November 2009Archives

by Claytonian

When I was young,　I learned to fear doctors like any sane American should. What kind of creepo wants to make you disrobe and touch you while you cough? I can do that alone. And they are only interested in you when you are sick. I'm pretty sure they practice voodoo too.

My Japanese friends get very concerned about me whenever I sneeze, cough, or yawn. These are signs that, according to them, I really need to drop whatever I am doing and go to the doctor. "Hey, we are going to take away one of your vacation days if you go. But you absolutely must go."

And so, every once in a while and against my better judgment, I find myself receiving medical care.  It's a horrible process, but relatively brief. They want to get you out of there as soon as possible. Maybe Japanese doctors make small talk with the natives, but for me it's blitzkrieg-diagnosis time.

This week I went to a skin doctor to get my dry winter skin treated. "What seems to be the problem?" says a woman as I enter the examination room, which protects my medical privacy with thin curtains.

"Well," says I, "I'm hoping to get some bath-tar. I have dry skin and I got this tar back in the US that you put in the bath to make--" At this point the doctor comes in and the lady just walks away. So I attempt to tell him about my medical tar. He asks two questions and tells me my diagnosis in English--they love breaking out the medical words, words we don't know anyways, to prove they know English before switching back to machine-gun-speed medical Japanese-- and that's that. I remind him that I am really keen on taking a tar bath, but can see the writing on the wall.

My prescription is waiting for me and I head out to the drug store. In Japan, the drugstore is always right next to the hospital. They should probably just combine them, but that would be too obvious; must maintain the illusion that doctors aren't throwing medicine at you or on the take from companies. The drug store people always like to ask you if you are suffering from this or that. No, the doc just sent me here for kicks. Then they give you directions on how to take the medicine, which is the same as the directions you get from the doctor, but it's nice to hear them again to make sure I didn't make any listening mistakes that will kill me. Keep in mind that this exchange of words is in front of the whole store, so if you have a case of hemorrhoids, everybody knows. But hey, when you make a blog post about your trip to the skin doctor, everybody knows you have dry skin, so.

In case you are wondering, no, I didn't get my bath-tar.

by Anna Kunnecke 

Since I live in Japan, it really feels like I should be making the most of it.  Studying tea ceremony, or karate, or finally learning the kanji characters.  At least watching Japanese TV.  But I don't.  

Now in my own defense, let me hasten to say that in fact I do watch some TV, and I can read and write enough to get along, but I haven't devoted myself to unraveling the mysteries of Japanese culture.  Nor have I become a student of traditional Japanese arts.  

A few years ago I had the delightful task of interviewing Japanese artisans for a radio show.  I talked to a family of yukata makers, a man who maintains and pulls jinrikisha (the two-wheeled buggy pulled by a swift runner), a performer of koto (a 13-stringed musical instrument), a tea ceremony master, and countless others.  It was a sensory feast of Japan's most venerable and ancient pursuits.  Perfect!  In the process, I would get to sample everything, and then I planned to pick an art to properly study. 

I tried, sort of.  I went to several tea ceremony lessons with an absolutely lovely teacher.   I was captivated by the grace, the rhythm, the timelessness of it, the way everything--conversation, traffic, phone calls--was suspended for that ritualized, mostly silent twenty minutes.  I found that I had a bit of a knack for the slow movements that brought the green powdered tea up on a bamboo scoop and the dainty tap-tap before laying it down.  I also found that I was completely hopeless when it came to the one-handed folding of the silk square.   My knees and ankles were in agony even after only twenty minutes of sitting on my knees in seiza, even on forgiving tatami mats, even with a compassionate cushion.  As a child, I would have sneered at my creaky self.  

I asked the teacher how long it would take to be able to do the ceremony adequately.  Oh, you know, years.  Not to mention that tea ceremony incorporates many of the other traditional arts--kimono, shuji, and ikebana--to be done properly.  I quailed at the thought of sacrificing every Saturday for the next five years just to be able to do the ceremony not particularly well.  It takes a lifetime to become a master.  I knew that intellectually, but couldn't handle what it actually meant.  

