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.

the happiest place(s) on earth!

So, it turns out that “The Happiest Place on Earth” is, in actuality, dispersed across many different locations on Earth. By my count, there are no less than 5 Happiest Places On Earth, with Disneyland in Anaheim, Disney World in Orlando, Euro Disney in France, Hong Kong Disneyland in South America (just kidding), and, my new friend, Tokyo Disneyland.

In reality my family and I did not go to Tokyo Disneyland, per se. Just like how Disney World consists of several parks including The Magic Kingdom, Epcot, etc, The Tokyo Disney complex consists of two parks: Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea. We had heard from many websites and guide books that Tokyo’s version of Disneyland is essentially exactly the same as California’s, just smaller, so we opted instead to go to DisneySea, which is entirely unique and exists only in Tokyo. The Japanese think the land/sea dichotomy in the naming scheme is far more obvious than it actually is, and accordingly, DisneySea is a standard Disney amusement park with a prevailing theme of water and the ocean. Its centerpiece is a massive volcano which periodically hisses and smokes, and glows orange at night. The regions of the park are all aquatically themed to some degree: represented are Agrabah, the Arabian port city from Aladdin, Ariel’s Kingdom from the Little Mermaid, an Amazon River themed area, and a small facsimile of Venice, complete with gondolas. The best area without question though was American Port, which was divided into two subsections: New York Harbor, featuring a gigantic tramp steamer that looked like it belonged in King Kong, and- wait for it – Cape Cod.

So it goes like this. I live in Cape Cod. I grew up on Cape Cod. I leave the Cape, fly halfway across the world to a language, a culture, a world not my own, and settle there. Then my family does the same, and we gather up and travel to a small area, no less than a square mile, that was meticulously designed to look as much as possible like the area that we came here from. Bizarre. The fascinating thing is how convincing it was. To be fair, the architecture and the old-timey-ness of it made the place look more like something from Nantucket or the cape from 1895, but their hearts were in the right place. Lobster traps were strewn about, sailboats in an artificial harbor had signs on their sides saying they delivered cargo to Plymouth and Provincetown, and the streetlights were apparently manufactured in Medford. My life is strange.

Despite this incredible bit of serendipity and synchronicity from which I don’t know if I’ll ever recover, there was something better. In the Amazonian section of the park, I spotted a 1930’s-era seaplane with the registration number “C3PO” on the wing. Being the nerd I am, I recognized this as Indiana Jones’ plane from Raiders of the Lost Ark. We quickly hunted out the ride, which was similar to the one in California. You sit in a huge car that drives around a track, all the while being shouted at by a robotic Harrison Ford who barks messages of encouragement in your direction. The best part? This robot Harrison Ford was shouting to us entirely in Japanese. “Hayaku itte! Koko wa abunai yo!” Fantastic.

trains! trains everywhere!

I’ve spoken before of Japan’s predilection towards trains, railroads, trams, subways, monorails, and basically any other vehicle that runs on one or more rails. They’re everywhere, and they’re honestly fantastic. I don’t doubt that if only the United States had a train system even a quarter as advanced or connected as Japan’s, we would be a cleaner, faster, and altogether better nation on the whole. On the Japan model, we would be able, in the United States, to travel from Boston to Chicago in about 3 hours (tops) for about $100 or so, in an un-hijackable, much more energy efficient version of a plane. That’s on a large scale. On a small scale, people would be easily able to travel from Lawrence, Massachusetts to Burlington, for example, in under an hour and for probably three dollars. Imagine the effect this would have on the economy, and on population density! We have but a seed of this potentiality currently in existence in the US, and it is a shame that it hasn’t been allowed to blossom. Though this isn’t to say that Japan’s trains are cheap, or, with some exceptions, direct.

“Labyrinthine” is the word I think I’ve used before, and will use again, to describe this network of locomotives. Utilizing the hub and spoke method of railway connections, getting from point A to point B requires first going to Point A1, making a transfer to Point A2b, switching for Train F, etc etc etc.

My family and I experienced this firsthand when, beginning at about 7 AM, I left my house and walked up the street to Fuchinobe station. From there, I boarded the Yokohama line and traveled two stops to the Machida JR Station. I disembarked and walked across town to the Machida Odakyu department store, the basement of which is the Machida Odakyu station. Getting on the semi-express train for Shinjuku, I traveled for about 40 minutes or so until I arrived in Shinjuku station in Tokyo, incidentally the largest train station in the world. I descended through the many layers of the highly stratified station and soon arrived at the Shinjuku Tokyo Metro Station, the subway station. I got on the Shinjuku line and switched at Akasaka Mitsuge for the Ginza Line, another subway line, and, about 2 hours or so after leaving Machida, arrived at Shimbashi, the Tokyo Metro station near my family’s hotel.

