I Am Completely Serious

I have lost just enough weight to render nearly all my clothes, including the stuff I got for Christmas, too big. Of stuff I can wear to work, I have one pair of pants, one turtleneck, and two jackets that aren’t baggy.

I couldn’t figure out why I was losing weight at first, because I’m eating more than I did in Okazaki, but then it came to me – I spend half the day running around after little kids. That I do not think of this as exercise does not alter its effect as such.

I have attempted to go shopping. Why does this country have SUCH POOR COLOR SENSE. How am I supposed to maintain my red-only color scheme if the stuff in my size is all mauve, neon yellow, and this vaguely nauseous shade of aquamarine? And it’s all got ruffles. I saw a blazer that was almost okay except for superfluous ruffles down all the seams. And I saw some blouses that would have been fine except for big frills around the collar. Do you think this is funny, Japan? I want a plain white button-down shirt and a plain brown blazer. Are you seriously incapable of providing these items? Is this like hard somehow?

The grocery store and the strip mall next to it are connected by a sort of overhang. I always go through the overhang on the way to the store – there’s usually someone standing there texting, peering out in the parking lot for their ride. People park their bicycles there. Not a very exciting place.

At around eight or nine the other night, as I approached the overhang, I heard rap playing. Beneath it, two high-school boys with hoodies and a boom box were practicing their dance moves.

As I am a demon of disharmony, my mere nearness dissipating all music to nothing, my entrance stopped them, and they stood looking suspiciously at me as I walked past.

When I came back through on my way home, they were still practicing, but this time they were sufficiently in the zone that my brief presence did not destroy their synchronization. The song sounded rough enough that I suspect they recorded it themselves.

-

Today was the day for random strangers talking to me. On my way to work this morning I passed a six-or-seven-year-old boy who said to me solemnly, “Konnichiwa.” “Konnichiwa,” I said. On my way home, a teenaged boy on a bike said, “woh!” to me. I did not know how to interpret that, and anyway was tired, so I merely nodded. Woh.

Made it into Niigata and got my re-entry permit with no disasters. This is incredible. I don’t think I’ve ever had a disaster-free interaction with the Japanese government before. I was out of the immigration office in twenty minutes, about five of which were spent writing my address. I still haven’t memorized the kanji and my pen kept blotting.

The nearest train station, as well as a couple of the stops on the way into Niigata, seem to be run on sort of an honor system. There’s one small ticket vending machine, but no station attendants or ticket scanners. You put your ticket in a metal mailbox that says “tickets go here” when you come into one of these stations. Most people using the train are going to and from Niigata (which has proper ticket-checking counters), not from one unattended station to another. I’m guessing Japan Rail loses less money on this than it would cost to install scanners and pay attendants.

A five-or-six-year-old boy a few seats behind me on the bus had just gotten off an airplane, and his mom had gotten him some toy airplanes. He was telling stories about them, loudly so everyone on the bus could hear: “There were a lot of airplanes, and they crashed. And all the people living on the Earth died… Meanwhile, there were some airplanes, and they crashed. And all the people living in China died.” I’m not sure what his problem was with China in specific, but he sent his airplanes to destroy it two or three separate times.

I like how I get paid and come home to find the yen’s actually lost on the dollar, for what I’m pretty sure is the first time in months.

I was paid in cash for some reason. (Apparently it’ll be direct-deposit next month.) It’s very weird having over a thousand dollars in cash sitting here next to me. I just have this urge to, like, gesture with it. Gesture at fools.

Problems inherent in the name “Sarah” and calling a taxi: Japanese people apparently tend to hear it as “Sanda” (I guess it can be a surname? I’ve never heard it before…), and so aren’t sure they buy that this gaijin is the person they’re supposed to be picking up.

Cut for long/boring/whiny.

Continue reading “Further Adventures with the Japanese Cell Phone Industry”

There isn’t room on the sidewalk coming up to the apartment for two people to walk abreast of each other. So when two middle-school girls on a bicycle together came up behind me, I stepped into the gutter to let them pass.

The girl pedaling stopped and squinted at me. The other giggled.

Pedaling Girl said, “S – sss – orry!” She worked very hard to get the “s” sound right. I said, “Daijoubu desu.”

They zoomed off, both chortling at the fact that they had actually used their English lessons.

(Why did I let them put me in northern Japan?! People only eat white miso up here! The miso aisle at the store only had two kinds of red!)

The other day it occurred to me that I was the only person in the office who spoke English.

So I started writing steampunk-themed gay erotica.

It was just kind of instinctive.

After a few minutes I realized someone was standing next to me. I looked up and oh shit white eight-year-old, why the hell is the only anglophone kid in Niigata prefecture standing right here.

I covered my notebook with my hand: “No! Secret!”

He shrugged and walked over to tug on Manager’s coat. Manager said, “Oh! You’re here! Hey, Sarah, let’s hear you guys talk English!”

I said, “Hi. What’s your name?”

