By Kevin Cooney

I am not a voyeur.  Neither am I an eavesdropper.  I don't listen in on others. I have never been a peeping tom.  I do not, generally speaking, interest myself in the lives of others.  But in Tokyo where you can't throw a rice ball without hitting somebody, it is nearly impossible not to be acutely aware of everything being said nearby.  Largely because, in Tokyo, nearby is about twenty centimeters... at best.  It's a great feat of design that fits one hundred coffee tables in to a space meant for 50.  If this were the US, most people couldn't fit between the tables to get to their seats without moving furniture.  But the Japanese are, well... aerodynamic.
    On the train you are almost literally sitting in the lap of the conversation next to you.  My first few years in Tokyo I was but a lapdog listening to the musical "Sou desu ne." ("Yeah, right.") and "Sou ka?" ("Really") going on all about me.  I would catch words here and there and imagine it must be something terribly interesting they were discussing.  After all, there were a lot of "Sugokunai" ("Isn't it fantastic.") being bandied about.   
    Now I'm somewhat conversant in the local lingo and I've discovered, no... it's not actually that fantastic.  Ninety five percent or so of conversations I've overheard are exactly the same banal and formulaic conversations I'd learned to tune out on the New York city subway, or the London Tube, or in any crowded hutch of my fellow english speakers.  
    I've learned now to tune out all the conversations around me in Japanese, just as I once had to do sitting in the orchestra seats of a vapid English conversation playing with gusto.  I can squelch out either language and find some small Zen bit of peace even in the most cramped and chatty of situations. That is with one exception.  When it is only one language or the other being spoken nearby.
    Sitting in a Tokyo cafe, trying desperately to focus on the words coming from my Japanese friends mouth, all I can hear is the conversation by two English speakers on the other side of the room.   I'm really really really trying not to listen to them but it enters my brain-space anyway.  My eyes dart over and they catch me looking.  Now they know I'm listening.  I try to be extra engaged in my own conversation, which my Japanese friend reads as me being overly caffeinated.  I try to focus, but the English words keep coming.
    Is that an Australian accent.  No... New Zealand maybe.  What? I just missed the last two minutes of what my friend was saying.  I take a chance with "Sou desu ne." He looks at me quizzically. I should have said "Sou ka?"  I look to see if the English speakers still think I'm listening.  Doh! They caught me again.  Their stare says "Why in a room of a hundred people are you listening to us?"  Because, I can't filter out more than one language at a time!  I'm not eavesdropping, I swear!  They see the guilty expression on my face.  
    So I ask my friend if he's in the mood for Chinese.

By Kevin Cooney

From my first few hours in Tokyo, now almost a decade ago, I have developed certain habits.  Habits can be both good and bad.  More often then not they are bad, but only because bad habits are usually more fun than good ones.  Most of my daily rituals are insignificant at surface level but for me they are an anchor of sanity.  
    I have my nightly pudding before I go to bed.  It is a specific pudding, from a specific shop, that I consume nightly with a little spoon.  I try to tell them not to give me the little plastic spoon, since I have a specific pudding spoon waiting at home, but sometimes am too tired or distracted to stop them.  At home I have a drawer designated for them called "The Cabinet of the Lost Spoons."  If several hundred house guests were to suddenly appear, I would be well prepared regarding mini-spoons.
    Now a pudding may not seem like much to you.  Mine is not even the nicest pudding around.  It is, I have decided after exhaustive research, the most economical yet delicious pudding for daily consumption.  It is also except in dire emergencies the same pudding I have been eating since I landed.
    Rolling my suitcase through the city I was overwhelmed by the lights an motion of Shinjuku on a late summer evening.  Hustle that even as a New Yorker I was unaccustomed to see.  Not because the people were so busy, but everything was busy.  Signs, walls, ceilings, floors, faces, smells and more, so many things were familiar but indiscernible.  My brain was calculating in overtime trying to process and analyze all of the new data streaming into my slack-jawed head.  For the first few months it seemed like doing any sort of activity required more brain skill than I had been accustomed to.  Even my toilet had options.  
    But in those first few days I found somethings through the sheer magic of guesswork that have stayed like tent poles unbroken by all the bizarre experiences I've had here.  It was then, on my second sleepless night of jet-lag, wandering around at the nearby 7-11, that I found her waiting for me on the shelf, my little pudding.  I'll admit, I haven't always been faithful.  Japanese convenience stores are an unending cacophony of choice, but my decision has always been relatively easy.  I know among all those puddings which one I will get each day.
    Some might argue I am mired in a pudding rut.  But getting into a routine is after all how the mind copes with change.  The 9/11 terrorist attacks happened about a month after I arrived, and pudding was there for me.  I've moved five times in Tokyo, but pudding is always at the nearest conbini.  I deal with the new and unexpected everyday but always, I have my pudding.
    But frankly there isn't so much of the unexpected these days.  Pudding has friends now.  I know what I'm going to order at the chinese restaurant before I sit down.  I know the exact vending machine, and drink I will get as I walk from the house to the station.  I have chosen my newspaper.  I know the first thing I will order at any sushi restaurant I go to... ever.  My life here has nearly become the exact same surprise-less routine that I had back home.  It seems no matter how I change the surroundings, my mind aches for routine and with time everything becomes "normal."
    Maybe I need to move to another country? Leave my pudding behind and search for new and exciting adventures abroad.