I met them there and we then boarded the Shimbashi stop for the Yamanote Line, which took us to Tokyo Station. From Tokyo Station we again descended to the lower depths of train-traveling and arrived at the Maihara Line, a private, elevated railway that takes you about 15 km or so outside of Tokyo Proper. After a nice, scenic ride we arrived at our destination: Tokyo Disneyland. I will write more about this in my next entry, for it seems I have ranted far too much about trains.

halloween in japan

It’s Halloween in Japan! Hooray! Excellent! Let’s have a party, everyone! Wait, what is Halloween and how do we celebrate it? Quick, to the foreigners!

This, apparently, was the thought process of The Nakama Crew, that super-funtime club I wrote of earlier. Beginning last week, every foreign student here at Obirin began to notice that all of our conversations and exchanges with the Japanese students started to become peppered with inquiries as to the nature and execution of Halloween. Nakama, it seemed, sensed or had heard that the holiday was a great deal of fun and was something that we all looked forward to, but they seemed to have little to no idea of what in the world Halloween actually was or what people did for it.

Some thought it was distinctly a Christian holiday for which we should attend church services (this delighted some as Obirin is technically a Christian university – one of the school’s sports teams, lacrosse, I think, is named the “triple thorn crowns”, a reference to the crown placed atop Jesus’ noggin during the crucifixion. Yikes!), while others quizzed me as to exactly how a pumpkin should be seasoned and cooked for the festivities. There was no doubt in their mind that the prevalence of pumpkins and pumpkin-related items around late October was a clear indicator that on Halloween night, everyone gathered around a table and consumed the orange gourd. Honestly, considering the ubiquity of cartoon turkeys and the like around late November, I can understand their confusion and I give them points for connecting the dots in such a creative way. And you know what? I would like a pumpkin pie for Halloween! Make it happen, Japan!

Anyway, we did our best to explain what Halloween was and that the big ritual, trick or treating, would be kind of hard to do unless we literally involved the whole of Machida in on our festivities. Certainly a party could be had, though, and we described how everyone should wear costumes, bob for apples, do that thing where you put a bunch of donuts on a string and bite them off, etc. The troops rallied admirably, and we had quite the excellent Halloween party, complete with absolutely ridiculous costumes, apple-bobbing (or ‘ringo-bobbu’), and a bingo game in which I won a stack of CD-Rs. I really find it quite endearing and sweet how eager the Japanese students were to absorb and dive head-long into some of our traditions, and I do my best to try to have their same enthusiasm when viewing their culture. I think I’ve been doing well but this has certainly given me a new outlook on how one can completely enmesh themselves, even if only temporarily, in a culture not one’s own.

business class = jealousy

Flying to Japan, we all traveled on Northwest Airlines. From Boston, we took a quick jaunt of a flight to Detroit, which lasted all of two hours and was nothing if not uneventful. The plane was a small Embraer something-or-other, and was arranged to be two seats on either side of the aisle, with nothing but the bare seatback and tray table in front of you. In May, I traveled to Europe and flew Air France. My plane from Boston to Paris was a large Airbus A330, and had the delightful and novel (to me at least) feature of having a television screen in the back of the seat in front of me on which I could either watch several pre-programmed TV shows, watch a movie or three, play tetris, or view a realtime map of where our plane was in the world. Flying nine hours to Europe, I found this to be a luxury. Flying 17 hours to Japan however, I mused, this would become a virtual necessity. I had no doubt that the bulk of our flight, from Detroit to Japan, would take place on a similar plane with equal if not better amenities.

I was wrong. The Boeing 747 that transported us from Detroit to Narita was about as barebones as you could get, and the rude and sassy flight attendants did nothing to improve it. I say this not to gripe or whine, but to provide an explanation as to why my father, sister, and mother have from here on out in life, completely lost their abilities to gripe and whine about seating situations on airplanes.

You see, my family came to visit me in Japan last week. I was thrilled. Even though we planned it and I knew they were coming, seeing them in this new world to which I have become accustomed was warming and much-needed. When away from what you love and what you’re used to, it’s easy to compartmentalize and tuck the thought of them away for most of the day, but in those idle moments alone in your apartment or while looking out the window of a train, the longing for the familiar only becomes that much more painful and stinging. So, to see them and to be with them again was absolutely magical, and I couldn’t have been happier.

However, they don’t know how good they have it. Oh lord, do they not know. In order to come visit me, my family (and I admit they are right) thought it a wonderful idea to use up each and every single frequent flyer mile they have ever earned in their long history of earning said miles, and to use them to fly first class to Japan, on Japan Airlines. JAL is one of the finest airlines in the world, and their first class section is absurdly posh. Upon boarding, my mother, father, and sister each settled themselves into what can only be described as their own personal eggs. They were seated in these incredibly odd but insanely comfortable (I am told) pod-like things that basically consists of a fully reclining (!) Chay’s lounge-dealy that is crowned by a swooping, egg-shaped shade that can be adjusted to your liking. From this egg hangs a personal, flat-screen television much like the one from my Air France experience that can be adjusted and tuned to your liking. They were served LOBSTER. I received flan. My family may have traveled over seven thousand miles to come visit me, but it’s a distinct possibility I won’t be speaking to them.

