12-11-04 > 05-12-04
November Nonchalance
As the temperature in northern Japan drops, and most of my kids and co-workers grow ill, so life changes in Japan . One becomes more sedentary, owing to a reliance on heated housing, and an urge not to waste fuel. The atmosphere grows more crisp day by day, and even short bike rides result in the sensation that one's hands no longer exist. As I write, a thin layer of snow lies on the ground, and the air is punctuated with white flakes of snow, lending it a fleeting tangibility.
Okay, enough of that. The chronicle of November and early December begins on the 13 th of November with Tammy's 21 st Birthday celebrations. These were held in Aomori , where Tammy lives, conveniently enough. Tammy was in excellent spirits, as ever, and we all squeezed into a cosy little bar in town to help her celebrate. It was nomihodai, as ever, so most people ended up pretty well lubricated early on. By the time we reached karaoke, most people were feeling worse for wear as a result of imbibing large quantities of neurodepressant . In fact, Liz had entirely conked out.
click here for all the photos from tammy's birthday
In the morning, we all piled into the Onsen before heading back to Hachinohe . The Onsen once again proved to be an excellent tool in the fight against the negative effects of booze. I make a more direct attack on alcohol using an Onsen later on in this entry.
That Thursday was the day of the Mid-Year conference. This year, the conference was held in Hachinohe . This was a double-edged sword. On the plus side, it meant that we could stay put in Hach, and entertain the visitors. Unfortunately, it meant we did not get to explore a new town, or stay in a hotel, both of which are highly enjoyable pursuits, particularly when someone else is paying.
The conference itself was the usual uninspiring conference-type guff in the main. An expert came along to tell us that in order to maintain the interest of the children, we should concentrate on speaking and listening, and make our lessons as varied as possible. Thanks for that. He then issued all and sundry with a questionnaire, in the style of a parent who offers an ice cream, after the mortuary visit.
On Thursday evening was the event that it had all been leading up to: the talent competition. For some reason, I was part of one of the acts. Aussie Alex had rewritten Gilbert and Sullivan's “The Mikado”, eliminating all but one of the songs, and all but three of the actors, who would be playing seven parts between them. A truly formidable effort. The only problem was that we had not had a full run-through with all of the three actors present, and we were thus performing script-in-hand. We were the last act of the evening. This works well for stand-up comedians, who get the most willing audiences, as a result of warm-up acts and booze.
The first acts were excellent. Mandy sang a couple of songs she wrote herself, whilst playing the piano. Marvin and Ali did a performance reminiscent of Björk , with Detroit underpinnings. It really had to be seen to be believed. Anne and Liz did a beautiful rendition of “Especially for You”, replacing the roles of Kylie and Jason, with Bush and Blair. Charlie, Alex and Stephan all banged out tunes on the guitar and piano, ranging from Coldplay , to Alex's especially heartfelt and sentimental rendition of “I Fuck Dogs.”
Before we knew what was going on, it was time for Alex, Stephan and I to take to the boards, and wow the crowd with our appalling act. This we did. My personal high point was when I had to play the part of two lovers wooing each other, and eventually consummating their union. This was accomplished via the employment of a wig, a bed sheet, voices, and some obscene noises. Alex and I also had fu employing our wildcard: a rendition of “Jump, You Fucker.” By Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Ewan's vocal participation was especially noted, as he offered such choice encouragement as, “ It's shite !” throughout our performance.
click here for all the talent photos
Theoretically, in a totally dry setting, the performance would have been pretty good. Unfortunately, it went on for too long, and by the end of the show, the owners of the bar refused to serve people, and the atmosphere turned nasty. We were lucky to get out of there alive. We had to be huddled out of the back door, and into a grubby old van, to escape the angry mobs. (Almost). The following Saturday, my Japanese teacher said to me, “Your show was really excellent.”
On the Saturday evening, we headed over to take part in Zazen meditation. This is an allegedly spiritually uplifting technique of detachment from objective reality. The actual experience is more akin to sitting in a stress-position, staring at a wall in a dimly lit room for twenty minutes, after which a monk with a stick walks around the room hitting everyone on the shoulder. In fact, the experience was quite exhilarating, since once the monk started his masochistic rounds, the hitting of other people was surprisingly loud. The mystery of the approaching crack was uplifting (hmmm).
