After you've lived in Japan for a while, things like NOT HAVING ANYTHING DECORATIVE DANGLING FROM YOUR CELL PHONE can make you feel really ON EDGE.

I'm pretty sure I befriended a yakuza (Japanese mafia) tonight at the bar.
How else would you explain a 21-year-old Japanese guy owning a shiny black Cadillac with tinted windows and having a $2500 full back tattoo?
He's a nice guy, though. His name is Masaru.

Three Tidbits from Christine's BizarroLife

A typical Sunday morning.
Christine wakes up in a world of hurt. One foot onto the floor, then the other.
Stops.

Remembers that there was a strange Australian man in her house the night before, and realizes that he might still be here. Hopes against all odds that he isn't. Being awake right now is hell, babysitting a near-stranger and going through the motions of awkward conversation at 9am in the midst of a hangover is worse.

Damn my drunken kindness. Damn coworkers who miss their trains.
Damn Sunday morning work.

After the daily ritual of mentally damning at least three things within the first five minutes of consciousness, she scampers in and out of the shower the way people do when they're afraid of being seen.
Sure enough, a knock on the bedroom door. A male voice.
"Christayne? Christayne?"
...Shit.
Not a good start to a day.

----------------------------------------------

My body is rejecting Japan.

It started with the legs, a few weeks ago. Every day, a searing itch that runs from the insides of the thigs, to the backs of the knees, down the sides of the calves.
This itch has defeated everything I've thrown at it, and frankly, I'm tired of buying expensive lotions.

Now, for the past eight days, the skin under my left eye has been red, swollen and scaly. Looking at me, one could assume one of three things:
1) I somehow offended my abusive trailer-trash boyfriend (but he loves me!)
2) I got in a bar fight (you should see the other guy!)
3) I've been doing meth (ever seen those before-and-after photos?)

Eight days of the tried-and-true Christine method of Ignore-It-Till-It-Goes-Away, and it's now spread to my eyebrow. So I'm starting to think that maybe, just maybe, this shit having shown up the day after I got slathered with professional (and communal) makeup, well that might not be a coincidence.
Oh, hooray.
Now excuse me while I furiously scratch my legs.

--------------------------------------------------

Today at work, I was giving a private lesson to a middle-aged businessman named Fumihiro, and we were discussing my impending fifteen-hour flight. He assured me that he is experienced in air travel to places like Amsterdam, and being that, is concerned that if I don't get up and walk around during the flight, I will get a blood clot in my brain and die.
The actual explanation was more like this, actually:
Fumihiro: "You need to training in airplane." *gestures stretching and moving his legs* "You sit for long time, your..." *points to the veins in his wrist*
Me: "Blood?"
Fumihiro: "Yes, blood it will..."
*gestures to indicate a small thing, then moves it up his arm into his head*
"...and dead."
Me: "Are you sure?"
Fumihiro: "Yes."

After hearing the prophecy of my own death from a man in a red-and-blue striped tie and bifocals, I went on to my next lesson, in which I discovered that one of the other English teachers had crossed out the vocabulary word "the devil" in the teachers' manual and replaced it with "the prince of darkness."

I couldn't possibly explain to Jiro why I burst out laughing in the middle of "Word Power."

Christine's 15 Minutes of Fame

When I heard that I would be modeling for some company posters, I expected some rinky-dink operation (*cough*GoGoEigo*cough*). Upon arrival at the studio with fellow "chosen ones" Adam and Dallas, this is what we found:

A crew of about fifteen serious artsy-looking people, snack and drink service, full makeup and wardrobe, and state-of-the-art equipment. I was dazzled.
But THEN...we were led to the table in the foreground and shown last years posters with the proposed changes, and told that our posters would be on the insides of trains. Lots of trains. Yamanote Line trains and Chou Line trains and Toyoko Line trains and Tokyo Metro trains and more trains and at this point I wasn't listening because I was shocked almost to tears.

Me (post-makeup) and Adam. The makeup girl managed to make foundation for me by taking regular foundation and dropping a big ol' blob of white into it. She did an amazing job, though. Among all the weird things done to my face, this was the first time I've ever had my eyelashes combed (the makeup girl had to stop and ask me if I was okay on account of my twitchiness). But hey, I bet Paris Hilton gets her eyelashes combed all the time. I am so famous.

Anyway, moving on...

If the wardrobe girl wasn't obscured by Random Useless Crew Guy #7, you could get the full effect of how tiny she is. I didn't find out her name, but I did find out that her boots cost $700 (a fact she quickly divulged to me after I complimented them).

That "wholesome American English teacher" look.

I'm adorable.

If you look to your left, you will see: forever frozen in time, a crew member taking a spill.

Dallas was a natural. Look at that motherfucker.

This is what happens when you take a flash photograph in a white room. On the left, Dallas with clipped jacket a la Bill Murray. On the right, crew members struggle to make Adam presentable by first hemming his raggedy cuffs for him, then making him take off his raggedy shoes and wear Dallas', then giving him a belt (Dallas') to hold up his saggedy pants.
If "saggedy" isn't a word, it should be.