Edo-Tokyo Tatemono-en

Last time I authored a somewhat rant-tastic entry about Ota sensei’s Japanese Culture class and the accompanying field trips that it entails. Well, over the weekend we were treated to another of these mystery journeys. Thankfully, this one was better (though only slightly) than the supermarket funstravaganza of days past.

On Sunday (Sunday, mind you! A weekend! Augh!) the entire Japanese Culture class met and were herded onto a train at Fuchinobe station. We traveled for quite some time, changing trains at Hachioji, switching to a private line whose name I can’t remember, and generally becoming progressively more disoriented with every step. After a while we disembarked at a station where, upon entering the station, the loudspeakers on the train cheerily started playing the classic Japanese folk song “Sakura”, much to the delight of everyone who actually knew the song (read: not the white people). This was surely to be an exciting place. I would equate this to pulling into Downtown Crossing and hearing “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain” over the loudspeakers. Surely not a bad sign, but who knows what it could mean?

We boarded a few buses and traveled even more disorientingly down side streets and boulevards in this mystery town, until we arrived at Edo-Tokyo Tatemono-en. Edo, as all crossword puzzle-players know, was the former name of Tokyo; the Japanese “New Amsterdam”, if you will. Tatemono is a word meaning building, and the suffix “-en” describes a park. So, in sum, this name implies, roughly, a building park spanning the decades from Edo to Tokyo. In reality it is a large, vast park (especially by crowded Japanese standards) in a Tokyo suburb where many historical buildings have either been replicated or entirely relocated. It reminded me quite a bit of Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Mass or Colonial Williamsburg, but with green tea and sushi.

Edo-Tokyo Tatemonoen (ETT from here on), was actually a pretty cool place. Despite Ota and his enigma of a wife being present, I had a pretty decent time roaming around the place and exploring the seemingly endless supply of old buildings and houses from centuries past. My favorite area was a recreation of an old Tokyo town square in the center of the park. They had brought in an old streetcar from the 1910s or so, mounted it on some tracks, and all around rebuilt or replicated old apothecaries, sake stores, restaurants, tea shops, and even a bathhouse. It had an otherworldly quality to it, and you could really deceive yourself into thinking you had stepped back to that time. Furthermore, in the central square they had old-timey kid’s toys, including wooden stilts, swings, and even those old barrel hoop things that kids in movies like Newsies would run down the street hitting with sticks to make them roll. Of course, this became the center of attention for the foreigners, and the entire educational value of the place was dispensed in favor to see who could walk farthest on the stilts or roll their hoops the best.

All in all a far superior trip than the one to the supermarket, though the lack of embarrassed crabs does bring a tinge of sadness to my heart. Can’t win em all, I suppose.

Ota, depachikas, and fugu

Ota sensei drives me crazy.

He seems like a very nice man, quite fit perhaps to be a grandfather or small shopkeeper. Especially if you speak his language fluently, or he yours. However, neither I nor he does, and we have both somehow been stuck with one another, neither fully understanding the motivation nor words of the other. Ota sensei is my Japanese Culture professor. I am not happy about this predicament.

Japanese Culture sounded like an excellent class. It would, they told us, dive into many new and exciting topics pertaining to the way Japanese people live, ranging everywhere from aspects of daily life to the most closely held details of their history and heritage. And what a rich culture it is! Sumo wrestling, tea ceremonies, the Bushido code, the effect of World War II on the public consciousness, the Meji Restoration and all that that implies, etc etc. The potential topics into which this class can delve are innumerable and exciting. So what do we do? We go to the grocery store, of course!

Japanese Culture has decided that to further indulge our curiosities and enrich our educational experience, we should go on periodic field trips. A fine idea, to be sure. However, the location and educational value of these field trips has, up to this point, been dubious at best. Recently, we traveled to a hyuakuenya, or dollar store, and then afterwards witnessed the wonders that the Japanese supermarket has to offer. Thrilling, I agree!

Oy. To be fair there is a degree to which the Japanese supermarkets are intriguing. Their seafood sections, especially, are quite fascinating inasmuch as they are much larger and more fully stocked than most American ones, and have a far higher frequency of live animals. In one section, I discovered an iced tray of live, pre-battered crabs that seemed to be sitting there, half-angered and half-embarrassed. I know I would be if some alien race plucked me from my home, stripped me naked, covered me in butter and oyster crackers and threw me in a bucket of ice.

