August 2010Archives

By Emily Connor

     I couldn't help myself from laughing out loud and seeming more insane than I usually do the other day when I saw a convenience store advertising ''KRUNKY CHICKEN'' for 50 yen a piece. The word KRUNKY is one of those words that just happens to pop up every so often in Japan, and it took me almost four years to finally figure out that it's supposed to mean 'crunchy'. KRUNKY shows up occasionally on poorly translated restaurant menus and also on chocolate snacks (although they spell it Crunky on the chocolates) and I must say, I am a very big fan of the KRUNKY. In fact, if I were not appalled by fried chicken you can bet I'd be in line to pick up some value KRUNKY chicken at the convenience store. Sounds like a great time to me.

     Another thing that gets me every time is the constant misuse of the letter W to stand for 'double'. I guess W first began being misused when some Japanese advertising company read the letter out loud-- DABURUYUU. 'Oh, how cute! 'They must have thought. 'It sounds like the word double! Which means two! Let's just stick it on anything that has to do with two!' And that's how the W burger, as well as the W many-other-things was born. For some reason the misuse of the letter W makes me a bit sad. I understand that maybe the word 'double' is a bit tedious to spell, but seriously-- W? At first I thought they were using it to stand for the Japanese abbreviation for LOL, which would have made even less sense-- but for some reason it just stands for double. And sometimes they even use WW for a double double burger, whatever that means. Am I being too strict? Probably. But if I don't throw it out there, no one will, and I cannot allow the letter W to be misused for much longer. It's a travesty. 

     I've been in Japan for too long now, and I sometimes feel my brain melting in such a way where I can no longer differentiate between what's actually funny and what's not. Japanese humor is bizarre; they don't understand sarcasm (which is unfortunate, because my favorite thing in the entire world besides dried figs and EMO cinema is most-definitely sarcasm) and they don't appreciate belittling others for the sake of amusement. The other day I saw a construction truck go by with the letters KKK painted on the side (probably stood for Konnichiwa Krunky Koujyou or something) and although it was terribly horrifying it was equally as hilarious. But because this is Japan and an absurd and wonderful place in a much different way than the USA, even if I were to point out the KKK cement truck to a Japanese person I'm sure no one would have laughed. So I held in my crude comments to myself and just snapped a picture for the scrapbook I'm sure I'll compile in 20 years when I'm old and weathered and have 20 cats in my Manhattan apartment.

     There are so many more things that I could rant about, but if I did all of the ranting today then I would have even less material for blogging than I already do. Keep in mind as you read all of my complaining that I do love Japan-- dearly, in fact-- so consider that my disclaimer and please don't flood the email boxes which I make sure never to check with your catty little comments like ''If all you do is complain, then you don't even deserve to live to Japan!''. Save yourself a bit of energy typing and just laugh at the absurdities and wonders of the land of the rising-and-ridiculously-hot-thanks-to-global-warming sun. Adieu.

By Martin Faynot

     The second island I visited was Inujima, the smallest one, with only 60 inhabitants! There used to be plenty more when the copper refinery was running. Beside the ruins of the factory, an incredible underground installation called Seirensho can be visited (unlike the art festival, Seirensho is permanent). On this sketch of a little port, you can see the red roof of one of the numerous houses of the "House Project" (also in the other islands). Those old houses have been redesigned into artistic installations by some famous artists from around the world.

by Claytonian

by Anna Kunnecke

      Understandably, Tokyo residents are worried about fire.  Train stations have big billboards proclaiming its danger; kids are taught early to turn off the stove at the valve at the first tremor of an earthquake; our earnest building staff test the piercing fire alarms more often than I am convinced is strictly necessary.   When we went out for yakiniku, I remembered why.

      It had been a long week.  Two tired parents and one cranky girl--none of us were up for cooking.  We settled in at our table and they brought over the great tub o' fire.  This is literally a big iron bowl full of coals that fits neatly into the round hole in the center of the table.  Yakiniku with a grabby little kid is a special way for anxious parents to torture themselves, but even with lots of warnings and dire consequences foretold if she got too close to the glowing coals, it turned out that the fiery cairn itself was enough to inspire total respect in our little hoodlum.

      The plates of raw meat came fast and we did our dance with tongs and long chopsticks, draping, turning, dipping, and burning our mouths.  As the bits of meat got hot and sizzled, drops of fat would drip onto the coals, causing a little storm of sparks to erupt.  My daughter was mesmerized.  "Ooooh!  Sparks!" she would exclaim, each and every time.  It suddenly struck me that here we were, the archetypal family, huddled around fire, poking meat with sticks.  Sanitized, commercialized, and safety-fied as it may be, it seems to me that the yakiniku table is basically a modernized urban version of the campfire.

      Minus the songs.  And the marshmallows.  And the mosquitoes.  

      Not that I'm complaining.  This is just about as much fire as I can handle in my life.  And I liked that for my daughter it connected the word 'fire' to something more tangible than the candles we light.  All of our scary stories about candles and fire and terribleburningthings aren't nearly as effective as one evening spent around an intensely hot bowl of actual smoking burning stuff.  I'm happy for her to have a controlled version of fire to get some of that extremely useful and irreplaceable ouch-they-weren't-kidding-when-they-said-don't-touch biofeedback.

      Since so few four-year-olds are allowed to play with matches out on the street anymore (these crazy over-protective modern parents), there isn't much reality to those big red trucks their kindergarten teachers take them to see.  And so intense curiosity sometimes gets channeled into experiments like trying to light candles in your mother's closet or setting off firecrackers in the yard, leading to charred clothes and the wrath of the entire neighborhood.  (Really.  Both those things happened to a friend of mine within the course of a year.  It was quite a year.)