Hour 4: We take off our jackets and do shoulders-up shots. They wanted "fun" and "happy face" pictures, and they wouldn't be pleased until they had close-up pictures of laughing faces. I drew my inspiration from the fact that there was a Japanese photographer in my face saying things like "ah! zat nice! it beautiful!" while frantically snapping and changing angles. Easy.

As I was being photographed, there were four or five people standing around this monitor, looking serious and making unintelligible comments in Japanese.



They blew through the last set of pictures pretty fast, and sent us on our way with a flurry of bowing. Not wanting to get caught up in the Traditional Japanese Bow-Off (usually awkward and always hilarious to watch), we kinda booked it out of there.

The posters should be up from January to April, which means that I have until January to stalker-proof the internet before my full name is riding around Tokyo for all to see.

Sweet.

Last night, the train was really crowded on my way home. Why? Oh, just because a middle-aged businessman in a suit was sprawled out on the floor unconscious.
No one tried to wake him up or move him, in fact no one said anything at all. On occasion, someone would give him a quizzical look before stepping over him, but for the most part, the public's attitude suggested that this is a run-of-the-mill occurrence. Well, I had to stick around after getting off at the last stop to watch him get woken up by train staff. Because, you know, plastered salarymen are oh-so-fun to watch (especially on long train-station staircases).

Speaking of salarymen, as I was exiting the same station, I noticed an older gentleman juggling his teeth. His full set of upper dentures seemed to have escaped his mouth, and he was struggling to stick them back in before anyone noticed. He also seemed to be drunk. After an awkward amount of time, he finally won the battle, got his teeth under control, reached into his pocket and lit up a cigarette.

Latest news:

I got a random-ass call today from headquarters, saying that they want my picture to be on posters for our company's next national ad campaign. Apparently they picked me out of all the female teachers in the region. Of course I agreed. So they're pulling me out of work on Sunday to do a photo shoot in Tokyo.

WTF.

Great Moments in English Teaching:

Noticing that Toyo had a bandage on his hand:
Me: "Hey, Toyo, what happened to your hand?"
Toyo: "I have an artificial arm from a traffic accident in college."
Me: "...Oh."
Why I never noticed this, and secondly why he had BANDAGES on a FAKE HAND is beyond me.

Takashi: "My granddaughter, she has mumps. Hahahahahaha."
Me: "Takashi, did anyone ever tell you that you have a tendency to laugh inappropriately?"
Takashi: "HAHAHAHAHA."
This came after weeks of Takashi laughing about his visiting his father's grave, his tennis elbow, natural disasters, etc.

Me: "Did you get along with your parents when you were little?"
Kazue: "My father used to hit me with a kendo sword."

I teach English to Japanese kids.
Hearing this, you might assume I stand in front of a classroom, facing neat rows of desks. At each desk sits an attentive Asian child holding a book, in awe of the American and eager to learn from her.

Nope.
It's a freakin' zoo. I sit on the floor of a small unfurnished room, yelling "sit down" to kids who aren't listening because they're too busy hitting each other.

The conclusion I've arrived at is that Japanese kids have issues. Not that I ever really spent any time with kids before I came here...

Here are some examples of what I deal with on Mondays and Tuesdays:

* Takumi was humping Kazuki from behind today, apparently out of happiness that I had paired them up together.

* Tatsuya makes at least one reference to "hip gas" every class, and more if he can find anything in the lesson that is vaguely reminiscent of things coming out of the asses of animals or people. Lately, it's progressed to Supaa Hippu Gas, and occasionally Ultra Hippu Gas.

* Tatsuya also likes to punch Akinobu in the crotch, which causes Akinobu to rub himself for the next five minutes while moaning "itaiiii" repeatedly.

* Hirokazu didn't have a name for his fish during the Pets lesson, so he named him Hirokazu 2 Fish.

* When I let the eight-year-olds play a lame little game of balloon volleyball, they literally screamed with excitement the whole time. I don't think they get out much.

* Ryoga's three favorite things to do: put his face two inches from mine and make a funny face, put his face two inches from mine and scream as loud as he can, and hit me with found objects.

* I taught the kids the word "hug" the other day. What happened next made me a little uncomfortable.

* Miku tags "okay baby!" onto the end of almost every English sentence. It's just what she does.

* Every time I say "What are these?" to the class, Hiroya echoes me with "Wasabiiiis!"

* I had to beg Aoi to stop wiggling her loose tooth. I'm not at the point yet where I can accept teeth jumping out of mouths when I'm the supervising adult.

* Takumi and Kazuki like to put balls in their shirts and strut around like women (well, their versions of women).

* One of my eight-year-olds has RANK feet, and I highly suspect that it's Akinobu. After class, I was able to communicate this to the staff in Japanese "Heya no naka ni ashi no niyoi ga aru no! Oide. Kusai, ne?" ("The room smells like feet. Come in here. Doesn't it reek?") So I opened the window, and the very next class someone threw a ball out of it (seven stories). That was the end of that.

* Kazuki's "ghost" costume looked strikingly like a Klan outfit.