Another interesting sight at the “supaa”, as they call it, was fugu. Fugu, as many may recognize from the classic Simpsons episode “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blowfish”, is perhaps the most notorious of all Japanese delicacies. It is a large, fat, blue and white blowfish which, due to the type of coral it eats in the wild, has a sac within it that becomes highly concentrated with a deadly toxin. Of course, this doesn’t stop the Japanese and they happily devour the fish in droves. Preparation of fugu requires a deft hand though, and one errant slice this way or chop that way can puncture the sac and spill the toxin throughout the flesh of the fish and make its way onto your plate and subsequently, stomach, at which point you die. Despite this fugu is widely available, though for quite a high price.

Well, would you look at that. I actually do find this somewhat interesting. Perhaps Ota isn’t so bad after all. Perhaps his almost complete lack of English skills don’t render him useless as a professor of an ostensibly English-language class. And perhaps he’ll let me prepare his fugu next time he orders it

I am the lord thy DJ

When discussing iconic images of Japan, there are a few things that come to mind immediately: bullet trains, cherry blossom trees, and of course, Mt. Fuji. One of the most easily and widely recognized mountains in the world, Mt. Fuji always seemed cool in principle but never really held any draw for me in theory. However, when, a few weeks ago, we were presented with the option of going away to an ‘international camp’ for a weekend at Lake Yamanaka, which is situated at the base of Fuji, I clearly did not turn down the offer. We were told that for the very reasonable fee of about 20 dollars we would be provided transportation to and from the camp, and lodging, food, and activities while there.

Upon arriving at the camp at Yamanaka, we all immediately piled out of the buses (it was about a 3 hour ride or so), and ran to the lake itself. Before us was one of the most magnificent and literally breathtaking sights I have ever witnessed in my life. Stretching up to the sky to a degree that I had previously thought unimaginable was Mt. Fuji. Neither words nor photographs can describe or accurately represent the sheer size of the thing; it dominates the scene and is the biggest behemoth of a single object I’ve ever encountered. I can now understand the reverence that people, Japanese and otherwise, have for the monument. Unfortunately, as it is October and therefore warm, the mountain lacked its characteristic cap of snow. This, however, is like complaining that the Mona Lisa is smaller than you expected it to be: a minor issue that by no means reflects on the overall work.

The camp itself was nothing short of absurd. First of all, we were not informed that this was, in fact, a Christian-themed camp where Jesus is law and all is Jesus. As part of this, we were expected to go to Mass on Sunday morning. This put me off considerably as A) I am not religious whatsoever and would rather spend my time doing something productive and B) the mass was entirely in Japanese. So, myself and a few of my fellow heathens concocted a devious plan wherein we walked towards the church when everyone else was going there, and then in an ingenious twist, turned away at the last second. They never saw it coming. So it came to pass that while everyone else was listening to a sermon nihongo de, about how Jesus is the DJ of the world and lays down phat tracks of forgiveness (I’m not kidding), my friends and I were wading in the waters of Lake Yamanaka and taking some of the best photographs that I’ve ever had the opportunity to take. To be fair we’re all going to rot in hell for all eternity, but at least I got to see a cool mountain

the eastern capital

I realized recently that I haven’t spoken much about Tokyo itself. It is still consistently inconceivable to me the exact scale of the place, and our proximity to it. The fact that I can walk down the road and take a 45 minute train ride into the largest urban conglomeration in the world is a baffling and exciting concept to me. 35 million people. 35 million. That’s more than 6 new yorks. Insane. The number is literally inconceivable but you get a sense of it when you’re squirming around on the Yamanote subway line, clawing desperately for a square inch of space to hold on to and hoping for all the world that the stars align and that 95% of the passengers decide to get off at the next stop.

Yes, Tokyo is crowded, but the city evens this flaw out by being absolutely massive on a ridiculous scale. The subway map alone reminds me of something out of a H.P. Lovecraft story; a terrifyingly complicated diagram that, to many, induces fear and panic merely by the sight of it. Tokyo, in fact, has grown so large that the Japanese have started growing more Tokyo; Odaiba, a fantastic neighborhood home to high-tech shopping centers, very un-Japanese wide open spaces, and an incredible Toyota museum (complete with arcade and Ferris wheel), has been built on reclaimed land, much as dirt from Norwell was once poured into Boston harbor in order to expand the surface area of my beloved home city.

One of my favorite places in the city is the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building in Shinjuku. Shinjuku is Tokyo’s equivalent to Manhattan or Boston’s Financial District – home to the majority of its skyscrapers. And tallest among them is the Met, rising high above Tokyo city hall, this dual-spired skyscraper absolutely towers above the city. Best of all, each of the two highest towers of the building are home to an absolutely free observatory with a view that puts to shame anything that Boston or New York has to offer. From it, you can see all the way south to Yokohama, and all the way west to Mt. Fuji. In between, you can see the residences of nearly a quarter of the nation’s entire population. The view is literally staggering; I often have to hold onto a railing just to keep my balance and perhaps sanity.