After enduring the meditation and punishment, we all had a slap-up pot-luck banquet together. There were quite a few people there: Alex, his lady-friend Nobuko, the Germans from Rokunohe , Sasha and Katja , as well as Liz, her English friend Rich, Zack and Marti, Elly and I. Joe was the guy who publicised the event, and kindly made his house available for us all the crash afterwards.
Whilst eating, the monk brought around a bottle of whitish opaque liquid, which we were assured was “home-brew sake”. It tasted more like spoilt cider, and the fruit-flies in the glasses provided deceased support to the theory that apples were in fact the main ingredient. The photos showing stereotypical “bitter-response” faces show the effects that this dastardly concoction had on the unprepared.
click here for all of the zazen photos
Unfortunately, Rich and I developed a dangerous tendency to challenge each
other in the doing of heinous things during his stay. This started with our
spending tem minutes in the electrified pool at the Onsen, and culminated with
us both snorting lines of concentrated Pocari Sweat. The effect of this tendency
here led us to down a lot of the aforementioned heinousdrink (sic), and photograph
our reactions of disgust repeatedly.
After the meal, we all headed into town with the monk, and he wowed us with his rather excellent karaoke abilities. I was also over the moon to find that the karaoke joint had The Smiths: a very rare find over here. After we left, we found a cat, and then headed back to Joe place (sans cat). We all ended up playing Micro Machines 3D™, a game that I unfortunately played with autistic intensity on the original Playstation . My skills with the little cars vexed Joe and the other players to the extent that a controller was sacrificed and offered to the silicon gods: I found the pieces in the morning and surmised that Joe was not joking when he said, “Right, who wants to smash a fucking controller?” Conclusion: The East meditates and hits the people meditating, the east plays competitive video games, and destroys their own hardware.
On the way back the next day, we saw some politically reprehensible condoms…
The following week passed with more teaching. I also had a graffiti-related epiphany. I was walking home from a day at school, and I saw some graffiti in Japanese Katakana script. Katakana is a separate alphabet reserved for words that do not originate in Japan . This is an example of the inherent us-them mindset. Anyway, I realised that I now had enough knowledge to read the word. I gradually translated it: MA … MAN … MAN … -NKO … MANKO. Then I realised: it was the Japanese word for “ cunt ”. I was very pleased to learn that it is a universal human (male) trait to use the word cunt . Marvellous. Internationalisation at its very best. I also spotted a couple of interesting brand names.
From Saturday 27 th to Sunday 28 th November, we went to Tomo on our office trip. The journey there was spent by Boris and myself mainly making fools of ourselves with respect to the stewardess, and making her crack up during her presentations with our singular form of visual humour.
In order to patch up any diplomatic issues this might have created between Japan and America (all foreigners are automatically ambassadors for America ), I had to go and offer her a Meltykiss in recompense. My Boss talked to me about this action at the Christmas party. Allow me to clarify: a Meltykiss is in fact a delicious form of chocolate. Boris made an advert for the brand on the spot, on the bus. If I have the resources, I will upload it. Honestly, it was totally ad-libbed.
On the way to our destination, we stopped off at a pool that is the host for a mythical creature known as the “ Capa ”. Capas are a beast that try to trick you and do heinous things to you, but they have a weakness. They carry water in a concave bowl integrated into their heads. It is therefore possible to fox them into bowing, and thus losing their water and power, by bowing to them. It is odd that such a cunning creature would be so easily fooled, but hey, it's a good way to teach Japanese children the importance of bowing. Our visit to the pool was rather hairy: there were high gale force winds in effect. En route to the pool, we were blown around, and we saw a detached roof and a fallen tree. Nobody seemed to question whether it was really worth going to look at a pool of water in such treacherous weather conditions. After going to see that the pool of water was indeed a pool of water, we headed back to the bus, dodging various pieces of airborne debris and fighting to remain standing at times. Then we pressed on towards Tono , our party destination.
Once at the hotel and all unpacked, there was time to grab a quick kip, before the party began. It was a traditional affair: eating food that you are unable to identify, speaking to co-workers who you do not usually have a chance to talk to in the office, and singing karaoke, of course. The photos tell the story.
click here for all of the office trip photos
After the party, we headed to a local karaoke joint. The novelty of the place was that it used some form of analysis system to determine how good it though the song was, and gave a percentage-based score. The percentage given corresponded to how many tiles it would take off the picture of a nude lady that it was displaying. This resulted in everyone (girls and boys) crying “TWO NIPPLES!” at the end of each song. It did not happen, until the very last song, which was half-sung by a local: the machine was obviously xenophobic. An exultant cheer went up, and we went home satisfied, or so I thought.