* I sing the ABC song every week in the four-year-olds' class, dancing and having a great time with it, and every class they sing their hearts out with me...while standing perfectly straight and still and staring at the wall. It's kinda spooky.

* None of the kids in any age group are able to remember or say the word "Christine," so they all call me "Teeechaaa" (okay, it's kinda cute).

* And finally, there's the babies-and-moms class. Five kids, between 1.5 and 3 years old, who follow a set pattern of behavior. Hiromi detaches herself from her mom and dances and sings (well, yells stuff that kinda vaguely sounds like the song) right up in my face. Toshiki smiles at me and jumps up and down continuously. Mikoto looks dazed and uninterested, and wanders around the classroom touching everything. Kazuya either lies on the floor whining and kicking, or stares at me with contempt. And Maika just clings to her mom, barely old enough to do anything but shit herself.

I, of course, keep on dancing.

This is my life.

I accept a last-minute assignment from headquarters that sounds like the kind of thing that will inch me one step closer to fame. Something about Panasonic and software and recording my lovely female American voice. I didn't really need to hear any more.

[MEET MR. KADO AT SHINAGAWA SEASIDE STATION AT 10:30 AM. WEAR BUSINESS CLOTHES AND DON'T BE LATE]

It's 10:40, and Zach and I are standing in the station watching the babies go by. The strollers are out in force, but there's no Mr. Kado to be seen. Finally at around 10:45, a short young guy shows up who appears to have just rolled out of bed and fallen into a business suit.

So much for Japanese punctuality.

We spend the next fifteen minutes following a flustered and squirrely Mr. Kado (nicknamed "JohnJohn") through the Shinagawa business district as he turns his photocopied map around and around in his hands.

There are signs with area maps on every corner. JohnJohn needs to chill out.

...

We arrive in the cavernous lobby of the Panasonic building and are greeted by three receptionists in matching yellow plaid outfits.

I cannot for the life of me figure out how to attach my visitor tag to my suitjacket. Zach helps me just in time so that my awkwardness will not be spotted by the two salarymen who have just walked into the lobby.

Between Mr. Kado and the two strangers, a flurry of bowing and business cards. They take each others' cards with both hands and continue to hold them like treasured objects. The two men turn to me.

"Hi, I'm Christine. Nice to meet you." I take the business cards in both hands like Mr. Kado had done, then instinctually go for the handshake. But my hands are full, so I switch the cards to one hand and weakly shake with the other. And now they're bowing at me and "yoroshiku onegaishimasu" so am I supposed to bow back? Not wanting to offend, I give it a shot, but only manage to spasm above the shoulders.

I'm not the bowing type.

...

We're in the elevator. Total silence. I'm fighting the snort with every fiber of my being.
"Don'tlaughdon'tlaughdon'tlaughJesusChristdon'tyoudarelaughChristine."
From the looks of him, Zach seems to be going through the same mental process.

We make it to the seventh floor, go through a futuristic security door, and are led into a conference room at the end of the hall. On the table is a laptop and a headset. JohnJohn stands there like an idiot, staring into space, while the two men give us instructions in Japanese. We're going to go into separate rooms, each with a computer, and read sports terms into a microphone. Easy enough.

Occasionally in one's life, there are moments when one takes a step back and says to oneself, "What the hell is going on?"
I'm now sitting at a table next to a nerdy Japanese man in a suit, who is taking notes while I say "Red Card...Yellow Card...Push Pass...Indirect Free Kick..." The computer program is showing a video of Paris for some reason, and the second hand of the clock on the wall is wiggling but not going anywhere.

...

We're almost done. I have recited somewhere around 1,100 terms into the computer, most of which I've never heard in my life. In the meantime, our friend JohnJohn has vanished. Zach comes into the room, already finished, and I start to re-record a few words that hadn't come out right.
But I'm soon interrupted by the sudden onslaught of a bizarre song blasting out of every loudspeaker in the building at the stroke of 1:00.

"Oh, they always play that at 1:00. We sing the company song when we get back from lunch every day."

Zach and I just look at each other.

...

I try to make it out of the building without having to bow again. Doesn't work. The two men go through all the formalities all over again, and see us off by standing there in the lobby side-by-side, straight-backed and serious, bowing intermittently. Zach and I walk through the giant double glass door into the sunlight, and immediately lose it.

After we had walked and laughed for about fifty feet, Zach asks "Do you think they're still standing there?"
I turn around to look.

The salarymen are still standing there, in the same exact position. They see me looking at them, and simultaneously bow in response.

Oh, Japan.

So here we are.

I'm feeling better now. I gave myself a few pep talks, took some walks, got some sun, etc. I think one of the problems has been that my job is already getting monotonous. I've never had a real job like this, and it's been years since I've taken a class that lasted more than a few months. It's like I keep expecting change to happen, and I'm getting the opposite. The reality of settling into a routine as a college graduate is a little weird. But the truth is, I'm having a good time. Life is sweet. And I'm finally starting to get off my ass and get proactive about learning Japanese, which can be really rewarding. I realized today that I am now able to say things like: "Someone in this apartment is using too much toilet paper, and I'm going to get to the bottom of this." (Kono apaato no naka ni dare ka toire peepaa o tsukaisugite irun dakara, minuku tsumori.)

