Conversation Cafes that employ a resident foreigner or two to come in and chat with patrons. A lot like hostess bars, except for that the company you provide comes in exotic (culturally and linguistically, not sexually, though there probably are English Conversation Hostess Bars) flavors. Last time I was here I was propositioned by a man in a black van to work a couple hours a week at just such an English Conversation Cafe, and even though I am a little leery of the potential link between the mafia and english conversation in this country, I regret to this day passing that up that opportunity.
Which is probably why I was so ready to accept a similar invitation this time around. Granted, it came through more official channels(straight from the local Coordinator of International Relations), but I still felt like this was fate offering me a second chance. I said yes. To be fair, I don't have much else to do (the most entertainment I get on a standard weekday evening is watching strange people lift weights in skimpy clothing at the gym (there's one guy who I'm convinced is the gay ancestor of the Norse warrior Sigmund (look him up, then imagine him doing calf-raises in booty shorts), but nonetheless I was excited about this.
It's officially termed an "English Conversation Exchange," this thing I'm doing, and it certainly falls on the unofficial side of things. After I agreed to participate, Bonnie (the coordinator for international relations) gave these two men looking for a chat my information, and from there it was up to us to determine the where when and how of our exchanging. I wasn't sure exactly when to expect a call from these guys, but promptly a few days later I received a call from an unknown number that I was pretty sure was from my new Japanese friends. Well, actually I received about 4 calls within about a 20 minute period (I was working at the time and couldn't really answer my phone). I guess they were really excited to start the chatting. Well, later that day they called when I was actually able to talk (I believe I was sitting on my toilet at the time) and after a quick exchange of Japanese we made plans to meet the following week.
Well, the following week came up yesterday, and at a little before six I stepped out my apartment to go meet my new friends Gonda and Yoshida. Ten minutes later I found myself in a smoky little cafe, the three of us arrayed around a cozy corner table like participants in some strange Omiai without so much as a whiff of a bride. Plenty of cigarette smoke, and I guess we did discuss girls at some point, but, well now that I think about it I'm not exactly sure how it was like an Omiai (which is the first step in an arranged marriage where the dude comes to check out the chick and see if she's worthy of him) I just liked the idea of the metaphor, and it did seem a little homoerotic at first. Two older men take a young man out for coffee so that they can chat and get to know him a little better. Sounds like ancient Greece except for a little classier. Can you imagine Achilles taking Patroclus out for a cup of... what the fuck, did they drink anything except mead and wine those days? to discuss his hobbies and educational history? I can't either.
But back to the topic at hand. It was supposed to be "English" conversation exchange, but it Japanese was most certainly the main meal. I think there was about a 3 minute garnish of English thrown in there for coloring, but mostly it was Japanese all the way. Which is perfect, as far as I'm concerned. It was awesome. Sweet dudes, sweet practice, sweet everything. They asked me most of the awkward questions I had always been told I would be asked but never had been (which are more beautiful, American or Japanese girls (a stupid question for many reasons, one that I was able to manage with the eminently diplomatic response "well, there are pretty girls all over the world, but of course my girlfriend is the prettiest" (sappy blog shout-out to girlfriend count: 1)) how much money do you make? how much do you pay in rent (not that awkward I guess)? how many centimeter is your penis). Just kidding about that last one, but they did ask me (well after we had been through whether I was a butt or a breast man) if there were any hot teachers at my school, to which I replied, "go fuck yourself." Luckily they didn't catch that and the conversation proceeded without much of a hitch.
Whoo, yikes, I realize I'm trying to make up for a month hiatus with one massive post, but bear with me even though most of the good shit has already passed. But yeah, we really hit it off which was great. It's pretty impressive that you can have an hour and a half conversation with total strangers in a foreign language and it's not awkward or strange at all. All the credit to Japanese people on that account. I was trying to imagine my dad and his boss or somebody taking a 22 year-old Japanese guy out for coffe and conversation, and try as I might I just couldn't see it happening. I'm certainly not giving my dad enough credit here, for even though he probably couldn't hold up the Japanese end of the conversation as well as these guys held up the English end of ours, he's a great guy and could easily flow through such a conversation. But the fact is, we just don't do that kind of stuff in America, which is one of the really cool things about Japan. They're willing to take in random foreigners off the street and invite them to play volleyball with them on Wednesdays (I'm doing that with Gonda next week), which is crazy! I've also been invited out to drink sake with them and eat food at their respective homes, so shit I guess they liked me. Or maybe they just thought I smelled good.
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