I blunted my disappointment by reminding myself that I am a full-time working mother.  I am a devoted student of Japanese daily life.  I didn't want to drink deeply of the old arts so much as take little sips, the exact kind of tasting that Japanese culture most disdains.  To dabble is to desecrate.  It was the same everywhere: I looked into aikido, but the sensei told me sternly of daily 5AM practices and bloody dogi.  I picked up my old kanji workbooks and put them down again in exhaustion.  

I am not generally a lazy person.  But I was daunted by this, this most familiar of cultures.  I felt the same way I did in fifth grade--if only I had started the study of something, anything, when I was three!  I could have played the piano, or been a gymnast, or a figure skater, or even a Mouseketeer by then!  (My goals have only changed slightly, as you can see.)  I mourned, at ten, that I was too old to learn anything properly.  That seems ludicrous to me now, but perhaps my future self will look back at me and smite her forehead.  Leave the laundry, she'll say.  Issue the invoices a little late this month.  So what?  But she is many years away, and her mastery of life is as daunting to me now as that of the tea master's.  There's a reason why it takes a lifetime.  

By Kevin Cooney

By Martin Faynot

Venice in Tokyo ? Yes we can ! This is not Disneyland Tokyo, but Jiyugaoka. To be honest, I wasn't even surprised when I discovered these fake Venitian "palaces" with a "canal" (40cm of water), this "typical" Venitian bridge, and even... a gondola (hidden by the bridge on the drawing), that couldn't even pass under the bridge. I said to myself : "Don't panic, this is just Tokyo ! Sit down and sketch !" 

By Claytonian

Despite all the drawbacks of being a stranger in a strange land, it brings interesting opportunities to meet people. In general, the Japanese are not cold towards strangers. A little shy and scared sometimes, yes, but for the most part the farther into the countryside you go, the more curious about you they get, which leads to interaction sooner or later. I would be slightly surprised if someone in Tokyo treated me differently from a native, because foreigners (or GONADs as Cooney so wonderfully coined it) are pretty common in the city. But I'm no expert on the big city as of yet, so lets draw the focus back to the inaka, or countryside.

If you take a seat in any kind of eating establishment in the inaka, you are probably going to get an interview that consists of a very predictable pattern: Where are you from? Where is that? Is it near California? Are you an English teacher? Do you cook? And so on. The interview can get a bit annoying in that we are confronted with these questions regularly and the questioner will soon forget your answers, but you can't deny that it is a good way to meet people and start friendships*. To top it off, the natives will probably treat you to something! Just remember to pay the goodwill forward.

I've lived in real inaka before, but my current town is considered to be inaka too, especially by snooty Tokyoites, who are up to their eyeballs in GONADs, so sometimes I get the old interview and insta-friend treatment here. The other day I got a bit of a surprise when a man I was passing on the street stopped me. He launched into a story about how just after the war he made friends with an American MP. He told me, and repeated many times, the name of the American: "Richard Anderson DICK!"** I, finding his story touching, attempted to google the name to see if we could find out what ever happened to Mr. DICK!, but didn't have much luck. In any case, my new friend invited me into his house and we had a little feast. I promised to come again.

You get these nice surprises, and come into contact with kind strangers all the time over here. They treat you well, and you can never repay them. It's beautiful, and it's so very Japan.

--
* Many friendships end the very night they begin with a phenomenon called shakoujirei (social obligation), in which the person says you should come over and hang out sometime, but doesn't really mean it. Try not to be disappointed if you never hear from the person again. Some relationships, like rare elementary particles, can't survive being outside of the hadron collider that is an izakaya.

**I changed the "middle" name to protect the anonymity of the veteran, wherever he may be. I guess Mr. DICK! was an OG GONAD. I didn't bother to point out to my elderly friend that Richard and DICK! are probably the same name.

by Anna Kunnecke 

  

If you want to cause a ruckus, you could always carry around a fake bag in Tokyo.  I had no idea.  Near-strangers will rush up to you and hiss anxiously, "Um, did you know that your bag...isn't real?"

There is an alley somewhere in California so famous for its designer knockoffs that it once featured in a Sex And The City storyline.  When my old buddy found herself in that fabled spot a few months ago, she grabbed me a satchel and sent it to me as a lark; she knew it would make me smile.  

The thing is, I had been wishing for a new bag.  And this one is black and soft and slouchy and has nice shiny silver hardware on it.  It can be folded small and chic or opened up to hold great piles of stuff, and the handles are soft and forgiving on tired shoulders.  I took a little shine to it.  