Anyway, here's a rant:
Tokyo is one of the most famously crowded cities in the world, but for some reason people do not know how to freakin' walk. It's really ridiculous. There are many types of people who interfere with my ability to get from one place to another. Usually it's your average run-of-the-mill situation where the street is a river of people, and a person or group of people will just arbitrarily stop and look around. Or the girls walking through Tokyo in three-inch stiletto heels, wobbling along at less than half my normal speed. What can be really obnoxious is that bicycles share sidewalk space with pedestrians, yet there's no system in place whatsoever. Say I'm walking on the right side of the sidewalk. A bike comes up behind me ringing its bell, so I switch to walking on the left side. *ring ring* Another bike. Oops, better move to the right side again. *ring ring* Sorry, let me get out of your way. *ring ring* WHAT THE FUCK.
Another WTF has to do with the retarded way that couples NEED TO BE TOUCHING EACH OTHER AT ALL TIMES. I'm in the center of the center of Tokyo at a major clothing store, and I cannot get through the doorway because each couple holding hands forms an impenitrable wall of PDA. Large groups of schoolkids are the same way, completely oblivious to the fact that there are other people trying to get by. Omiya has gigantic sidewalks by Japanese standards, and I still can't get around the armies of uniformed teens.
I also get annoyed when people are walking in the opposite direction at a crowded time, and, seemingly oblivious to my presence, will leave absolutely no space for me to get by. The arrows on the floor of the train station are there for a reason, assholes. So it becomes a war of sorts, wherein I tell myself I absolutely will not suffer the indignity of turning sideways and squeezing by people who refuse to do the same for me. So we bump into each other. And I assume that they spend the rest of the day after that thinking about their "encounter with the rude foreigner."

Alright, that's done.

Anyway, yeah. Teaching English is either really fun or really horrible. It all depends on the students. I cannot teach anyone social skills, nor can I come up with a hundred topics of conversation when you've answered ninety-nine questions with a short sentence and an expectant look at me.
I fail to understand why it is so difficult for people to figure out a reasonable flow of conversation in English, when they're perfectly fine conversationalists in Japanese. A typical example (this occurred today):
Me: "So, Hiroko, what are you going to do today?"
Hiroko: "I'm going to iron some clothes."
*awkward pause*
Me: "Satoshi, let's ask Hiroko another question. Remember: 'What else...'"
Satoshi: "How long are you going to iron?"

I also seem to get a lot of people wandering into English school in a state of near-coma, who plop down and proceed to engage me in a thrilling conversation that goes somewhat like this:
Me: "Nobusato, good to see you again. How are you today?"
Nobusato: "I am tired."
Me: "Tired? Why?"
Nobusato: "I work today."
Me: "What do you do?"
Nobusato: "I am office worker."
*awkward pause*
Me: "Well, what do you like to do in your free time?"
Nobusato: "I sleep."
*awkward pause*
Me: "Well, have you seen any movies recently? Done anything interesting?"
Nobusato: "Nothing special."

Having fifteen to twenty minutes of free-talk time built into each lesson plan, you can imagine how awesome this can be.

And sometimes it's just unpredictable. Like this one from a low-level lesson I taught today:
Me: "Okay, today we're going to learn about buying things in America, using dollars and cents. Has anyone been to America?"
Yoko: "No."
Miyuki: "No."
Yoshikazu: "I hate America."
Me: "Uhhhhh OKAY! Let's turn to page 34."

But I do get a good amount of fun people who are actually interested in learning and have something to say, and that can be great. It's pretty funny when people hang onto every word I say like it's gold. It's really made me aware of how much bullshit I spout in everyday conversation (a lot).

So between classes today, I was making small-talk in simple English by the desk of the sole staff member working at my school (nicknamed "Ellen," I have no idea what her Japanese name is). I told her I thought that my previous student Daisuke was cute and nice, and she looked up at me with an innocent smile and said, "You should attack!"
Stuff like this is becoming commonplace.

So here I am, drinking a Kirin Ichiban of questionable age that I found in the back of the fridge. I don't particularly want to write in my blog, but it's been a while and the guilt is building up. So here we go.

Today was a particularly difficult and homesick day. I started out early in the morning (10ish) by waking up into a state of half-consciousness to hear a male voice speaking formal Japanese IN MY HOUSE. I stayed awake just long enough to think to myself "It is surely the cops, and they are surely coming to get me," and immediately fell back asleep. I would be told later that a random guy came and stood in our doorway, asked Melissa a whole bunch of unintelligible questions, then proceeded to drop to his knees and pray and sing at her in Japanese. Oh, Japan.
After I woke up for real (12:30ish), I proceeded to spend the better part of my pre-work period moping around the apartment feeling sorry for myself that a) omg college is over, and b) I no longer have access to a Putnam Street sandwich on wheat bread.
I then threw on some dress clothes (dirty) and dragged myself to work, where my seven classes in a row were mostly awkward and I wanted nothing more than to leave. Finally, 9:30 came and I had to run to catch my train back home, because the Saikyo line only runs every twenty minutes. Back in Omiya, I looked around for ages for something to eat other than Japanese Crap (difficult to do at 10pm), and had to settle on a pack of passable mini-pizzas from the 24-hour grocery store. And the grocery store was OUT OF BREAD. How does that happen?!
So here I am now, post-mini-pizza-but-still-hungry, drinking this skanky ass old beer because my soda is still warm, with a persistent nagging feeling that I'm not doing such a good job at this whole "growing up" thing.