I am always fascinated and humbled by the scope and grandeur of this place, but often I am saddened as well. I know that no matter how long I stay or how hard I try that it is literally impossible for me to see and experience everything this country and city have to offer. I suppose that’s okay though. I wouldn’t want to live in a place where the whole thing could be done in an afternoon. You get a sense of life and vibrancy from Tokyo and Japan that is unrivaled anywhere else, and you can do little to prevent these feelings of joie de vivre from permeating through yourself as well. I wouldn’t have it any other way

singin in a smoky room; i smell of wine and moscow mules

There’s a reason that Karaoke is so well known and associated with Japan: it’s freaking incredible.

Never in my life have I been a singer. In elementary and middle school, when music classes were mandatory and frequent, I would do everything to avoid them: feigning sickness to spend 45 minutes in the nurse’s office, hiding out in the bathroom, or simply moving my mouth and lip-synching the words among my classmates, allowing them to do the dastardly singing while leaving my vocal chords unexercised. It worked for me, and for the last 20 years of my life nary a song has escaped from my lungs. And like so many of these entries, then I came to Japan and the whole thing changed.

From what I’ve seen, heard, and experienced, karaoke in America is a curiosity without any real home. It arrived on our shores in the eighties to much fanfare and ballyhoo and then whimpered away when no one realized that they actually wanted to stand in front of a crowd of strangers and sing “Blitzkrieg Bop”. Not only this, but the audience would much rather listen to a singer who doesn’t need to read the lyrics off of a 19” Magnavox. And so from what I understood, karaoke was now drifting around in the US, searching for its niche. It seemed that that the most likely place for it to find success was in college-age bars, where drunken fratboys can sing Journey to their hearts content. Still, the notion of standing in front of a room full of people you don’t know and singing a song you can’t sing did not seem fun.

The Japanese realized this too, and in the early 90s adjusted the format of karaoke to make it considerably more accessible. The only thing that was needed was a simple change in the physical space of the activity: instead of singing in a bar with rows and rows of seats in front of you, Japanese karaoke places are like dormitories: a main building consisting of multiple little rooms into which you and 5-10 of your closest friends pile and begin the song-making. It’s fantastic. There is a TV monitor with a DVD-player-looking device hooked up to it, out from which two microphones are attached. Using a hefty PDA kind of thing, you type in the name of either the song or artist you’re looking for, and tap the song with a stylus when you find it. The PDA thing then beams the information to the deck and the song begins playing. The thing that astounded me was just how many English songs these places have; we’ve sung everything from The Police to the Beatles to Dave Matthews, Radiohead, The Four Tops, and yes, the aforementioned Journey. Johnny Cash is my specialty, and apparently when I am unable to attend karaoke sessions it is sung in my honor. I couldn’t be more thrilled.

And so, as it has done for many aspects of life, Japan has given me a new outlook on and appreciation for that black sheep of music, karaoke

beachside

In Lawrence, Massachusetts, the town next to my hometown of Andover, there is a fantastic restaurant called Yokohama. It’s a teppanyaki restaurant, meaning that the cook grills up all your food in front of you on a large flat metal cooking surface and does all sorts of theatrics involving flaming onions and such. Up until recently, my entire knowledge of what the term “Yokohama” connotes was based on this restaurant. Thankfully, however, I recently traveled to the real Yokohama, an absolutely massive city south of here.

One of the nation’s most important ports, Yokohama is located on the south side of Tokyo Bay, and is about an hour away by train (we’re actually on the Yokohama line in Machida). Historically, Yokohama was vital to the economy of Japan, as, after the country was first opened to foreign trade in the 1800s, it was one of the first places that international commerce was allowed to take place. As part of this, the city has a long-standing tradition of inclusion and integration of foreign cultures, and is home to not only one of the largest Chinatowns in the world, but a number of Dutch and German-style homes. Landmark Tower, the tallest building in Japan, is the city’s centerpiece, and in addition a large percentage of the waterfront seems to have recently undergone a lot of redevelopment. The net effect of all of this is that Yokohama seems very much unlike most other Japanese cities, and certainly stands apart from Machida and Tokyo. The city has wide streets, large plazas, tree-lined boulevards, and a prevailing nautical theme that reminds me very much of what South Boston aspires to be.

My time in Yokohama was spent strolling around the city and searching desperately to find a few of my friends whose cell phone numbers I unfortunately did not have. You see, it was Karie, my fellow Northeastern student’s, birthday, and a bunch of people had set off to Yokohama’s Chinatown to celebrate, as Karie is from Hong Kong. I missed the train that they all boarded, so I took what I assumed was the next one, all by myself and having never made this journey before. I also neglected to bring my MP3 player, something I rarely, if ever, do. And so it was that I spent the entire day roaming around Yokohama by myself, with no comforting, familiar music to accompany me. It was fantastic. Far too often, I think, we find refuge in the familiar when we should be daring ourselves to delve into the strange and exotic. I did exactly that in Yokohama, and was thrilled. I was engaged, aware, and fascinated every second of the day, and though I did not find my friends until I was back home in Machida, I had a wonderful day.

iiiiii desu neeeeeeeee

Prior to taking classes here at Obirin, I had studied the Japanese language for a year at Northeastern. I am by no means an expert, but I could make due. I knew, for instance, how to say “Oh, good job” in Japanese; “Oh, ii desu nee”. I knew this, intellectually. I had no idea, however, what the actual impact of this statement was.