He looked at me warily, then hid behind Manager. Manager poked his shoulder. “Leo, come on, answer.”

Leo said disgustedly, in Japanese, “I don’t speak English.”

Manager said, “Yeah, he speaks Russian.”

I said, “Oh. Good.”

So today I read Anita Blake on the laptop.

I’ve been having the kids play a game where they race origami fish across the floor by blowing on them. Yesterday one girl was having trouble getting hers to move, mostly because she was blowing from the wrong angle. She complained to me (in Japanese), “I can’t do it!” I said (in English), “Oh, yes you can!”

The two other girls immediately jumped up and began to chant, “Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Yes, we can!”

“Oh!” I said. “Obama fans?”

“Obama-fan!” they said, and laughed as if this was the second-funniest phrase in the world. (The funniest is “chicken points” – the kids earn chicken points and get to hold the stuffed chicken (and be the “chicken mama”) if they win a game, see. It’s been an extremely successful initiative.)

The girl whose fish would not move crossed her arms defiantly and began chanting, “No, we can’t! No, we can’t! No, we can’t!” The other two girls joined in.

I said, “You know, you guys are way too young to be this cynical about the political process,” which words they did not understand, but which tone they did, for they all rolled their eyes at me. (This class is all ages 10 to 12, incidentally.) And then I had to go grab the class’s lone boy, who was mopily trying to deform the foam ABCs again, and bully him into blowing on his fish.

Where did they learn this? I mean, I assume they’ve heard “Yes, we can!” on the news, but where did they get the “No, we can’t”? Their pronunciation was perfect, too. Is there stuff going on on Japanese TV of which I’m unaware?

I walked home in heavy snow tonight. The sun went down hours ago, but the bright blue-white streetlights on the snow made it feel like just dusk – the streets looked bizarre and desaturated, like a black-and-white photo. It’s very quiet. I saw only a few sets of footprints aside from my own.

Someone had come along just after someone else and, realizing that she and her predecessor wore the same boots, matched her stride perfectly to the other’s, making it look as if a single person had gone down the street, hopping, two feet planted firmly beside each other. Near the apartment I saw hard little prints that looked like a deer’s, meandering alongside a set of bootprints. The feet were too close together to be a deer; I think someone who lives near here puts shoes on their dog.

For most of the sidewalk home, though, I was the first person who had walked there in at least half an hour. Everyone else here drives.

A conversation overheard on Friday:

English Teacher: What color? What color crayon? You already have the red. Purple? Peach?

Japanese Four-Year-Old: Hada! (Translation: skin.)

English Teacher: What? …No. This is peach. “Peach!”

Japanese Four-Year-Old (encouraged by Sensei’s wince): Hada hada hada hada!

English Teacher, patiently: No. Peach.

Japanese Four-Year-Old continues to chant “hada” for about thirty seconds before covering his dog picture with red, to indicate that it is bleeding, or possible that it has eaten somebody.

So it turns out Japanese crayon boxes have/had the same racial issues as American ones. Good to know.

It had been drizzling all day, but a few minutes from my apartment it turned into a downpour, and then suddenly hail, coming horizontally from behind, like being hit in the back with birdshot. I immediately forgot where I was. I got my map out, and now the ink from the notes I made on it is running.

Though I spent most of my time in Tokyo being bludgeoned to death with textbooks with amusing names (Strategies in Speaking?), I did have a couple days to wander around and be touristy. I took a bunch of photos, but need to sort through them before I upload them. Never trust a cheap cameraphone to give photos logical filenames! My King Metal Slime pictures are all mixed up with my Imperial Palace pictures. I will try to post them here in the next couple days.

Oh, and I taught small children English all by myself. Assigned homework, even! The first three classes were fine. The last had a dreadful parent who made me quiz his son for a test way above his present level, thus rendering me complicit in the destruction of the child’s self-esteem. I did not assign this student homework. And I will kill his dad.

Just like the book! Except with fewer prostitutes. And I lost my train ticket. (“Act like you don’t speak Japanese,” advised Tanizaki-sensei*, escorting me to the school. “Nihongo wo tabemasen.” “Right, exactly.” They didn’t bother to stop me, though.)

(I wonder if Snow Country would exist in the form it does if the shinkansen had been around in Kawabata’s day. Probably the pace would be different.)

Until the present teacher moves out of the apartment on Sunday, they have me in a hotel room by the train station, a hotel room which I believe to be extremely inexpensive. The rooms have actual keys, not cards, and the stairwell is being used to store a lot of boxes of things. I hope the building doesn’t catch fire while I’m here. The lights in the room do not turn on unless you put a little red stick attached to the keys into a slot by the door, ensuring that the lights are not left on in an empty room. (This is actually a pretty good idea…) And you have to turn your keys in when you leave; you get them back when you come back. I know that they recognize me because I’m the white girl, but do they really get so few patrons that this works all the time?