In short, my shiny new Japan life is not always fun. Most days, I really don't do anything but wake up, go to work, come home, and sit on the computer until I go to bed.

But I've got big plans for this weekend. Tomorrow, I'm visiting TUJ and seeing Joe for the first time in a year and a half. Friday, I'm going to a concert in Shibuya. And Saturday, Adam's coming in from Toyama to spend the night.

Nevermind that I have to work Saturday and Sunday morning. That's gonna be a laugh riot.

I'll keep you posted...maybe.

Oh, and here's a new Christine Scavenger Hunt for you: see if you can find me here and here.

Tokyo Game Show 2006

Check out some new video games, get some free stuff, and make fun of some nerds. Totally worth a three-hour round trip train ride.



The inside was, predictably, a sweaty, noisy, packed mass of nerds carrying around giant bags of freebies. Not the type to stand in line for half an hour to play a video game for ten minutes, I was content with just walking around and peeking over people's shoulders.













I can't decide whether or not "look cute and hang around some electronics" is a desirable job description:






And my favorite part, the costumes. All geeks bow down before the costumed geek:












I was all ready to screw around in this picture, but these girls threw me a curveball by handing me this little plush thing at the last second. Dammit.

"That's a dude!"



Later, dorks.

Some news:

Last Thursday, I traveled two hours to middle-of-nowhere Kanagawa to film some more TV stuff. I got there expecting the whole Mojya squad to be there, but to my surprise I ended up being the only foreigner. The people present were me, an eight-person crew, and a clown named Joe (a name I gave him because he had suggested "Catherine" and I didn't think that was appropriate). I started out by doing my makeup all pretty, and then was handed the familiar bright green afro wig and oversized green shirt. Dammit.

So Thursday's work was to film fifteen short segments called Let's Exercise. Here's how it goes:

1. The opening sequence. Joe is doing some clown trick, and I'm watching, mesmerized. The camera zooms up and we turn back to back, do finger-guns, and I exclaim, "LET'S EXERCISE!" These were filmed in front of a live audience of about 200 kindergarteners.
2. Joe is in a small room, doing a clown trick. I walk in, singing to myself. I stop, look at Joe, and give a command ("Sit down!"). He looks at me, confused. I repeat it. He sits down. I give another command ("Stand up!") and he follows. I repeat a few times, and say "Great!" with two thumbs up. Then I run up to the camera, get right up in it, and introduce us: "Hi! I'm Mojya Green, and this is Joe the Clown!"
3. I'm standing with my arm around Joe, in a close shot. I say, "Let's Do It!" look at Joe, and Joe makes a funny face.
4. We're standing in the same room. I give a command to Joe, then look at the camera like I want it to join in. I give the other command, and look back at the camera. I do this a couple times, do it once just looking at the camera, then say "Great!" to the camera with two thumbs up.
5. Starts out the same way, except this time, I give the commands one after another, faster and faster until Joe falls down or crashes into something. Unfazed, I run up to the camera, get right up in it again, and say "ByeBye!!!!!!" while waving vigorously.

That's all there is to it. We filmed a whole bunch of these, and threw in something stupid here and there (like I say "ByeBye!" and blow into my open hand so Joe is blown away in the background). It took all day, but it was a good time. The crew seemed to be happy that I could speak enough Japanese that it wasn't awkward. We did most of the shots in one take. The guys on the crew were loving every minute, laughing and telling me that it was perfect. But I could have sworn that the producer/translator woman was giving me looks once in a while that read as something like "I can't believe you're willingly doing this."

I'm still waiting on the still photos that one of the crew members took, so I can post them. He said he would email them to me. I've gotta track his ass down.

Anyway, "Let's Exercise!" is due to start in October, and it will be on BS Fuji twice a day, every weekday. Crazy.

My feelings on this are hovering somewhere between "holy crap I'm awesome," and "someday these will fall into the wrong hands and boy will I be sorry."

Tonight, me and my roommate Melissa were coming out of Omiya Station when we heard a guy yelling. Public commotion is very weird in Japan, so we looked to see where it was coming from. The source was a guy who looked to be in his twenties, standing by the police station and yelling at a crowd of six or seven policemen while his friend held him back and tried to get him to shut up. The policemen just stood there and took the abuse, which unfortunately I couldn't understand a word of because it was really brusque slangy masculine Japanese.
So we found a good spot by the taxi stand and watched the scene play out.
Eventually, the guy broke free of his friend, ran up to the policemen, and started yelling in their faces. He was obviously drunk.
In America, this guy would have been cuffed and thrown in the drunk tank. But the Japanese policemen did nothing but gently try to move him along in the direction of the station. They seemed completely unfazed.
I don't know what ended up happening after Drunk Angry Guy and the crowd of police moved out of our view. But the whole thing was just astounding to me.

