jyaa ne

I'm Bobby O'Neill, and I'm from Boston. Well, Andover, really, but no one knows where that is. Right now though, I'm not in Boston. I'm in Machida. You wouldn't know it from the inquiries though.

Recently, with the news of Daisuke Matsuzaka joining the Red Sox, something very interesting and exciting has been happening: everyone is asking me about home. “Bobby! Bobby-san! Bosuton! You are from Bosuton, ne? Did you hear about Matsuzaka Daisuke?”. This question has been posed to me about fifteen times in the last two days.

The Japanese love baseball. In their language, it was called “beisuboru”, a katakana-ized version of the English word “baseball”. That is, until World War II. In an interesting parallel to our own recent history, “Freedom Fries” and all, the Japanese became hypernationalistic at the outset of the war and purged most English terms from their language. “Beisuboru” was one victim; it was replaced with the far more classically-influenced “yakyu”, which means “field ball”, essentially. So baseball, or yakyu, games in Japan are watched with the kind of passion only the Japanese could muster. As soon as it was announced that Matsuzaka would become the most recent “major leaguer” (a term which, incidentally, they reserve exclusively to describe Japanese players who have graduated to playing in the US – nation-wide inferiority complex ahoy!), 90% of Japan had to quickly familiarize themselves with what in the world Boston was and why Matsuzaka was on his way.

Needless to say I, resident Boston representative that I am, became the focal point of much attention. I quickly became a full time Bostonian raconteur, telling in broken Japanese/English stories of the Boston tea party, the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry (to which incidentally there is a bizarrely similar Japanese parallel between the Tokyo-based Yomiuri Giants and Osaka’s Hanshin Tigers), and all sorts of other varied information about our favorite City Upon a Hill.

All this has served to conflict me greatly. I’m returning home soon; this will be my last entry. All this talk of Boston has caused me to be incredibly homesick (which, now, with the proximity of my return so close, I’ve allowed myself to be), but also incredibly pre-non-homesick for how I’ll feel about this place once I’m back in the freezing tundra of Massachusetts, seven thousand miles away from these incredible experiences and relationships that I’ve forged during my time here. I love each and every one of these people, including those who I cannot stand for the life of me. I’ll miss the karaoke, the trains, the ridiculousness of At-Market, and the incredibly warmth which which I’ve been treated. I’ll miss the food. I’ll miss the air. I’ll miss everything. But at the same time I’m going to be thrilled to have my parents closer than just a Skype call away. I’ll be happy to be in the same time zone, let alone hemisphere as all my best friends. I want a damn steak.

It’ll be wonderful at home, just as it’s been wonderful here. But in a different way. In a more familiar, challenging way. And that’s okay. I’m glad that I have this to compare home to. It makes me appreciate it more. But I’m also glad that I’ve had home to compare here too. It exoticises Japan and makes it so tantalizing, and so wonderfully bizarre and strange.

So, goodbye Japan. For now.

Jyaa, ne.

bread and sunshine

I believe I wrote about this earlier, but with finals coming up, I wish to reiterate how ridiculous Japanese can actually be sometimes.

The language issue isn't as bad as I feared, but I still run into problems here and there. Japanese is much easier to speak than read, since the language uses three alphabets. The first is called hiragana, which is a collection of about 30 characters or so used to phonetically spell words native to Japanese (like teriyaki or konnichiwa). The second, also about 30 characters, is called katakana, which is used to phonetically spell words from foreign languages (the japanese word for hamburger is "hambaagaa", for example). Both of these I know in full and so I have no problem dealing with them. The third writing system, called Kanji, is far more difficult; essentially the Japanese use Chinese characters as kind of shorthand for words: instead of phonetically writing out "ku-ru-ma" (car), which would use 3 simple Japanese characters, they use 1 chinese character. The worst thing is, by looking at them there is literally no way of sounding it out or guessing what it means; you just have to know "oh this character means car and this means person" and so on and so on. Everything in Japanese is written in a mishmash of these three alphabets, so you really have to work to read things written down. Speaking is far far easier, provided you actually know the words you need to know.

Funny story: when my parents and sister were here, my mom was going to McDonalds to get a hamburger for my dad. She asked how to order it with nothing on it, and i told her it's "pan to niku dake", which means "just bread and meat". She then apparently didn't remember exactly what it was and ordered "pan to nikko (instead of niku) dake", which means "just bread and sunshine". The woman at the counter looked at her like she was a crazy person and I guess figured out that she meant meat and not sunshine.

So I've been here almost 2 months and I can't believe how fast it's gone. I have about a month and change left; I come back on the 23rd of December. It's going to be very very different coming back, especially since it's routinely in the 70's here and I expect the plane to land in about 4 feet of snow when we get back to Boston. Oh well.

conflicts of history

In the last five years or so of my life, I’ve been to a few different countries around the world. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel, and among the places I’ve been, in addition to Japan, are Italy and Germany. While in all of these countries, I’ve marveled over and over about the fact that once, in a time that now seems centuries ago, these were The Enemy.