But there is a restaurant attached that has inexpensive and basically acceptable kimchi ramen. And the internet works, which is a step up.

Training was very tiring and I will get all fretful if I talk about it. It’s technically not over yet, I still have to do two more days with the present teacher supervising me.

And I’m very sleepy now and need to go to bed.

* This is not his real name; I’m sticking to my policy of giving everyone made-up names. Tanizaki-sensei is named after Yukari-sensei from Azumanga Daioh, based on his habit of saying deeply inappropriate things, and on Junichiro Tanizaki, based on his being kinda weird.

I’m sorry, I just don’t need any erotic figurines right now.

As I was leaving the Waffle House where I had dinner, I heard one guy saying to another, in a tone of faint astonishment, “She was polite, wasn’t she? Really polite.”

- Someone CUT IN FRONT OF ME IN A LINE omg.

- Suddenly I can’t understand what the heck anyone’s saying. I can’t read any of the menus on this computer, either. (There’s wi-fi, but I’m in the computer lounge because I can’t find a plug for my computer. The computer lounge smells mysteriously of Pantene.)

- Female service personnel are not all wearing makeup, and are not constantly smiling in a way that probably hurts. The men smile less, too.

- There are female tarmac workers and security guards. And one of the security guards snapped at me. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, but her intent was clear. (Her intent was “don’t stand there while you put your stuff back in your bag, I want my nice clean table back.”)

- When Japanese women facetiously hit a guy who’s flirting with them, they usually back off and miss at the last second with a sort of gesture that sends them off at an angle, making it look like they made themselves dizzy with the gesture. I saw a Korean woman actually whap a guy earlier. This startled me.

- I don’t know if this is a Korean cultural thing or a coincidence, but I’ve seen two women sharing food/drinks. Like, two straws in the same smoothie. Is this usual?

- The guys act pretty much the same except louder, I think. I’ve noticed a bunch of younger guys affecting this slow, too-deep voice (what’s the opposite of a falsetto?) – Kimiho-san does that, I thought it was just a thing of his. Apparently not. I keep hearing this and looking around to see if it’s him.

- Seriously, it is totally weird how I can’t understand what anyone’s saying. The intonation is too much like Japanese! It would be easier if I was in China or Taiwan…

I need to get off this computer now. There’s a K-drama playing on a TV over there where some guy keeps randomly breaking into perfect midwestern-accented English, I’m gonna go see if I can figure out what’s up with that.

I am at the hotel in Nagoya, all prepared to leave in the morning. I am stressed out about this, so I may walk over to the airport (the hotel is attached, but far enough away from the tarmac that you can’t hear the planes) and buy chocolate in a while. I am American and female, this is what I do in these situations.

The hotel room came with an amusing striped nightshirt. I will probably actually wear it tonight, as I think I put my pajamas in the big huge suitcase I don’t want to reopen.

I ate oxtail porridge at a Korean place for dinner, because my one desire in this life is to HORRIFY MY FAMILY. (Apparently it’s actually beef.) Also because it looked good in the picture. It was okay, but kind of bland, so I dumped in the little bowl of spicy sauce they gave me. I don’t know if that’s what that was for? It didn’t really help all that much. I think I will google around for interesting-looking Korean foods, and then tomorrow see if they number among the amenities offered by the Incheon airport. (From looking around online, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s probably too risky for me to leave the airport unless my departing flight gets delayed at least an hour.)

There was a graduation ceremony yesterday, at which I wore a tiara and held a pink scepter with a little heart covered in fake pearls. We had to give speeches, and mine in its entirety was “The Princess has no need to give a speech!” (「姫様はスピーチをする必要がない！」) This was done largely at the instigation of Sensu-sensei and Kuma-sensei, who acquired these items for me at the 100-yen-shop last term, because I am The Princess. It did not appear that they had alerted any of the rest of the faculty to this.

Last day of classes, and I just now finished the last of my job interviews while-I’m-in-Japan-at-least. I can now panic about packing instead.

I have a vague desire to go purchase gyoza and cake, but also an irrational fear of adding to the pile of recycling I need to take out in the morning. I just got this stuff organized.

I had a job interview today, and made it back in time for most of last period. My class and another one had been divided into groups last week to perform little skits, and I got into the room just before my group’s taping. I did not have my script, had forgotten we were doing this, and was trying to eat a pastry.

Atom-sensei gave me her copy of the script, so I heroically draped my suit jacket over my shoulders in the manner of a drunken sarariman (much to the dismay of the rest of the group) and read my lines. We got the award for Best Performance, which was a small paper bag of junk food and a certificate signed by a teacher who hadn’t felt like showing up for this.

I felt very proud of myself until I went to my elective, where I discovered I was supposed to have prepared a story to recite. (I have been busy, okay?) I couldn’t think of anything. I paused a lot and told the story about the time mysterious strangers at the Kentucky State Capital kept stopping me and asking me about my “squirrel friend.”

And now I have another job interview in about forty minutes.