Here's a sampling of the adults I teach English to:


Takayuki - Has a lisp, wears pink polo shirts, and talks about musical theater. I have an 80-minute private lesson with him first thing every Saturday morning.

Sachiko - An overly genki girl. Laughs more than anyone should laugh.

Kazuyo - Sachiko's sidekick.

Manabu - Always hangs around after class and teaches me a little Japanese, which I appreciate. Only has one hand, though, which is awkward when the lesson instructions are "cover the English words with your fingers."

Toshi - Always wears loud clothing, and has the look of someone who used to party too hard when he was younger. I always look forward to lessons with him, because I can loosen up and give him a little shit.

Kazuhiko - Something's weird about him. It might be that I have never seen him not fanning himself with a little wooden fan.

Minako - A new student who I initially level-tested. Burst into tears of happiness when she found out that she wasn't the very lowest level.

Harry - A dentist whose real name is Yoshihiko. Speaks English shockingly well. Has managed to eradicate his Japanese accent and replace it with something that sounds vaguely Latino.

Masako - Can see and hear spirits. Stays away from graveyards and the movie Poltergeist.

Takashi - Cool old dude who likes bonsai trees, hates the government, and used to make his living testing pharmaceuticals on animals. During a grammar lesson, one of his example sentences was "My wife is always talking, and I often tell her to stop."

Satomi - A university student. Very fashionable. Deer in headlights expression.

Yoshiyasu - Can barely speak a word of English besides "muscle training." The man likes his exercise.

Toyo - My first impression of this guy was "Dear Lord, he is surely a vampire." Sure enough, his two favorite kinds of movies are "violence movies" and "vampire movies."

Naoko and Tsuneko - Two housewives who are refreshingly quirky and animated. A good contrast to all the tired businessmen.

Yoko - A high-school student. When asked what kind of pet she wants, replied "I want a little pony."

Asao - An old guy with white hair on his head and mesmerizingly long black hair on his fingers.

Daisuke - A hottie.

Satoshi - Will grill you for twenty minutes about your drinking habits, then explain that he has to drink a lot because he "is fat man." Has a tendency to steer the conversation toward the topic of Japanese baths and whether or not I am comfortable with nudity.

Hajime - Seriously messed-up teeth.

Monroe - Real name is Fujio. The only student in an 80-minute advanced class I have taken over for. I suspect the other five or so students dropped out because Monroe tends to dominate conversations to the point that you simply cannot get anything done. Makes things easy for me.

Shinichi - This guy's a piece of work. When asked a simple question, will repeat the question to himself, then alternate between repeating the first word of his answer and sucking his teeth.
Example:
Me: "Shinichi, do YOU think Japanese is more difficult than English?"
Shinichi: "Do you think...Japanese...more difficult...*teeth sucking*...So...*teeth*...So...*teeth*...English...*teeth*...pause...
So...pause...*teeth*...English is..."
(this continues until I answer for him and turn my attention to the better students)
When he does talk, it usually has something to do with "working in the factory."

So in conclusion, my students run the gamut between really cool people I can have a good chat with, and flustered, teeth-sucking businessmen who put me to sleep.

In addition to the ubiquitous teeth-sucking habit displayed by older Japanese men, I've also noticed that a staggering number of the females have a tendency to grunt like guinea pigs when they're confused or make a mistake.

These kinds of things keep me amused.

Who are the people in your neighborhood?

Well, here are some of the people in MY neighborhood:

First, there's Old Transvestite Homeless Guy, who lives on a couple of benches on the pedestrian walkway near my apartment. I was under the assumption that he never wears a shirt, but my roommate has just informed me that he'll bust out a camisole and a pair of fakies on occasion.
Old Homeless Woman usually just hangs out by the station on a pile of cardboard boxes and talks to herself.
Often when I'm walking home at night, I'll pass by that super-bony woman who's always jogging. It's probably insensitive of me to call her Skeletor.
And then there's that whole crew who works at the conveyor-belt sushi place. The male chefs will yell "Irrashaimase!" at you in a sing-song voice, and the female waitresses never wear any expression other than "sullen." The oldest waitress annoys the hell out of me, because not only does always she thank me more times than is comfortable, but she also says it in a strange way. It's really nasal, and it's always "arigatou gozaimaSUUUUU." Ugh.
Of course there's Takuya from Bee Darts Bar, but I don't go there anymore after I realized how insanely expensive it is.
My new favorite bar is called Drunky, and it's right next to the ECC school here in Omiya. It's a tiny hole-in-the-wall that blasts reggae music out into the street. Kenichi and Hide, the two bartenders who work there, are trying to help me learn how to talk like a normal person and not a textbook. They're my buddies.
Homma is a 40-something guy who's always hanging out at Drunky, and is always, well, drunky. Last time he was there, he declared himself my japanese dad. I also met a girl named Reona who was thrilled to talk to me right up until she passed out on the bar.
One of my favorite local people is Ramen Man. Every night, without fail, you can find him at the local ramen shop, making noodles for all the drunk businessmen (and sometimes me). He's a happy dude, and it's fun to watch him throw all the ingredients together with the flair of someone who has dedicated his life to ramen.
I never really see my neighbors in this building. The one time I saw them, they happened to walk by me as I was outside having a heated conversation on the phone. They looked scared and confused (as is the normal Japanese response to someone like me) and I haven't seen them since.