For the record, I am the proud owner of a legitimate leather reticule with a venerable French name on it, and it was expensive and beautiful and worth every penny.  (Even though I paid in yen.)  I've used it every day for nearly four years now, and it's a bit battered but still elegant and functional.  I walked into the store several months pregnant and plunked down a wad of cash for the lizard-embossed taupe rectangle that would serve as briefcase, diaper bag, and everything in between.  It was a poignant rite of passage, to buy myself something both substantial and decadent with money I'd earned myself.  

But four years later, I'm ready for a little change.  So I just threw my shiny new impostor over my shoulder one day, not thinking of anything other than the fact that it would look hot with my shoes.  It attracted rather more attention than I expected.  Friends looked askance.  "What's up with the bag?  Where did you get it?" was a polite way of saying, "I hope you didn't pay full price for that, honey, or you are one naïve customer."  I got curious, and kept carrying it.  Interestingly, of all the people who commented on it, not one person mentioned the poor designers whose pockets were being gouged by the scourge of knockoffs; the ethics of copying didn't really seem to be part of the problem.  One friend finally put her finger on it: 

"It says something, that you might not know it's a fake."

"Well obviously it's not real leather; it's vinyl!"

"That's not what I mean.  It's like you don't value yourself."

This struck me as ironic.  Women all around Tokyo, and not just wealthy ones, carry thousands of dollars on their wrists, and what I usually wonder when I see them is what they had to do in order to afford it.  You hear tales of young girls performing sexual favors to feed their designer habit, or hostesses who wheedle expensive trinkets from hapless customers as tokens of affection.  When every train carriage is populated with an explosion of the particularly ubiquitous Leather Vittleton, you have to conclude that it's not about the fashion, it's about the statement.  And the statement proclaims status, but something else, too: something to do with playing by the rules.  

Who knew it would be so easy to be a rebel?  Me and my sweet pleather bag, we're drawing concerned gazes all over Tokyo.  I am intensely fascinated by this, and secretly I'm also kind of enjoying it.  Maybe I'll try a green mohawk next.

By Kevin Cooney

 

I struggled for a while trying to popularize an emo-con to demark sarcasm in typed text.  I have both lost and made unintentional friends due to misunderstood e-communication. "Oh I am soooo excited to go to Steve's party."  You see, there is an obvious need for this universally understood emo-con. Just think of the sanity it could restore to youtube video comments, and endless bickering threads on Japan "discussion" forums. The need is clearly out there, but when will some clever anonymous netizen deliver the sarcastic hieroglyph that finally goes viral and ends the epic miscommunication everywhere on the net.

 

Another place I have found our current linguistic options lacking is in the endlessly spouted term "Gaijin" or "Gaikokujin".  This word is abused, misused and entirely lacking in certain discussions. 

 

I was thoroughly not enjoying my dinner, while next to me a Japanese man and woman, slurring slightly from the mojitos, picked apart the injustice of "Gaijin stealing Japanese women." The gentleman, believe it or not ladies, was bemoaning the ease at which Gaijin men poach the local ladies but Japanese men rarely are successful in the reverse direction.  Impelled to butt in (I'm such a Gaijin) I leaned over and pointed out that by government statistics more than two-thirds of international marriages in Japan involve a Japanese man and a foreign woman.  Less than a third of them involve a foreign man and a Japanese woman.  This is fact straight from the Japanese government.  It is not open for debate.  He was, as I'm sure many readers are right now, in disbelief.  The issue at hand though is rather one of linguistics. He wasn't talking about Gaikokujin, he was talking about GONADs.

 

To explain further however I must point out that the wide majority of married foreign women in Japan come from China, Korea and the Philippines.  The gentleman however was more specifically talking about white or black foreigners when using the term Gaijin.  We are all guilty of this in someway.  Walking down the street in Shibuya we see the dorky white dude and his Asian counter part and think... oh look an international couple.  We pass a Japanese man with his Chinese bride and think, "Oh look! McNuggets are only 100 yen today."  The wide majority of international marriages are mostly invisible to people watchers.  But the statistics say different.