    Where does Flan come from?  Oh, nevermind.

By Kevin Cooney



What exactly is so frightening about beans I will never know. How an Oni (devil) would have much cause to fear them is even further beyond me.  But there you are, today is Setsubun, the ancient Japanese tradition of driving out the evil devils of misfortune with a handful of beans.  Across the nation on this day Japanese families are carrying out the age-old tradition in their home by casting about handful's of beans and crying "Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!" Out with devils! In with good luck!
 
I've read in books about Japanese culture that it is typically the male head of the household who is honored with the task of driving out the demons.  But my own informal surveys reveal that actually it tends to be the male head of most households (or family pet) that puts on a devil mask and gets pelted with beans by his wife and children to complete the ritual.  I have a feeling the writers of those books were themselves the male head of a household.  It is a cute, truly fun family event for all.  Well, unless your kid has a pro-league pitching arm.
 
For research purposes I had friend wing me with a few dried beans.  It stung a bit, but barely left a little red mark.  If you didn't know an Oni is entirely red, so this would seem to be somewhat self-defeating.  Perhaps if the bean were fired from some type of makeshift gun using rubber bands or firecrackers you could start to do some damage.  And even then you'd have to hit a particularly sensitive area.  Realistically you'd probably just end up pissing off the demon even more.  Just throwing them, really?  Apparently Japanese devils are huge wussies.
 
I mean, if a demonic creature from the beyond is frightened of being dinged with dried beans, how serious a threat could it really pose to the health and safety of your family.  I found the biggest danger to this whole Setsbun thing is slipping on a kitchen floor covered in dried beans.  Don't tell me I'm the only person still finding bean fragments clinging to my socks two months later.
 
I explained all of this with excitement and a sense of accomplishment to one of my Japanese friends.  Brimming with smug joy I had pointed out the silliness of his nation's ancient traditions.  Then the little Oni asked "So how is it then, exactly, that vampires are afraid of garlic?"
 
"What!  That is totally different.  I mean, somebody throws a bean at you, that's one thing, but a head of garlic has some heft!"
 
"So Vampires bruise easily then?"
 
"Well no... It... Well... Doh!"

By Kevin Cooney

I spent the New Year's holiday in the most traditional Japanese way.  Cocooned inside layers of blankets watching TV and eating mikan oranges. Of course, the kadomatsu, kagami mochi and other seasonal decorations are an important part of the Japanese New Year celebrations.  They are, however, only minor distractions.  The TV is king during those lazy days of the New Year.  Kohaku Uta Gassen, the Ekiden are among a few of the programs that keep people glued to their sofas.

This year I passed on most of the traditional New Year's programming, and instead kept myself busy with a triple marathon of american science fiction shows.  I cruised the stars with Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5 and Star Trek.  I know, I am a stellar nerd.    

The year 2010 is a bit technologically disappointing.  I remember as a kid thinking about 2010 being so far in the future. I would have though we'd have flying cars and food made out of plankton by now.  But we don't.  Well, actually I'm not sure about the plankton thing. I think I might have been served that recently in Tokyo.