Oh Omiya.

Anyway, here's a picture of something funny because I KNOW YOU WANT IT:

Yup.

Green-san* and Dance Man

Oh, low-budget Japanese television. How can I even start to explain this...

Well, I guess it all started during training for my teaching job. My company, ECC, has a contract with a satellite channel called BS Fuji. When BS Fuji is in need of some whiteys for its English-language educational segments, it calls ECC. When we watched some of these in training, as terribly goofy and embarrassing as they were, I was thrilled. Japanese TV! I told the people at headquarters that I would love to do it. This confused the hell out of them (why would anyone willingly humiliate themselves like that?), but they told me they'd let me know if they heard about anything.

About six weeks later, there I was, waking up at 5:30 in the morning for a twelve-hour shoot of a show called Mojya². There were six scenes in all, teaching the words Airplane, Eat, Cap, Monkey, Peel, and Cut. I would be Green-san, one of Dance Man's four perpetually dancing henchmen.

All day, we wore earpieces that looped the same sixteen bars of "Boogie-something-or-other," so that our dancing would be in sync. We danced in terrible heat, first in a playground, then in various rooms of a hot, stuffy house. We were tired. We had woken up early. We sweated. The Japanese director and his crew didn't manage time well, so we found ourselves half-assing our way through the last few scenes, often using only one take. I'm hoping the shot of me trying (and failing) to pull a ski cap over my green wig gets lost on the cutting room floor.

Despite being an awful day overall, I'm glad I did it. Hell, I'd probably do it again. I'm sure I'll look terrible on this show, all tired and sweaty and saying things like "Let's PEEL the POTATO!" with a deranged smile, but you know what?

I'm on TV, bitches.

Highlight of the day: We're inside the house, and Dance Man is wearing plastic shower caps over his giant platform shoes because of Japanese cleanliness standards. So he's dancing on the staircase, right up close to the camera, with us in the background near the bottom of the stairs. We're doing "Cap! Cap! Cap!" turning left and right while miming the brim of a baseball cap. Without warning, CRASH! Dance Man has taken a major spill and is now sprawled out at the bottom of the stairs under a large potted plant. Of course we all stop dancing and start laughing, but within seconds Dance Man is back up and at the top of the stairs, dancing like nothing has happened. The cameramen haven't stopped filming. The four of us look at each other in confusion, shrug, and resume our "Cap! Cap! Cap!" routine, stifling laughter for ten more seconds until the director gives us a "cut." He approves of the take, and we move onto the next scene. I guess he decided he had enough to work with in editing and didn't have to do it again. I really hope I can see that footage sometime.

Here's the website for the show. I'm not on there yet, but you get the idea. I guess the old Green-san didn't want to do it anymore. Can't imagine why...

*I look like hell in this picture because a) I am wearing a green afro wig (obviously), and b) well, why don't YOU try looking good after dancing, making stupid faces, and sweating for twelve hours.

Hey kids! Guess what time it is!
IT'S PICTURE CATCH-UP TIME!

Yeah...I haven't uploaded pictures in weeks. So here are the highlights from what I unearthed tonight:

My roommate Jen and I in Shinjuku.

This guy is on advertisements all over the city. I'd party with him.

Outside Shinjuku Station at 6am. You know when you've stayed up all night and you're on your way home, and it's sunny and you're tired and hung over and you want to die? Yeah, that.

A sign at a train platform in Shinjuku.

Fumi's birthday. Guess which one is Fumi.

What a nice, scenic place to drink cheap beer next to some homeless guys.

Nate, Adam, and I at the izakaya with Random Japanese Guy #1. Note the dangerous organ meats in the foreground.

In Japan, monkeys host talk shows and drive cars. Sometimes at the same time.

For those of you who were curious, here's the living room of my apartment. Meet Stumpy The Couch, and his friends Stumpy-Ass Table And Chairs.

Another view. It's not really on a slant, I don't know what happened there.

That's all for tonight. I'm a little braindead because I woke up at 5:30 this morning to spend twelve hours dancing in a green afro wig. But I'm saving that story for later.

Goodnight.

I don't feel all that bad for not posting this past week. It was the second week of my big two-week summer vacation, and having spent the first week going to festivals and the like, I made the educated decision to spend the second week partying like a rockstar.
Needless to say, I soon found myself in a black hole of terrible sleeping habits from which it has been impossible to return.