On arrival at the hotel, I was seized by the urge to onsen. I grabbed my kit and headed downstairs to the bath, half-expecting it to be closed. I was pleased to see that it was open, and I proceeded to have an excellent midnight solitary onsen experience. I reckon it must have helped, because the next morning I did not pay nearly as heavily as I expected for the previous night's debauchery.
On the way back on Sunday, we went for a light stroll up a hill, and my supervisor and I were chatting about the previous night's merriment. “We got two nipples in the end.” I said. “Yes, but we never reached 100%, and that is the only way to see the er … mysterious triangle … so maybe we need to aim for one hundred.” came the reply. Well, quite.
The next stop was a farming museum, which did not seem that exciting initially. The first bizarre occurrence was the fact that it said “a horse” on the map, so I went to take a look. Sure enough, there was a horse at that point. Next, I stumbled across a penis shrine. Yes, that's right, a shrine to penises. When I came to Japan , I had no idea this sort of thing existed. There were members of all shapes and sizes, as well as an anatomically correct straw couple. Pure genius.
The following weekend was the event that all of my Japanese learning had been leading up to: the Japanese Language Proficency Test in Sendai . On Friday 3 rd December I had a new experience: The Bullet Train. I was very excited. Elly and I boarded the train and we took our seats. I expected to be wowed by the superlative speeds, but the experience turned out to be disappointing from an excitement perspective. Instead, I marvelled at the way the train made travelling so fast seem effortless. Corners are so gentle that they are almost imperceptible, and the acceleration and deceleration is also very gentle. This means that the whole journey seems slower than a British Rail journey, until you realise that you have travelled 400 kilometres in the previous hour.
Once we arrived in Sendai , we found our room, and waited for the others to arrive. Once Liz, Chris, Mary and Jeff were in the area, we explored Sendai . It's quite an impressive city, especially when you have been living in the sticks. We looked around for a while, then went to a bar and made various expressions for the camera.
Saturday in Sendai was spent looking round shops, and conducting other such frippery. As on most such excursions in Japan , there were several opportunities to take photos of truly odd products. We also managed to discover a shrine within the shopping mall, which was a novel one on me. We also happened upon a bar called “ Yellowslut Adult”, I kid ye not. Self-deprecating humour is all very well, but I felt that this was taking things a little too far.
In the evening, we visited a jazz bar called “Count”, which was excellent: the owner had 8000 records stored in the walls, and he displayed the currently playing record on a music stand. The sound system was at least 30 years old, but it was big and crisp-sounding. Sonny Rollins was played. I nipped to the loo at one point to discover that someone had an unfortunate mis -spelling of the name of the place in the lavatorial graffiti: see the photos for proof. So it was that at two in the morning we decided that we were prepared for the Japanese test, and we headed back to the hotel.
click here for all of the photos from sendai
So, on Saturday, we headed to the University, to take the test. On the way, we passed a clothing store called Sweat Shop . “How remarkably honest of them,” I thought, “To admit the source of their clothes.” On the taxi went. We arrived at the test centre, where hundreds of people from all over northern Japan had congregated to take the test. We had the obligatory pre-test chats:
“Are you ready?”
“No
way.”
“Right,
so that means you could either have not prepared or, more likely, you are
unwilling to admit that you have put in a lot of time and effort for this
then.”
Then it was time to go in. The test itself was an interesting experience, if not a particularly confidence-inspiring one. The instructions for the test were almost entirely incomprehensible to me. Almost, except for the part where they held up yellow and red cards, and the instructions said “- BLAH BLAH BLAH yellow card BLAH BLAH . BLAH BLAH red card BLAH BLAH .” I surmised from this that the cards were in fact red and yellow cards. Congratulating myself heartily, I moved onto the test, in which I understood a similar amount, but made semi-educated guesses. The only problem with this strategy was that on the questions that I did understand, I noticed that there was a trick aspect to them, ingeniously designed to catch the sort of person who might be making educated guesses at the answers. Only time will tell.
After the test, Elly and I headed back up to Aomori on the bullet train.
Thus concludes November's instalment of my JET experience diary. I hope you enjoyed it. I am writing this in January 2005, so I know what is going to be in the next episode. Here's some clues to whet your appetite:
NOTE: One of these clues was intentionally fabricated.
See you next time!