I think about this constantly; how my grandfathers, who both fought in World War Two, would feel about me not just living here but loving the place. If they would come visit. If they would show respect to the place. These questions are unanswerable, but it never stops me from pondering them. To think that the current emperor, Emperor Akihito, is the son of Emperor Hirohito, the man who ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor. Imagine if Fritz Hitler or some equivalent was President of Germany currently, or if Giuseppe Mussolini was in charge of Italy. Those would be inconceivable. But somehow, in this contradiction of a country, Akihito is the man in charge. I don’t take issue with this; the continuation of the Imperial Family was deemed necessary by MacArthur and it likely prevented a great amount of deaths and helped facilitate the transition to post-war Japan. I just find it interesting.

Recently, I was reading Flags of Our Fathers, a book about the American flagraisers on Iwo Jima, on the train into Shinjuku. The front cover of the book depicts the famous picture of the struggling Marines raising up the stars and stripes in a triumphant display of victory atop Mt. Suribachi on the sulfur island. As I was reading the book, I noticed an older gentleman sitting across from me. He looked to be in at least his 80s, and was sitting silently, reading the newspaper. I don’t think he noticed me (although, being the only foreigner on the train, I’m sure he did), nor do I think he noticed my book. Still, the concept that this man could conceivably have fought on Iwo Jima made my head spin. It was like seeing a time traveler, and not wanting to insult the man or call attention to his country’s loss, I stopped reading and put the book away. I’ve said before, this country never ceases to amaze and confuse me, but that’s not the whole story. It forces me to look at things a different way, and honestly I appreciate it.

jas & suzy

Back in the US, there’s much talk in many different environments (in school, work, as well as the nation at large) about diversity. Diversity, we are told, is integral in order to make our lives rewarding and purposeful; only by being exposed to worldviews and opinions different to ours can we truly become self-actualized and vibrant individuals.

Well, let me tell you – diversity in the US ain’t got nothing on the diversity happening here. I’ve spoken of it before but it is consistently amazing to me that I have neighbors from 4 different continents, and from an absolutely absurd amount of countries. My friend and neighbor Suzy is a prime example of this. From Cairo, Egypt, she is a practicing – I daresay devout – Muslim. She wears her hijab – her traditional headscarf – every day, unless she is inside her own room. Furthermore, she abstains entirely from alcohol and can only eat halal meat, which not surprisingly is exceedingly hard to come by in this country.

Another neighbor and friend of mine is Jasvandi. Jas, as we call her, is from Pune, India. She speaks 4 languages – English, Japanese, Hindi, and her regional Indian language – fluently. I am astonished by this, and deeply envious. I barely process English correctly, and here’s this girl running linguistic circles around me four times over. Most fascinating of all of this is the fact that Jas and Suzy communicate best with one another in Japanese; an Egyptian girl and an Indian girl both communicating in a language native to neither of them. There's something deeply poetic about this, and endlessly fascinating.

My point is, it is entirely due to my coming to Japan that I experienced these people and their incredible relationship to one another. Through speaking and interacting with both of them, I have come to understand a bit better this massive world we live in and be exposed further to its intricacies. That's diversity

sakuranbo

Sakuranbo is by far the finest place in the entire nation of Japan. What is Sakuranbo? Run by an incredibly terrifying, authoritative old woman, Sakuranbo, which, for reasons unbeknownst to anyone but her, means “canned cherries”, is an absolutely delicious restaurant across the street from Obirin.

We first heard whispered rumors about this place back in late September, from those of us who had been here since last semester. “Look for the pink house that isn’t really a house”, we heard, as if this was some sort of scavenger hunt-meets-Amazing Race quest. After much searching, we found it however and were thrilled to discover all the excellent treasures within. This place is perhaps the single most delicious restaurant I’ve ever been to. Central to Sakuranbo is katsu, a simple but deceptively fantastic meal of fried breaded pork, served with rice, miso soup, and vegetables. Katsu is typically served with katsu sauce, which is like a wonderful hybrid of soy and barbecue sauce. I love it. It’s absolutely horrendous for you but katsu is just so wonderful that we go there at least once a week. Furthermore, the food there is absurdly cheap – 525 yen for a giant plate of food; probably the single best price to portion ratio I’ve seen in this country. The best permutation of katsu, however, is curry katsu. Served on a gigantic bed of rice and topped with pickled plums, curry katsu is an enormous pork cutlet covered in curry sauce, a less-spicy Japanese twist on the classic Indian food.

The only downside to Sakuranbo is the fearsome Sakuranbo Lady. The restaurant appears to be run out of a room in her house, and when one eats there you fittingly feel as if you’re somehow impeding on her daily business. Your food comes to you through a hole in the wall connected to a kitchen, from which the Sakuranbo Lady is never to emerge. She shouts all sorts of unspeakable things at you, speaks not a word of English, and is not impressed, amused, or swayed by anything anyone could do or say. Her katsu, however? Fantastic.

kobinifest 2006 pt II

Continuing with the food theme, there are heated options available at the register, including hot dogs, chicken drumsticks, oddly simmering bread items that are submerged in some sort of broth that frightens me, and everyone’s favorite, corn dogs. Depressingly, these are called “American dogs”.