Of the memory soup left over from last week, these are the tidbits of life that float to the surface:
Chilling on Tom's Tokyo balcony and looking out over all the roofs.
Dancing and chanting with a crowd of Japanese strangers in the techno room of Club Vanilla.
Drinking at an izakaya (look it up) with Adam, his friend Nate, and two random 40-year-old Japanese guys we picked up on the street.
Watching a middle-aged, Scottish coworker of mine stage a drunken revolution against Japanese waitstaff.
Lots and lots of early morning trains home.

That's really about it.

When I was out drinking with aforementioned 40-year-old sketchy dudes, I asked them to order us food, and the waitress came back with some meat on sticks. But this is Japan, and if there's one thing the Japanese love to do, it's to pull the Gross Card on some unsuspecting foreigners. That said, the four meats presented to us were:
Chicken Skin
Heart
Liver
Chicken Hamburg (whatever that is)
But I was hungry, goddamnit, and if you ignored the textures it wasn't all THAT bad. So I ate like 3/4 of all the food on the table, organ meats included. And then I got really sick for about a day. And then I swore never to eat organ meats again.
The End.

Anyway, my first day back at work started out pretty awful. My very first class was a "Mini Kids" lesson, meaning "dance and sing at some babies and their moms." I wouldn't have had a problem doing that, except today only ONE baby/mom duo showed up. I had to spend half an hour desperately dancing and singing at one kid, who made it quite obvious that she wanted nothing to do with me. To top it all off, I didn't know the words to any of the songs, and was sweating profusely the whole time.

Awful.

But it got better. Fast-forward two hours, and I now have two 5-year-old boys fanning me with their books, one giving me a shoulder massage, and the fourth blowing on my face for lack of things to fan me with. That class was pretty cool. We mostly just ran around yelling about cookies, ice cream, sandwiches, etc (for some reason, the vocabulary word "pancakes" was the only one they could never remember). At one point, they discovered the stuffed velcro monkeys in the corner of the room and decided to attach them all to my arms, screaming with delight as I lumbered around like some big monkey-monster.

Question: How can you get a small Japanese child to stop systematically lining up his crayons and organizing his belongings, and have him move onto the next activity?
Answer: You cannot.

As for today's adult classes, they were the most boring people imaginable, across the board, and I was very glad when the forced-conversation portion of my day was over.

Now for the lying-on-the-couch portion of the day.

It's hot in here, where are Hitoki, Tatsuya, Satoshi, and Kousuke when I need them?
GOD, JAPANESE CHILDREN ARE CUTE.

I'm watching Matthew's Best Hit TV (now called Matthew's Best Hit UV for some reason) and feeling VERY indignant. For the last five years, this guy has had his own TV show, which, like most other Japanese programming, is just him hanging out with guests, making exaggerated Japanese faces, and playing with stuff. So why can't I screw around in front of a camera for half an hour and call it a TV show?

I DESERVE MY OWN TELEVISION SHOW. I AM WAY MORE FUNNY AND INTERESTING TO WATCH THAN THESE JERKS.

If someone reading this could hook that up, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.


ANNNNNNYway.

The highlight of my week wasn't any of the festivals, any time I befriended a random Japanese girl/old man/masked festival monster/crazy dog lady, any time I witnessed a Japanese person passed out in or near vomit (twice), or even that time I ate my weight in shrimp-flavored snack foods and spent the next three hours with an apocalyptic stomachache.

It was this guy:

Just a guy, with a watermelon for a head, hanging out by the side of the road. Seeing as he wasn't selling anything or handing anything out, I figure he was either on break, or he was a pervert. The crotch sombrero would seem to point to the latter. Either way, I ran over to him and had Adam take a picture.


Honorable Mentions for Japan Double-Take Of The Week

Japan's newest and most heavily-advertised brand of canned coffee.

Check out the name of the restaurant on the third floor.

Neckface Strikes Again

This costume kit is called "Hello Gaijin-san!" ('gaijin' being the derogatory term for a foreigner). It comes with a big white nose and blue eyes. I've nothing more to say about this.


I also need to add that I've been to Tokyu Hands' toy department four or five times since I got here, and each time I've been transfixed by this:


But forget Melon Man, the hypnotic Disney army, and racist party accessories.

Because on Wednesday, Adam and I did what we needed to do.

We went back to Jiyugaoka, where we had lived as study-abroad students last year (see: Japan Part I). We checked out our familiar train station, our favorite izakaya, the 100-yen store, and finally walked the old route back to the place we've been pining for since last April:



One personal demon down. 27 to go.

Festival Number...Something: Asagaya Tanabata Matsuri

Pretty much just a long crowded street decorated like a kid's birthday party, if a kid's birthday party was populated with grown men screaming at you to buy tentacled snacks. C-, Asagaya. C-



Ten points to anyone who can figure out who Transgender Nosehair Soccer Player is supposed to be.

You haven't known fear until you've had an Enormous Paper-Maché Baby staring down at you from above.

I figured eating a whole squid on a stick would give me some Japan Cred. It gave me a squid juice stain on my pants.