 

The term Gaijin is too often invoked when talking about issues relating only to non-Asian foreigners in Tokyo.  Often its usage fails to include the great majority of foreigners, largely Asian living in Japan.  Of course they, if anything bear a more difficult burden for being a foreigner in their daily lives, but in the general discussion of Japanese, Non-Japanese issues they are not the ones being talked about.  The words Gaijin, or Gaikokujin are not really applied properly and inclusively.

 

Into this void I suggest the word GONAD.  I am a GONAD.  Many of my best friends are GONADs.  And often when I hear people discuss Gaijin life in Japan they are really talking about their GONADs.  That is, "Gaijin of Non Asian Descent."

 

So if the soused salaryman had said as he meant, "It is difficult for me to get a GONAD in the sack." He'd still be a moron, but somewhere closer to the truth. In the self obsessed, mini-western world theme park we've created in Roppongi, Hiro and Aoyama the word Gaijin is used incorrectly and incompatibly with the demographic facts of an international Tokyo. 

 

I suggest we add this subtle distinction so those late night carping sessions at Pubs across the city reflect who we are actually talking about.  All 100% of the Gaijin community are foreigners, but let's not presume to think that the issues of us GONADS define the experience here for the majority of non-Japanese.

 

 

 

By Martin Faynot

Second image of Jimbocho : as well as really old houses in Tokyo, there are a few cafes that haven't changed since the 50's. "Ladrio" is one of them. When you step inside, it's a kind of a timeslip back to postwar Tokyo (fortunately I wasn't born at this time though). Every item, cup, lamp, frame seems to keep their place defiantly against the years!
By the way, I'm going to hold an exhibition in Jimbocho with a lot more of Kanda-Jimbocho images like this one. It will be held at "Hon to Machi no annaijo" gallery from November 14th to December 11th.

For more information : http://www.cafemarutan.com

by Anna Kunnecke

 

The kids are coming home from preschool with bags and bags of damp laundry.  The clothes are filthy, covered in mud, and quickly turn rank and sour.  But I don't mind it one bit.  There is great delight in knowing that my daughter is spending great gobs of time in her natural state, which is to say covered in mud, leaves, sticks, sand, bugs, and water.   There is equal delight in having her returned to me every day washed clean, damp hair tied up in a tiny ponytail, fresh and clean and ready to walk home.

I'm telling you, this preschool stuff?  It's the secret to the universe.  

I am happy that she gets dirty, and I would be happy to participate in it about once or twice a week.  But I am happiest of all that she gets absolutely filthy almost every day, and I only need to be involved...well...once or twice a week.  

As far as I can tell, this dirtiness is all part of the plan at hoikuen (preschool).  There is a sense of entitlement in Japan when it comes to childhood, a belief that little kids are not just allowed but almost obligated to run around like hellions, dig in the dirt, and get filthy.  It's considered one of the sweetest phases of life, this time when you can run free and make a mess of yourself, and I can't help but wonder if the poignancy comes from knowing that such freedom will be short-lived.  The day they start first grade, they'll be marching to a different beat, and it will include mops and brooms.  

In any case, there are a lot of preschool activities that have to do with dirt.  There is the ceremonious making ofsunadango, (balls of sand, folks, just balls of sand) which is a playground rite of passage that apparently hasn't slackened since I was in kindergarten about a thousand years ago.  Then there is the yearly digging for sweet potatoes, imo hori, and the attendant mud communing.  There's the planting of the seeds, and the watching them grow, and the gleeful picking of the green thing that sprouts and eating it.  In the city, we don't take much for granted.  Food popping up out of the ground?  Now that's some serious magic.

Even the daily noon meal is hooked into the larger idea that food is connected to dirt.  Each day, the teachers set out a tray laden with a serving of that day's lunch under a neat glass box so that parents can see what their kids are eating.  Next to the tray is a little basket full of leafy carrot tops, onion peels, zucchini stems and sandy spinach roots.  In other words, it's clear to see, somebody made this meal from vegetables that were pulled right out of the ground, not too long ago, and not too far from here in the scheme of things.  It's so rooted, so connected, and so earthy, sometimes I get a little misty.

by Claytonian

I'm only human, and a man, so I can't help but glancing if a pretty young girl walks by.  Of course, there is proper etiquette to ogling correctly in public: be discrete, look no longer than a few seconds, keep your mouth closed, never do it around your girlfriend, and never look at a mom. That last one in particular should go without saying, but sometimes it's pretty hard to tell if someone is a mom in Japan, as the ladies wear fashions of the wrong style to be properly identified as mothers.