“OOOOHHHH IIIIIIIIIII DESUUUU NEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!”

This phrase is inescapable. It is ubiquitous, omnipresent, and terrifying. Every morning at 9 AM, I arrive at my Japanese IIB class and within minutes am verbally beaten with these words with all the force of a drill instructor berating his platoon. The assailant is Eric Masuyama, our Japanese professor. Masuyama-sensei, as we call him, is one of the most unabashedly enthusiastic people I have ever met in my life. On top of that he is nothing if not absurd in every way; he is well over 6 feet tall (incredibly impressive in this country), has a gold tooth, is unreasonably muscular, and inexplicably has a single earring; a letter “J” bedecked in what I can only assume are diamonds.

The man is fantastic. Apart from the fact that he is by leaps and bounds the best professor of them all here at Obirin, he is one of the best professors I’ve ever had in my entire life. Masuyama understands education and pedagogy; our Japanese class, which I feared would be the most difficult and boring to endure, has turned out to be not only the most entertaining, but one of the most easily accessible and rewarding. We have a fantastic group of students, including many from Northeastern: myself, Jeremy, Jarrett, Karie, Craig, and Chris, in addition to several from other schools. Perhaps because of this pre-existing camaraderie between we Northeastern students, the class has a wonderful, laid-back atmosphere that is extremely conducive to learning. I feel that not only do we ourselves want to learn and succeed, but we wish the same for our classmates. It sounds cheesy but it’s true.

Unfortunately the Masuyama experience is not an everyday one. For some reason that is beyond my understanding, the structure of our class schedule is such that we alternate every other day between having Masuyama and another professor, Ikota-sensei, teaching our class. Ikota is a decent enough professor, and in a vacuum would probably be considered a very good professor, but she pales in comparison to Masuyama. Both are very good however and when utilized in conjunction with the excellent and eager atmosphere create one of the best learning environments I’ve ever been in.

saka geemu

Turns out people from Hong Kong love KFC.

This is one of the many edifying things I learned this weekend at Ajinomoto Stadium, as the Reconnaissance Japan students battled the labyrinthine and complex Japanese train network to go on a lovely outing to see Tokyo Verdy play the Yamagata Eagles. I figured out about an hour into our train journey that this, apparently, was a soccer game we were going to. I don’t know, I just wanted to ride the trains.

In the US I have gone to only a few sporting events; a handful of Red Sox games at Fenway, a Revolution game and a Patriots game at Foxboro Stadium, and strangely, a Twins-Expos game in Montreal once. All of these games, with the exception of the oddly-quiet Expos game, were full of raucous, charmingly obnoxious fans chanting “Yankees Suck” or other booze-fueled epithets. From what I had heard about Japan, I expected this not to be the case. I remember reading “Dave Barry Does Japan”, a book written in the 1980s during Japan’s stellar economic growth, about 7 years ago and hearing Barry describe how at a Japanese baseball game, the entire crowd (made entirely of men) were all dressed in suits and ties and merely clapped politely after their home team hitter blasted a grand slam out of the park. Going to the soccer game, I expected a Montrealesque, creepily-subdued sense of respect and restraint.

This was not the case at all. These fans were some of the loudest and creatively raucous I’ve ever witnessed. They cheered, screamed, waved enormous green banners with the Verdy Eagle logo on them, chanted, and carried on to a much stronger degree than I ever expected. I was happy to see this, since it dispelled to some degree the notion that the Japanese are completely reserved and devoid of emotion.

About a quarter of the way through the game, myself and my friends Iris and Karie, both of whom are from Hong Kong, decided to go get some food from one of the concessions stands. Upon seeing that the stadium sold KFC chicken, Karie and Iris absolutely tweaked out, frightening me in the process. “KFC! KFC!” they shouted. What followed was a monstrous display, with shards of bone and 11 original herbs and spices flying every which way. Meanwhile, I purchased some ramen and ate that silently as I watched these two tiny girls eat their own weight in chicken.

All in all an excellent day, despite soccer being the most boring sport in the world. The end score was 1-0.

Watashi no ie

I once read a book set in a futuristic Japan where the main character stays in a placed called “Cheap Hotel”, where the rooms are crafted out of used shipping containers. Since space is at such a premium in Japan, the shipping containers are ideal since they can be stacked on top of one another. Inside, the kitchen and bathroom are essentially built into the walls of the container, with the bed on the opposite side. I think the people who designed my apartment were big fans of that book.

