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.