      So I have a suggestion.  Instead of those Hi-No-Yojin marches the neighborhood associations are always trying to guilt-trip people into joining, which involve marching and banging gongs and bells and chanting "let's be careful of fire," I think they should just take the whole ward out for yakiniku.  Let everybody grill up some tasty morsels, down a few icy jokki of beer, and at a crucial moment, stop, point at the coals and say, "People.  Just remember: it's very, very hot."  I think that should do the trick.

by Martin Faynot



     I managed to escape from Tokyo's summer heat... to find another heat, but more artistic, in the islands of Setouchi, just between Shikoku & Honshu. It's been a while since I wanted to visit Naoshima, Inujima, Ogijima & the other islands of the archipelago, but even more since I heard about the art festival held in all of the islands from July 19th to October 31st 2010. More about the festival here : http://setouchi-artfest.jp/en/

by Emily Connor

     After two years of using my washed up CASIO cellphone, last month I was finally able to get my hands on a new top of the line cellphone, only to realize one thing:

     Japanese cellphones nowadays are much too complex.

     They can literally do anything. And by being able to do anything, they're a bit overwhelming at times. I really don't need so many features in my phone. The 13 megapixel camera is great. The display is beautiful. But in a lot of ways my phone is so high-tech that it just becomes annoying to use. For example, the touch screen. I completely understand the touchscreen option for phones that are touchscreen based, but since my cellphone is based around the keypad it's just a nuisance to have the touchscreen option. The other day when I was trying to answer a call I accidentally activated the touchscreen which made it so I couldn't answer the call. How does that even make any sense?

     My phone also comes with a built-in English/Japanese dictionary, a pedometer which calculates how many calories you burn in a day, a television and GPS, an MP3 player, and a bunch of other things that I haven't figured out yet. Most of these features drain the battery at a pretty rapid speed, so unless I've got a charger in hand I'd be nearly a fool to use them. I don't know, I feel like it's overkill for a phone to even have all of these options in it. If it were an iPhone, sure.... But it's not, so it shouldn't pretend to be!

     Because Japanese cellphones are so complex in general, every cellphone carrier always offers a few ''Senior-friendly'' phones available in the shop. These cellphones are pretty much exactly like normal American cellphones that everyone uses, except for the keypad is almost laughably large. Other than that, though, they just offer easy to understand menus and usually a pretty terrible cellphone. Apparently people who aren't clever enough to use normal phones over here don't deserve to have a kick-ass camera. Simplicity is (at times!) best, my friends.

     I can't blame the Japanese for having these insanely cram-packed cellphones, though. The cellphone market over here is insane, and if a phone offers the newest and greatest feature (I think the one at the moment is a HD 3D video camera) then people will flock to it and buy it up. People here don't just have one phone, many business people carry two and often upgrade. So don't fix what's not broken, I suppose--- maybe Japanese people are just born with the knowledge on how to use their complicated cellphones which is why I can't wrap my mind around them. Anyway, I've got to go-- my phone's ringing. If only I could figure out how to answer the thing...  

by Kevin Cooney

     Perhaps the most universally hated question on the "Nice to Meet you I'm a gaijin FAQ" is the personal and perennial "Why are you here?"
     There are a variety of reasons why we squirm under the spotlight this throws on our transient lives.  That it's a personal matter, the question is too complex, or (as our mom suspects) that there is no answer.  After all, my closest family connection to Japan is a game boy and my Tsutaya video shop membership. Possibly my legal visa status is something, so there surely must be some greater purpose to my continued existence here. Or why am I here?
      We all have our reasons.  I've had so many it's hard to remember, and all of them sound strangely like alibis. Why does the question make us offer excuses for just being.
      For those who came for love of something material, the expat Otaku Akihabara denizens, the admission that you moved here for a cartoon seems so ignobly narrow.  Emigration for fandom, is like living in Sweden because you like Abba.
      For those who followed their sweethearts (or perhaps other organs) the answer also seems sadly insufficient.  No one likes appearing as if they have so little say about their life.  It's like the "They made me come here!" explanation given by those married to their companies.  Both types often throw in an obligatory and vague "But I'm really excited about the culture."
     Then there are those indentured servants who make their way here as teachers and travelers, always one step away from being homeless, or to put it more nicely "a backpacker."  The "I just came here to travel" is fine, and good for those young travelers, but as you renew that third visa the explanation wears thin.  After all, travelers, by definition are on their way somewhere else.
            "I want to experience new cultures..." sounds like you're running from something.
            "I want to explore new worlds..." sounds deviant.
            "I want to grow as a person..." sounds like you were a failure back home.

     No reason for being here ever sounds right.  So, why do we even offer any justification?  We are here, isn't that enough?  Until I moved here I never had to explain my mere existence so regularly.  The "why are you here gaijin" question often feels like living in your parents basement, with everyone wondering when you are going to grow up already and move out to a normal life.
     Well, this is my normal life.  Never did I sit on my sofa watching TV, with my Doritos and beer and suffer the angst filled question... "Why am I here?"  The answer was obvious: because this is my sofa and I like Doritos and beer.  Granted, now I sit on a cushion on the floor, my Doritos taste of sea life and the beer is much more expensive, but damn it, I am just being here, because this is my cushion.  This is my piece of floor.  Move along, there is nothing to see.
    Why am I here?
    Why am I here?
    Well, I have a visa, therefore I am.