Smoker’s Paradise
Often, I think Japan is the most ridiculous place on planet earth. Then I remember the White House press room.
I learned something very exciting the other day. My city has banned walking while smoking on city streets. I know this doesn’t make sense to most of my friends from America who’ve never been to Japan, but please bear with me when I describe why this is exciting to me.
I walk to work lately, and I see about 300 other pedestrians and bicyclists on my commute. This is a hustling bustling asian metropolis. It’s so crowded that little old ladies often get knocked down and trampled on if they try to get near the subway station entrance. Furthermore, the sidewalks are narrow. Tokyo is no city of wide broad promenades. No, we have tiny paved footpaths that run between skyscrapers. The main reason that you see homeless under bridges instead of on the streets is because they’d block foot traffic. It’s so crowded that you can tell what the guy in front of you had for breakfast. This is in stark contrast to my hometown of a little less than 1 million where you can’t find that many people on all of the streets combined at 8AM. In my hometown, they’re all in their cars inhaling fresh air on the way to work because they drive. Here there’s TONS of people. If you’re not careful, you’ll step on somebody.
Now, consider that about 40% of the Japanese population are active smokers. I’m not talking about smoking only at parties or bars; they’re chain smoking and lighting up any chance they get. Among my friends, 70% smoke. Lately I try to avoid them because I think I absorb so much tar and pollutants that I lose years of my life. I mean, why hang out with somebody if they’re going to make you die sooner? So naturally, when the disgusting businessman walking ahead of me lights up, I get to smell (and for the rest of the day, smell like) his “eau de cancer-causing nicotine”.
I guess the reason that the new law was passed is to relieve the discomfort and breathing difficulties of Japan’s aging population. Now the leagues of 80-year-old chronic pulmonary disease-suffering Japanese can celebrate. I’m happy about it too. However, I still see some rebel salarymen stalking down the road, smoking a cigarette and running from the law, which is punishable by a 2000yen (18 dollar) fine. I despise them, and wonder if they allow citizen’s arrest in Japan.
One funny thing is that standing around smoking is apparently OK. Some wiseguy put an ashtray next to the subway entrance. It’s winter, so the cold air now flows down into the station from the entrance. All the smoke goes straight into the station. Gotta love this place. Gotta love it.
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I Feel Confused
I have 2 opportunities in front of me, but can only choose one. I’ve had this feeling before. This deadlock. Indecision. Dreadful hesitancy to take the wrong path. I think the first time I felt it was when I was 13. Let me explain:
I was homeschooled as a child. I went to Montessori school and from then on, learned how to read, write, multiply, divide, add, subtract, solve equations, estimate the atomic weight of a molecule, write a prize-winning essay, et cetera–all from my home, out of books or from watching public television. I had time with friends. My mother got together with local homeschooling parents and us kids played baseball in the park. I loved pitching. I had even gone to some weekly classes where I did my first science project, learned to play the ukulele, and joined the boy scouts.
At the age of 13, already a very serious boy, I considered the future of my education. College was a must. My father was valedictorian and has a Master’s from a major national institution and just being related to him I felt too smart not to go. I went to the library and read “Psychology Today”, Kahlil Gibran, and Herman Hesse.
I was afraid of the wild, messy world of other kids who often did drugs, wasted time, and started fights out of boredom. Most of all, I was afraid of wasting my time with them.
Then, at the beginning of summer I got the worst haircut ever. It was bad. It was a flattop that was shaved. My mother had taken me, a self-conscious 13-year-old to a barber who used the latest technical convenience–an electric trimmer attached to a vacuum–to level my head. It was fast, easy, and had horrible results. I felt flattened. I didn’t even want to go out in public. If I had to go somewhere with my family, I was content to stay in the car and read a book. Looking back now, I realize that I felt as thought it was then end of the world for me.
Then, instead of retreating to my books, I decided I needed to do something new. Maybe it was because I watched Indiana Jones movies, where Harrison Ford’s character always learns the language before he visits a distant land. Maybe it was because I imagined myself growing out my hometown, out of my family, and traveling myself. I decided I needed to go to Public High School and learn Spanish.