I come from a country where parents dress properly. That is to say, like old people. If you get married and/or pop out a miracle of creation, you have a duty to your fellow citizens to gain weight as a sign that you are off the market. It's just polite. Then you should take pains to switch to bad clothes. Anything that's out, in fashion terms, is in for you. So that means no miniskirts, no highlights, no keffiyehs, no sharp suits.  Society will accept you only if you wear flannel, sweats, or your acid-washed jeans from the 90s. And anything that lets your ponderous belly peek out a little is recommended. It's just common sense for American parents.

But the Japanese. Oh, where did we go wrong with them?  The mothers care about how they look. Can you imagine the confusion? "Oh, hey what's up, hot mama-- whoah! You really are a momma!" That ain't right. It disturbs the natural order!  The fathers get in on the act too, with goatees, fauhawks, decori shirts, and holey jeans.  How old are you, young man? Because that's what sixteen year olds in Japan wear too! A line must be drawn!

It wasn't always this way. Maybe before about 2002, the older generation of parents wore their parental uniforms with civic pride. The mothers knew that as soon as they got married they had to wear kappougi (big white aprons). And the fathers had to wear something like their sagyougi (really uncool green jackets that almost all office workers wear) or their salary-man suits and accompanying toupees. 

Nowadays, this system of uncoolness as parental status marker is being abandoned. So the next time you see a pretty Japanese girl, look for her hands. Because chances are, there will be a kid holding one of them.

By Kevin Cooney

To me the single most stunning attribute of Tokyo is it's capacity for change.  Sweeping changes, small nearly unnoticeable changes, shocking changes, silly changes, meaningless changes, my 8 years in the city are catalogued most not by the seasons or years but by things dissappearing, appearing and even reappearing.  Tokyo is a constant work in progress.  Like a painting whose neurotic creater feels impelled to keep fiddling with his master work and never gaining a sense of completion.  Of course all major cities are the same in this way, but of the major world cities I've lived in none seems as constantly transformative as Tokyo.  With all this change though, I'm not always sure the city is improving.  Or perhaps I'm just too stubborn to change.
     Long time expats, many longer than myself, mark their years in this city in remeniscent sentances like "There used to be this shop in omotesando with the best coffee." or "Remeber that buidling on the corner that looked like a broken down space ship?".  Sometimes they are personal rememberances like "Mike, what a crazy guy he was.  Hmmmm... whatever happened to him?"  He went home.  The building was torn down.  The coffee place went out of business.
     Some of the changes coincide with social or technological changes.  I have ex-pat friends who remeber back to when 99% of the population had black hair.  When you boarded a train an actual human being stamped your ticket instead of the magnet reading robots that guard the station gates today.  My personal biggest sense of loss and rebirth was when the iconic Dojunkai Aoyama Apartments were torn down and replaced with the buzzing hive of commerce that is Omotesando Hills.  The old, beautiful, ivy covered buidlings gave a sense of quiet to the street that is now gone. To be fair they were put up in 1927 and crumbling.  Other ex-pats like me were livid when we heard it was being torn down for "improvement". As a nod to those upset by construction, they even designed the south east corner of the building to approximate the look of old building.
     Now when I walk down Omotesando I have trouble recalling what it looked like before the face lift.  And actually, I can even admit to be pleasantly surprised how well the buildings outdoor design looks. Not to mention the bladder saving public bathroom they've included. I mention the old landmark to a friend once, and he seemed surprised anything ever existed before Omotesando Hills.  As though it had always been there, and the street the way it is today.
     Frankly, I find it is the foreigners who lament these changes most.  The locals seem endlessly verastile to put it in a positive way.  After all the bustling metropolis we busy ourselves about was completely flattened twice in the last hundered years.  Rebuilding seems almost an intrinisc part of the DNA of Tokyo.  Forgetting the past and moving on a mission statement boldly declared in every new towering building site.  Ive seen more than a few go up recently.  Roppongi Hills, Tokyo Midtown were just the start. Now even more unthinkable are the current projects to build a new Tokyo Tower, a new Tuskiji Fishmarket and a new Kabuki-za
     Sometimes I want to scream "Stop all this newness!"  But to deny the ever evolving skyline of Tokyo is to miss the most essential characteristic of this city.  Nothing stays the same for very long.  Least of all me.  I can't believe what a crotchety old timer I've become in just eight years.