This isn’t to say my room is bad or disappointing; it’s just veeeery small and compact. My kitchen, as it were, is not a room. It’s a receded area, about 5 feet wide and 6 feet tall, set into the wall of my hallway. I have a single gas burner, a counter that is about a foot wide, and a sink, all adjacent to one another. Beneath the burner there are two switches, one to turn on the overhead lights (which are inexplicably red; I’ll need to go buy some new lightbulbs soon), and one to turn on the vent, which is fortunate as I have a tendency to inadvertently and suddenly turn many of my dishes into flambé. Beneath these, at knee level, is a large cabinet filled with all sorts of necessary kitchen accoutrements that have accumulated over the years and been left by former inhabitants of my apartment. I have, among other things: 5 pairs of chopsticks, bamboo mats for rolling sushi, seven spoons, multiple instances of Tupperware, an American-made blender for some reason, a rice cooker (which has become my new favorite device), multiple cups and a few plates. More interesting, however, is what I don’t have: a single pot or pan, the lack of which render the burner mostly ornamental, and a fork. I have not a fork to my name. I discovered this the other day after I made some spaghetti (by borrowing a pot from my neighbor, incidentally) and discovering that I was going to have to either barehand the pasta and burn off my fingerprints in the process, or struggle with the intricacies of eating spaghetti and meat sauce with chopsticks. I opted for the latter for about 5 minutes before breaking down and borrowing a fork from the same aforementioned neighbor. I’m going to have to do something about this.

Additionally puzzling is my bathroom situation. I have two bathrooms, which is nearly twice as many as I’m used to owning. The first bathroom is literally that; it contains an impressively deep tub, with a wall-mounted but detachable shower head that is connected to a valve in the sink. To engage the shower, you have to turn a dial on the neck of the sink’s faucet to “showa” (honestly, that’s how you say shower in Japanese). This disables the sink and sends the flow of water up a hose into the showerhead. Likewise, to use the sink you must redirect the water away from the tub. This seems somewhat wacky to me. Additionally, the entire room is kind of rubberized and seems like it’s all carved from one giant block of something. A drain is located in the floor, allowing you, as in the Japanese tradition, to shower yourself off quickly while standing in front of the tub before you get in to take a bath. This also enables me, in the American tradition, to close the door and just go hog wild spraying every surface with the shower head, just because I can.

My second bathroom, or the Toilet Annex, as I prefer to call it, is an incredibly small room containing just a toilet and a small cabinet built into the wall with a sliding cover. It also has, disturbingly, a window that, if opened, looks directly out to the street. The glass in the window is bubbled and distorted for privacy, but if slid open it gives the whole neighborhood both a great view and something to talk about. I keep that window closed.

The remainder of my apartment pulls quadruple time as a bedroom, living room, dining room, and, when I’m feeling particularly raucous, study. I suspect it can be converted to a boxing ring but this has yet to be proven. Despite the size of my room, it is still MY room, and it’s just big enough to avoid being too small. I daresay it’s cozy, even. It is, in my opinion, extremely wise of Obirin to have given everyone a room of their own and not to have put us in shared housing, as living in a strange and new place such as we are comes with a certain degree of irritation and a need to be alone from time to time. Thankfully, we are able to do this. Especially in the Toilet Annex.

Izakaya

I wrote last time about the common ground that almost all of us foreigners here in Japan share; a mutually-understood foundation upon which it seems very easy to build friendships. This has definitely proven to be true, and I’m thrilled about it. However, I’ve been surprised and delighted to find out that this extends to not just us filthy gaijin, but to the Japanese as well. Since we’ve been here, I’ve been absolutely astounded at how accommodating and friendly the Japanese students have been to us. There’s a student group here called Nakama (the name means ‘friendship’, or ‘group of friends) who set up events and “parties” (usually a card table with a few 1-liter bottles of tea and soda set up in a function room, but hey, what are you gonna do?), and they’ve been just absolutely fantastic.

Approximately 99% of Nakama is comprised of incredibly nice, enthusiastic, clinically insane girls. They seem so excited to meet and hang out with us, and have already started planning Halloween and Christmas parties for everyone. They ask all sorts of questions about where we’re from and what we do in the US, and seem to know absolutely nothing, but in a very endearing way. Last week they invited us to a “drinking party”, which pretty much everyone was on board for. Meet on Friday, they told us, near Fuchinobe station (our local train station), and bring 2000 yen, the equivalent of roundabouts 18 dollars.

And so it was that Fuchinobe Station became crammed with 40-50 confused foreigners on that night. Mingling about, we started quizzically asking each other if anyone had any idea what the hell was going on or if anyone knew what we were doing. Rumors of bowling, of karaoke (oh my), of dinner, and of simply going to a bar circulated, and it seemed that anything was possible. Soon, the Nakama girls arrived and informed us that we were going to an izakaya. Not wanting to be the unwashed, uninformed foreigners that we most certainly were, we took delight at the suggestion, insisting that we make haste at once! “To the izakaya!”, we shouted. “Who doesn’t love an izakaya? Not me, that’s for sure!”. Subsequent to this we immediately began asking each other in low tones what the everloving hell an izakaya is.

