Howdy folks,
I'm new to the site, but I've known about it for a while, as I'm a friend of the mysterious Mr. I (what's up with a one-letter username anyway, eh?). I've never had a blog before, so I don't know if it's really considered blogging if you just put something up you wrote a long time ago, but that's what I'm going to do here. I did the JET program in Akita, Japan from 2002-2003, and I wrote one fairly long e-mail back home about my first impressions of the program and my new environs about 2 months into my stay. Then I just didn't bother e-mailing anymore. That would have required me to be sober long enough to sit up straight at my computer and type something intelligible for the folks back home. Anyway, I hope at least a few of you find these ramblings from 4 1/2 years ago useful. If not, I'm sure our ruthless admin Mr. I will take it down (but only after he prints it out and pisses on it). So here goes. Enjoy!
As a preface to this e-mail, just so you know why the hell I keep alluding to the horrors of traveling in China, I had just returned from a rather eventful two-month post-graduation trip around the muddled kingdom with my ex-girlfriend Sue (no, she wasn't my ex at the time) when I took off for Japan. Ok, go read.
***ORIENTATION***
There are few things as enjoyable as being packed into a plane on a 13-hour flight with a huge selection of B-grade movies, crappy sitcoms, and elevator music that the 30-year old zit-faced manager at your local grocery store wouldn't even dare let loose over his speakers. Then there is the 'gourmet' meal and a half you are served during the flight consisting of portions that even outdo Luby's Luann platter in scarceness. Oh yes, my friends, the joy of flying economy on international flights is up there with the thrill of having a triple enema while constipated or the rush of having ones wisdom teeth removed by the dentist from 'Little Shop of Horrors' (if you don't know who I'm talking about, then you must have missed that classic Rick Moranis flick on YOUR last international flight). And yet my flight to Tokyo passed rather quickly and uneventfully. I guess after taking almost 20 hours to fly back from Hong Kong two days earlier, and after two months of spending whole days on buses smelling of piss and boats smelling of another human excrement in China, a short, smooth Continental flight with some good-looking stewardesses bringing you refreshments every once in a while seemed like a vacation in comparison. Oh wait, China was a vacation. Doh! At any rate, there was even one good movie on the flight worth watching, although I forget what it was. I just remember I was interested enough to stop picking my nose and making booger art on the girl next to me (don't worry... she was sleeping) for the duration of the flick.
So suddenly I was back in Tokyo for the first time in three years, amazingly unaffected by the jetlag (I had managed to stay somewhat on Asia time by not sleeping at all back in Houston) and shocked by how clean this massive city was. Obviously China had scarred me in more ways than I realized. There were no longer just the JETs (the way I refer to people on the JET program with me) from Texas and Oklahoma who flew over with me, as my bus to the orientation in Shinjuku was packed with tired yet enthusiastic young people from all over the US getting their first taste of life in a foreign country. Then there were the French at the back who, when occasionally approached by a poor, naive young American and asked what they thought about this great new city with its futuristic buildings towering over the expressways, nonchalantly replied with a wave of the hand, 'blaaah, itz just a ceety.'
Orientation went well. It was three days of sleeping through boring meetings (that we got paid for!) as we recovered from jetlag, followed by heavy drinking to help speed the jetlag recovery, followed by more sleeping through meetings to recover from the hangovers. All and all it was a smashing success, except for all those damn meetings we had to sleep through. We could have done without those. At the big farewell bash where free beer and (real) gourmet food was served, I had the opportunity to meet two fascinating girls from South Africa who were 'well-endowed' with great personalities, and 'stacked' with good opinions. Talking with them for over an hour, I rapidly developed an interest in South Africa and its people. Or maybe just its people. Had I not been enjoying the free beer even more than our lovely little conversation, I might have even remembered to get their e-mail addresses.