So I went with my bad haircut to the school and enrolled in Spanish I, along with a bunch of other requirements. It was scary, but I decided to do it.
For a few reasons, most likely related to the opportunities in front of me, I feel like I’ve got a bad haircut again. I’m not sure of myself and not sure how it will all shake out.
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4 Good Lies Analysed
Situation 1)
I had a conference call with a VP and my manager the other day. We were talking about my branch office budget and revenue stream. My manager had some issues with the terms, so he fed the VP some lies about Japanese import laws to get leverage.
I think that this was a logic-defying lie that was told out of personal necessity for my manager. He wanted more revenues for the Japanese business. We had discussed the import laws in question at work the previous day, and my manager cited facts that were clearly opposite during the conference call. I think it’s interesting that when the logic doesn’t fit a certain outcome, according to Japanese culture it is acceptable to discount facts and procedures in order to make things happen the way they want. I think that’s one of the reasons that criminal trials are never won on technicalities in Japan. Furthermore, it’s accepted that if a case comes to trial, the judge always has the final say, rather than laws, if any. It’s this non-logic that’s responsible for “case-by-case” style problem resolution in Japan.
Situation 2)
My female co-worker told me that I use chopsticks well after I dropped some food in my lap.
I don’t think this was Japanese sarcasm. I think it was said out of pity, but that she was trying to say something that didn’t sound pitiful. Nonetheless, an impromptu chopstick technique lesson would have been more useful to me. Then again, Japanese women are trained to avoid criticizing. I think that constructive criticism can be a wonderful thing, but it’s also dangerous because the Japanese ego is such a delicate thing.
Situation 3)
The people at the gym told my wife that she is a little chubby.
The reason why the constructive criticism rule does not apply here is because the trainers at the gym are health experts, but they said this purely to make it easier for them to sell expensive personal training sessions. I think this lie may have caused problems because now when I suggest going to the gym, she tells me that she feels fat before we go, even after visiting the gym she seems to feel good about herself.
Situation 4)
When shopping, the salesgirl told me that it was the last shirt available in that particular color. I bought it and 2 hours later there was another shirt exactly the same on the rack.
I bought the shirt because I liked it, not because she told me about it’s scarcity. When I go shopping, I feel like I see right through the sales pitch at the retail shops, especially in Japan, and especially because they say such outrageously stupid stuff to me. I’ve had salesmen compare me to David Beckham, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise, and Keifer Sutherland. They’ve told me that I should buy a particular shirt because I’m white and its color matches my skin. The salesgirl turned a little red when I came back to the store. I laughed at her.
Heard any good lies lately? Please feel free to comment.
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OK so Tokyo has interesting people who come up with interesting ways to drink alcohol. As Gaijin Tonic puts it, “Japan is a pisshead’s paradise! It’s a land of happy drunks, relaxed alcohol laws, and hilarious novelty bars which are open all night.” The latest top 10 list on his blog details the weirdest places to get your drink on. It’s a good read if you’d like to know more about Japan’s drunken fantasies revealed.
http://gaijintonic.com/2007/10/04/tokyos-top-ten-weird-watering-holes/
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Friendly People
Yesterday when I got on the Ginza line go to home, two foreign men sat down on either side of me. They introduced themselves as Tim. There were 3 Tims, all on the same bench on the train on the way home. They were vacationers, and they were terribly friendly and inquired about my life in Japan.
It turns out that the older fellow, who looked about 50, said that he was from New York and grew up in occupied Japan. He said that he lived in Washington park (Now Yoyogi), Azabu, and Meguro during his 5-year stay. The other guy was German, and he looked like he had jetlag because he was falling asleep. We had a nice chat about what it was like to grow up in occupied Japan, and he had questions about what it’s like to work at a Japanese company and live with a Japanese wife.
When I got home and told the story to my wife, she reacted negatively. She doesn’t like the idea of talking to strangers. What’s so bad about talking to strangers? I wonder if my wife will meet Japanese people in public and talk to them when she’s in America.