One thing struck me from all the Sci-fi I watched.  In almost every future world conceived by Hollywood, most people eat with chopsticks.  What's more, people in the future almost always appear to be eating udon noodles.  How is it that the writers and creators of Hollywood collectively decided that in the year 2365 all humans would be eating udon with chopsticks?

Chopsticks are not new, far from it.  Their origin predates the fork by centuries.  I prefer chopsticks to the knife and fork, but I'm curious why so many different science fiction creators agree that our future is the chopstick.  I had such high hopes for the "spork."

Obsessively watching the details of every scene, I started noticing Thai triangular pillows in the alien sleeping quarters.  Ikebana in the intergalactic meeting rooms.  Martians eating out of a donabe hotpot! American sci-fi set designers incorporate a stunning amount of asianesque bric-a-brac into future worlds.

I suppose it's due to the exotic nature these things have from a western perspective.  I'm often asked by friends back home about Japanese robots and technology.  No flying cars here.  Though the door at Seven Eleven opens by itself.  That's cool, but not a sentient cybernetic personality.  At some level living in Asia demystifies the foreignness of these things and thus ruins the imaginary future.  Instead of enjoying the fantasy world in my TV, I just wonder quietly to myself why hundreds of years into the future, the universe is using chopsticks yet still these gaijin can't slurp noodles properly.

 

By Kevin Cooney

I've never been very good at remembering what year it is.  That's kind of a strange thing, since I have no such problem with, for example Tuesday, the second week of August, or even a smaller yet full month like February.  I generally know what day of the week it is, and usually what day of the month and yes, even the current month.  However, the year for some reason often slips my mind.  Many times I have filled out some form or dated some document only to have it returned to me with a quizzical stare that says, "Seriously, you think its 2008?"  It's with great embarrassment that I have had to scratch out and re-pen a year here and there.
    It would seem an eminently large enough unit of time that I could remember it.  But sadly, I can not.  So while most people are busy celebrating what a great new year it is, I'm always trying to just remember which great new year it is.  The months before January are not so tough.  I've usually just gotten the hang of it by August.  I'm fully engaged in the yearly cycle by November.  Then comes a whole new one.  For the next three months I'll be constantly dating things 2009, and getting wincing "you idiot" looks from friends and colleagues.
    I have actually had the following conversation at a post office.

Me: "Whats the date again?"
Them: "The fourteenth."
Me: "Oh... and this part" (gesturing to year)
Them: Uhm. (Silent Disbelief)

    While my issue with what year it is was comparatively minor stateside, I now have to deal with the Japanese calendar as well.  With its various periods, Taisho, Showa, Heisei and more all marking the reigns of various emperors I can say that I came to Japan in the 13th year of the Heisei period.  But only because I just did a web search to find out.  When filling out a bank statement and suddenly being asked what the current date is in Heisei, I draw a blank.  Which is fitting, considering my overdraft.  I know the day, week, month... but which year it is in the Japanese calendar always throws me.  (Pro Tip: I just write 09! Well soon it will be 010, if I remember.)
    Another issue is working with and living amongst other English speaking people who not only drive on the wrong side of the road but order their dates bizarrely as well.  Is it day/month/year or year/month/day or even month/day/year? I've seen fisticuffs erupt in an international workplace over the statement. "07/08/06... So was this in July?"
    I've thought about it, and I suppose the reason I have such difficulty remembering the year, is that it is of little relevance to my life.  I know its Tuesday because I have my Japanese lesson on Tuesday.  I know its the fifteenth, because that check is supposed to get deposited in my account.  I know It is February because I am freezing.  These smaller units I'm working with on a regular basis and interact with at great frequency.  But years? I don't have much cause to think about what year it is. I suppose that is Old Father Time's dirty little secret.  We get so busy with the Mondays and the Twenty-thirds that we forget all about the picture.  Time passes so surreptitiously that I hardly notice its already Hesei 22!  Oh my goodness, where has the time gone?  I'll tell you where it went, into lots of little 24 hour blocks of life here and there.

Happy New Year!