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.

Festival #2 - Hachioji Matsuri









Crazy Dog Lady

Her dog's custom-made festival accessories





I love things that end in "...of the future."