Aside from food, there are innumerable toys, magazines, trinkets, baubles and doo-dads for sale, none of which anyone would ever in a million years need but which I continuously find myself compelled to purchase. So it is that I own an entirely useless but thoroughly entertaining action figure of Kirby, a Nintendo character, wearing what I can only guess is a Navajo chief’s headdress. I don’t know either.

Interestingly, these stores are entirely devoid of Aspirin, Aleve, Tylenol, or anything that may similarly be desired at a 7-11 or equivalent back home. The Japanese have a fairly rigid set of restrictions on drugs, tame and strong alike, and as such things like these are hard if not impossible to get a hold of, even sometimes with a prescription. There are all sorts of snake oil type cures and elixirs, each and every one of which is guaranteed to do virtually nothing for you.

Anyway, this has become almost as complicated and dense as the konbinis themselves, but I will leave you with one parting remark that hopefully encapsulates why I so dearly love these places. Recently, I had a strong hankering for some ice cream. I trudged diligently up the road to the nearest Mini Stop, and ordered a cone of the ‘beruji choco’ (Belgian chocolate) soft-serve that they had been so persistently advertising recently. The clerk hurriedly dashed off to the back room to perfectly dispense the soft-serve onto a delightfully scalloped waffle cone, and then came back and proudly presented me with a bag. I regarded both the clerk and her offer quizzically, as where I come from (“’Merrica”), we aren’t often served an ice cream cone in a bag. I peered into the thing and saw that not only was my cone in fact in there, but that it had been carefully placed into an equally carefully designed cardboard ice cream cone holding device. It didn’t end there though: I inspected the package a bit closer and discovered to my surprise and delight that there were in fact TWO cones: the traditional, “foundation” cone upon and into which the soft-serve had been dispensed, and a novel, exciting “adorable hat” cone which had been placed on top of the vertical point of the soft serve so as to protect and preserve the conical shape of the ice cream itself. As my head spun, I reflected to myself how insanely ridiculous and yet simultaneously fantastic this was. I love this place

kobinifest 2006

The Japanese are a materialistic people. Furiously so. To be sure, we Americans are as well, but at the same time we somehow cringe from our materialism, denying it while at the same time giving into it. Self-hating materialists, I suppose. The Japanese, however, revel in it, and I love it. This isn’t to say they are solely materialistic, not by any means. But they love their stuff, and they love loving it, and there’s something to respect in that.

Case in point: konbini. “Konbini” is the shortened form of “convenience stores”, and if there’s one thing that Japan has in droves, it’s these places. Within a mile from my house, there are the following: two Mini-Stops, (my go-to konbinis), two Sunkus-es, each about 300 yards from each other, a 7-11, a Family Mart or two, a Circle K, and my favorite and the most authentically Japanese in my opinion, a Lawson. Lawson is an enigma whose secrets I hope are never revealed to me for it would spoil the fun. Decked out in a classy blue and white motif, all Lawsons look like they were built in 1969. Their logo is, for whatever, reason, a milk can, and their employees wear hilarious little uniforms. They also feature “liquor corners”. Now, liquor is perhaps the lifeblood of the burgeoning konbini industry and is available at literally every one I have ever seen, but Lawson is the only one who calls their liquor corner (which is not, in fact, located in a corner), by such a name. The only form of ID-checking they have is a little laminated cutout of a hand with a message to the effect of “Halt! Are you 20?” printed on it, which protrudes out from the refrigerated wall on the end of a bouncy spring. The selection of booze is impressive, with each beer manufacturer (generally Asahi, Kirin, Suntory, Sapporo, Yebisu and the occasional foreign brew) sporting an average of 5 to 6 different variations on their brew. There are also dubiously cheap cans available for something like ¥105, or like 85 cents. Christ.

But enough of the booze. The amount of other stuff available at these places is staggering. An entire wall is devoted to prepackaged food, most of which is of disappointingly higher quality than its American equivalents. Of this wall, a good quarter is sectioned off to offer nothing but onigiri, an elegant Japanese invention that consists of a triangular wedge of a rice, wrapped on one side with nori (dried seaweed, a salty thing that tastes much better than you would expect) and with some sort of filling inside the rice. This can be anything from egg to fish (typically salmon or tuna) to chicken, to beef, or sometimes, even a different kind of rice. These snacks are available for about a dollar, roughly, and are ubiquitous. I wish they would catch on in the US, but with less fish and more chicken. At one convenience store it is not uncommon for upwards of 15 to 20 variations of onigiri to be available for purchase. Other prepackaged foods that are available include expected items like edamame, dumplings, and sushi but range as well towards more non-Japanese things like spaghetti and meatballs and all sorts of sandwiches and curry dishes. Another wall is taken up entirely by new and exciting types of ramen, some with incredibly complicated (for ramen) cooking procedures that entail putting the freeze dried vegetables in at one stage, followed by the first sauce at this point and then the second sauce after you’ve eaten half of it, etc. Yakisoba, a dish similar to ramen, is also available in a frighteningly diverse range of flavors and complexities, and is growing on me rapidly.