We soon found out. An izakaya, it turns out, is the best thing ever. After paying our 2000 yen entry fee, we were brought into a wonderfully traditional looking Japanese restaurant, with low, chairless tables, cubby holes to put your shoes into, and fantastically loud waiters and cooks barking orders to each other in colloquial Japanese. Then, to improve the situation, we were taught two of the finest words that Japanese has to offer: tabehoudai, all you can eat, and nomihoudai, all you can drink. For two hours.

The casualties were severe. Not an artery left unclogged, not a liver left uncirrhocissed to some degree. The highlight of the night was a seemingly goofy but honestly touching taste of home: after having eating Japanese food that either the school or our friends have provided us the entire time we’ve been here, the cooks at the izakaya laid before us an absolutely enormous tray of what the Japanese call “poteto”. In English, these are better known as Tater Tots. The crowd went wild. I have never seen so much food devoured in such a short amount of time. Not to say the teriyaki, katsu, and sushi that we’ve been eating hasn’t been delicious, but they can’t hold a candle to tater tots offered to a displaced American like myself.

Why Japan?

“So, why Japan?”

This question has been a repeating theme in my life for a while now. Prior to jetting off halfway across the world, while I was still in the US, I was bombarded with The Question by friends, family, coworkers, professors, and most others to whom I told my plans. I would usually answer the same way, a self-deprecated explanation that if you follow it back to the beginning, it probably started with playing Nintendo when I was 7, and that my interest later grew into a fuller and more adult appreciation for a paradoxical culture somewhat similar to but markedly different from my own. This was a line, though. A rote piece of dialogue given to Those Who Don’t Get It. To be honest, I have very little concept as to why or how I’m here. It has always been more of a drive than a desire, a feeling that this is the Right Thing To Do, and that, when I’m older, it is absolutely imperative that when telling my life story, I can have a chapters that begin with the line “When I was in Japan…”. To say that I wanted to be a part of a culture different than mine is also incorrect; I didn’t merely want ‘different’. If I wanted that I’d be living in Siberia or with the Aborigines at Ayers Rock. I wanted parallel. It’s hard to explain; I’m not sure I can elucidate my motivations exactly, but the thing is, I no longer need to.

The Question has disappeared.

In meeting my fellow study abroad students, The Question has never once been asked. Whether talking to my neighbor from Kansas, our good friend from Cairo, or the crazy Australian from whom I steal wireless internet, it has never once come up. It’s superfluous to ask “why”; just by virtue of the fact that we’re here, we all have a common motivation. And I love this. Whether I get along with them or not, I can still related to most everyone here. I came because I somehow needed to. I didn’t necessarily come to further my language abilities or to study Japan-North Korean relations or to embiggen my nerdy comic collection, but for each of us who may have those goals, there’s a mutually-understood thread of motivation. I don’t think I’ve ever been with a bigger group of people that I can relate to, and who can relate to me.

Arrival

After a disorienting, seventeen-hour, sleeping-pill muddled flight consistently bleached by blinding sunlight, I, along with my fellow Northeastern students, arrived at Tokyo-Narita International Airport. As we stepped off the plane and walked through the jetway, we were greeted by a gigantic, illuminated advertisement for DoCoMo NTT, a Japanese cell phone company. Depicting a smiling Japanese woman enthusiastically carrying on a conversation on her handset, the ad was blazoned by a simple, single line of copy:

“DoCoMo NTT: Smiling life happy”.

This, apparently, is to set the tone for the next few months of my life.

After arriving in the airport and having our already discombobulated brains kicked while they were down by the aforementioned ad, we were met at the gate by some extremely nice representatives of Obirin, both Japanese and American. We were quickly ushered off to a bus which brought us to a hotel for the night; here the rest of the students, including people from Egypt, Luxembourg, Mongolia, Australia, Hong Kong, and Germany all convened. We were treated to a not-so-traditional Americo-Japanese buffet, which was much appreciated, and then we began dropping like flies. The general level of fatigue and confusion in the room was almost tangible, and it was clear that sleep was coming whether we embraced it or not. And so it was, that at approximately 6 PM, I found myself in a strange bed, in a strange hotel, in a strange land, falling into an almost comatose sleep.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been more eager to get out of bed than on the following day. My feelings of potential, of wonder, and of excitement were reaching critical mass. I simply could not wait to do anything, even the inevitable orientation sessions that now have proved to be unbearably boring and repetitive seemed laden with the possibility of fun.

I still wake up excited. I have an immense feeling of accomplishment in having come here. I’ve been hoping, planning, and waiting for this time a significant percentage of my life. And now that I’m here, I couldn’t be happier.