By Claytonian

I seem to remember dimly (very dimly) stories of the mysterious Japanese from my childhood. Being a kid in the 80s, I heard vague rumors about the Japanese, who were our unofficial enemies, because they were rich and we weren't. Among the rumors of workaholism, geishas, and baseball prowess, I think I heard that they did calisthenic exercises at work.  Four years into my time in Japan in the present day, and I'm still not sure whether or not that one is true or not; I just don't make it into the office that often I'm afraid.

But I do know that at least one form of peculiar exercise does happen, and for many people it happens via morning radio. I experienced it first hand when I went camping with my junior highers. Wait, really? You do this? Together? Without laughing?  And it is a humorous affair, because besides synchronized silly movements, we have that radio exercise music. It is without fail a lilting piano piece. Apparently, our own beloved NHK broadcasts the song for the public each day.

I often spy older people around my neighborhood doing the radio exercises sans radio. But the other day, an obaachan (granny) did it on the train, using the bar that holds up the seat to assist with her killer workout (this went on for a few minutes). Shamelessly, I snapped a couple pics and made an animated GIF for your enjoyment. Here she goes:

by Anna Kunnecke

Here are the choices:
a) Japanese banks.  b) Traditional carved seals much like ones used to inscribe sealing wax.  c) Online banking.  d) A tidy paper booklet printed with your bank balance, kept in its own little pouch. 

Ding ding ding!  You're correct!  Even this far into the bright shiny future, Japanese banks are totally uncomfortable with internet banking. 

It's still relatively new, for one thing.  Until recently, the only way to check your bank balance was to actually go to your own bank's ATM.  Once there, you could open your nifty passbook to the correct page, insert it into the machine, and have it print out every single transaction since your last printout.  That part was handy.  However, most ATMs are only open until about 7pm, and are closed on holidays.  Even when technically open, they will probably do some functions but not others, according to a complicated date/time matrix no one can quite decipher.  (Hence my theory that Japanese ATMs are not actually fully automated; I submit that there's a human being back there who slides the money into the slot, counting out the bills and then punching a number into a screen; otherwise, why would there be any reason for the ATMs to close at all?  Isn't the point that they're machines and need so very few smoke breaks?) 

But just going to the bank in person isn't enough.  You must have with you your hanko, your engraved seal.  This is considered the only proof-positive ID; no amount of photo IDs, passports, or DNA testing will substitute for the little piece of carved bamboo that you can pick up for $20 in any neighborhood.  Being a seasoned Japan-dweller, I've simply gotten used to carrying around my little carved stick if I need to do any business at all at the bank--mine has a pouch!  and its own little jar of red ink!  and sparkle stickers!  --okay, no sparkle stickers.  The whole thing makes me deeply uneasy, because most people just keep their hanko lying in their desk drawers.  The same drawers, naturally, that hold their passbook--the two items with which a burglar could easily withdraw ALL the money from any bank account, even without a card or a PIN number or any kind of ID.   The banks often have signs saying, "Keep your hanko in a safe place!!"  Which of course is another way of saying, "None of you idiots are keeping your hanko in a safe place!"

But it turns out that you need your hanko another time too.  You need it if you want to end your internet banking contract.  (Yes, where 'internet banking contract' means paying $20 a month for the privilege of simply viewing your current balance online.)  The reason you are ending it, let's just say hypothetically, is because you have yet to be able to actually view your account online, and you're tired of paying $20 a month to haggle with customer service representatives.  No, they won't e-mail you a new password.  No, they can't tell you why the current password won't work.  No, there's nothing you can do online, even though you filled in eight thousand security questions.  The only way you can fix this situation, the one that you brought on yourself by daring to dream that checking your balance shouldn't require an actual train journey, is to go to the bank itself.  Not an ATM, not even any old branch office, but the central one where you first opened your account years ago, the one that requires not one but two trains.  You'll need your passbook and your hanko.  Also, quite possibly, the soul of your firstborn child, and if you have any sealing wax, well, you'd probably better bring that too.