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3 Beautiful Things About Japan
Cyclist’s Paradise
Turner gives poetic details on his picturesque tour of southern Kyushu. Link
Live Porn Show in Tokyo Public Park
The NYTimes gives details on an interesting Japanese phenomenon. Link
Japanese Inventors Help Men Pee Better
TokyoMango summarizes some of the hot new inventions for bathrooms. Link
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Ideas
I’m going to add some pictures to my posts. Time to spiff this place up a little more.
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Dirty Chinese Restaurants
I usually go out for lunch at one of the 100’s of restaurants near my office in a posh area of Tokyo. There’s dozens of delicious places, with every imaginable type of cuisine you could think of, within 50 paces of my office door. Yep. Lunch is something to look forward to every day. The hardest part about lunch is choosing which restaurant we (my whole section at work, a total of 4 people) want to patronize that day. This is Japan, so we always go together, nominate establishments, build a consensus, and collectively decide based on consideration for each other’s likes and dislikes. This is Japan, where we go with the flow, and sometimes my boss chooses the place.
I have a middle-aged boss here at my company. He’s actually 58, but because Japanese people live so long, the term “middle-aged” extends until 75. Old age is after 80. These dates are even bigger if you’re from Okinawa. He’s a nice guy. I know this because he told me so when I asked him for a raise. He likes watching soccer, works out every weekend, and doesn’t smoke or drink, making him more agreeable than 80% of old Japanese men. However, when he chooses the restaurant we visit for lunch, it is ALWAYS a Dirty Chinese Restaurant.
It seems like no matter how posh your neighborhood in Tokyo, there is always a tiny, cockroach-infested, wet-noodle-smelling restaurant with recycled plastic bags hanging outside to dry somewhere within 1500 feet. Keep in mind there are no zoning laws in this city, so it makes it very easy for anybody to open a humble health-code-be-damned noodle shop on their front porch anytime they want. So, this results in some flavorful restaurants, none of which I’ve gotten food poisoning from yet, praise Jesus. My boss loves this type of restaurant.
Maybe it’s because there seems to be a kind of caste system for restaurants in Tokyo. The light, airy, Japanese-French fusion restaurant with white decoration and wall-to-ceiling windows is populated by 90% office ladies and socializing housewives during lunch. The bossa-nova blaring, hip restaurant with curries is where female college students outnumber everyone else 8 to 1. Likewise, the Dirty Chinese Restaurant is filthy, smoke-filled, with a menu of 8 items written in marks-a-lot and posted on the wall, chairs that are actually footstools covered in vinyl cloth, and full of balding men in old yellowed suits. Not my favorite place to spend my allotted hour of freedom during lunch.
I can never forget some of the places he’s taken us. One time, we waited for 5 minutes in the absolutely foul air of the doorway to one restaurant, which looked like it may have been a car garage in it’s previous life. There were no windows, black scuffs on the walls, and a brown ceiling from all the smoking that had been going on in there. This place was so dirty that they had softporn magazines in a little cubby under the table for people to read after (or before) their meals.
Another place was a noodle shop where we paid 1200 yen ($10) for soba noodles and sat at the same table that was about 2×3′, our knees touching because the place was so cramped. Yet another place specialized in stir fry. The food there was not so bad, but the last time we went I found a hair in my food.
The absolute funniest thing is that whenever we go to one of his Dirty Chinese Restaurants he always complains about the food after we leave. That’s Japan.
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Chicken-scratches
That’s what my Japanese looks like. It looks like what happens to hard clay when chickens wander through, scrounging for bugs to supplement their dinner. I’ve seen chicken-scratches before. I had chickens when I was a kid. That’s why I know what my Japanese resembles, even on a good day.
To be honest with myself, I study Kanji about 2-3x/week, and I am getting really good at finding reasons to procrastinate. It’s a bad thing. I really need to find a way to get over this horrible habit. It’s just that studying Japanese is such a bore.
I study Japanese because I need to be constantly improving my skills. If I study in my free time, I can increase my Japanese vocabulary by 50 words per month, which does wonders for my reading comprehension. That’s only IF I study.
The way that I’ve learned to study, and the way which has been proven to work, is to take a single Kanji character, assemble some words that use it, memorize their meanings, and copy the Kanji dozens of times in my Kanji study notebook while saying the word each time. I have a nice mechanical pencil just for the purpose. I have to study some word like “輸出”, which means “export” and sounds like “yushutsu” or in American English “You Shoe Zoo” said really fast. To study this word, I copy it, in excruciating pencil. There are 21 individual lines or pencil-strokes in this word. Compare that to “Export”. There are 11 pencil-strokes in “Export”, and that’s even with a capital “E”. I think that Japanese requires more dexterity than English, and my handwriting in English is not the best to begin with.
I look like a a weirdo when I’m memorizing Japanese words. This is because while I write, I say the word out loud. There’s something about saying it that makes it easier to remember. When I study, I sit down at the table, hold my pencil, make chicken-scratches, and say You Shoe Zoo once every 20 seconds as I’m copying the Kanji. I look like a crazy person. That’s me, that guy in the corner of my office during lunch, saying “You Shoe Zoo. You Shoe Zoo. You Shoe Zoo.” I mean, what else can it look like other than schizophrenia? Sometimes I even rock back and forth, depending on the complexity of the Kanji. That’s me, Mr. Nutcase.
I just had to get that off my chest.
Filed under: japanese | 1 Comment
Oasis, what horrors!
I am a member of Oasis.
What’s Oasis? An exclusive nightclub in the center of Ginza? An arabian-themed massage-parlour in a back alley of Roppongi? No, actually it’s a “Sports Club” as they say in Japan or as we say in English, a private gym. It’s a place where I can swim laps in a 25m-long pool, practice my golf swing, lift weights and attend a surprising variety of fitness programs. It’s keeping me fit for now. There’s things that I like about it, including the amazing Japanese body-composition-analyzing machine that gives you a full-body evaluation, the fact that they have “Hawaiian Power Pilates” classes 2x/week, and their dedicated, understanding service staff. But there’s one room in the gym that I have issues with: the locker room.
The locker room is comfortably furnished. It’s got plenty of lockers, vanity mirrors, coin-operated massage chairs, a vending machine, a sauna, and a big Japanese shower room. It’s got a swimsuit dehydrator, a fan, and a blow-dryer at every sink. It’s got free cotton swabs for your ears, shaving lotion, hair tonic, body wash, and 2-in-1 shampoo. It’s got it all. I guess that’s why so many people go in there.
That’s right. Many people are in there. Mostly Japanese men. From my informal survey, mostly old men. Sometimes the cleaning lady comes in, too, while there are old Japanese men, doing what people do in the locker room; change clothes, dehydrate their swimsuits, take a bath, spend a few minutes in the sauna, and generally relax after their workout. But the big kicker for me about this locker room is that all the old Japanese men, and me, the foreigner, do all this stuff completely naked. Sometimes the naked men do things a little differently than we do in America. For example, I saw a man yesterday who had just left the shower. He decided to dry all of the hair on his body. With a Hairdryer. In front of the Vanity Mirror. Completely Naked. With special attention to his Penis.
Let me describe the scene to you better. This prune of a skinny man, with slightly saggy skin, a balding patch, and slightly bloodshot eyes was standing there, hairdryer in his right hand, his left hand gently brushing his pubic hair, with his hips bent slightly towards the mirror so that his balls could get some of the warm breeze. Imagine that. I can’t even begin to understand what was going through his mind when he was doing this. Maybe he was thinking about the warm air going over his lil pickle. Maybe he was thinking that he should get his pubes as dry as possible to prevent crotch-rot. Maybe he wasn’t thinking at all, just acting the way that any uninhibited, 50-year-old healthy Japanese man would act after taking a bath and realizing that he needed to dry his bush in front of the mirror for EVERYBODY to see as they left the showers.
I understand needing to dry yourself. I don’t understand why anybody needs to dry their junk with a hairdryer in front of the mirror in a public setting. I, as a red-blooded American, don’t want to let my pubes fly through the air. I also don’t want to see that much of any man ever again.
Yes, it shocked me. I can’t just chalk it up to “that’s Japan”. Needless to say I got dressed and ran out as soon as I could. Then my wife and I swapped stories about the gross-outs she’d seen in the women’s locker room, because we often go together. I just had to get it out.
Filed under: health | 4 Comments
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