Tokyo hadn't changed much, and yet everything seemed so different to me. Not only had my travels and sojourns abroad, mostly in Chinese territories, tainted my view, but now I was with a group of people who had never stepped foot in their nearest Chinatown, much less an actual Asian city, and suddenly I found myself explaining signs and subway maps and the purple mohawk on the guy in front of us crossing the street with a leash around his neck. Held by his girlfriend. Who had spikes around her own neck. I always felt that Tokyo, with its Western facade and easy accessibility to just about anything you could possibly want or need, would clearly be one of the easiest stepping stones for a Westerner jumping into the cultural and economical monstrosity known as Asia. And well it may be. Yet here I stood before a group of Westerners with eyes bulging from their heads as they walked around Shinjuku, only one of Tokyo's many lively districts, overwhelmed by the sheer mass of people on the streets, the gigantic buildings hovering effortlessly overhead, and enough neon on just one city block to light all of India. And they hadn't even ventured into Shinjuku Station yet, the busiest in the world with over 2,000,000 passengers a day boarding its trains. This city is like no other, although there should be a large warning sticker slapped over it so visitors suffering from heart problems, epilepsy, or any similar ailment will know before they even deplane that they should just head straight for the countryside. It's certainly not a place for the faint of heart.
***THE FIRST WEEK***
Soon the three days of orientation, or disorientation as many people came to find it, finished and we all headed off to our respective jobs. Ah yes, the job thing. After much partying and socializing, the realization that real work awaited us was a sobering slap in the face as we boarded our planes, only to arrive in our new towns to find nothing to do until school started several weeks later. And as tough as that was for us overachievers to digest, the realization that we would be getting paid to do next to nothing that entire time came as an even bigger shock. I personally decided that being the decent human being I am, and having spent twenty-four years of my life watching my parents scrounge to make ends meet, I couldn't possibly take Japanese taxpayers hard-earned yen for nothing. So I put in a call to Mr. Jet himself (I guess the program was named after him) and told him to put me on a plane back to Houston or else the young students of Hiraka, Japan would be learning some very interesting English vocabulary over the next few months. Yes, right... and then God called a few minutes later and told me the reason it is so darn cold in this prefecture is because it is located directly over hell, which recently froze over. Buh.
But I digress. So on the fourth day of my second stay in Japan (actually my third stay if you count my three week layover on the way to Taiwan), I flew to Akita airport with ten other fresh-faced new arrivals who were equally as anxious to find out what awaited them in their rice paddies. Just over an hour after leaving Tokyo, our plane landed safely in the middle of one of these rice paddies (don't worry, this one had a runway in it) and taxied to the single terminal at Akita airport (okay, so maybe there were two... the grain distillery next to the runway was blocking my view). We nervously filed off the plane and hurriedly navigated the ten paces to baggage claim, where outside we could see the mob of small but aggressive Japanese farmers angrily waving signs and demanding our surrender. Upon closer inspection we realized they were actually our new supervisors and co-workers, and they had made cute little signs to warmly welcome us. Despite having the least amount of luggage of anyone in the group, mine took the longest to make its way out of what had to have been the world's shortest conveyor belt system, so instead of waiting I scuttled around back to the outhouse to relieve myself. When I came back all of my new JET friends had ridden off into the sunset with their new farmer friends, and only three Japanese remained outside waiting. They looked a bit distraught, as if they had lost something important, but upon walking through the doors I realized I was the lost object. These poor folks had watched restlessly as the other farmers retrieved their allotted foreigner, and when there were no more foreigners filing out the door, they figured maybe I had been lost by the airline like an old tattered brown suitcase or something. Needless to say, the look of relief on their faces seeing me walk through the doors was like that of three Japanese men running through the streets with bladders full of beer who had finally found a place to relieve themselves (one of them was a woman by the way, but she looked like she knew the feeling).
And so on our way back to my new rice paddy we went, a short 90 minutes or so from the airport. Along the way I saw many interesting things, namely rice paddies. Oh yeah, behind all the rice paddies there were mountains. Lots of them. I grinned. My aspirations to become a ski bum might finally be realized this winter, I thought to myself. Along the way, we stopped for a quick bite of ramen noodles and dumplings, which we found in a quaint little restaurant with a huge painted sign of a panda dressed Chinese style hungrily eating a bowl of noodles and looking down over entering patrons. I thought he had an evil look in his eyes as he stared down at me, probably the first foreigner he had ever laid eyes on. I decided not to share my thoughts about the evil bear with my new co-workers though, as they were treating me. The ramen turned out to be quite tasty anyway.
The rest of the way back I spent mostly chatting with my boss, and asking lots of questions about my new town. I could tell he was a bit disappointed I spoke such good Japanese, as I'm sure he had been practicing his English, along with the rest of my office, before my arrival. Of course it also took a lot of pressure off of them not to have to strain their limited English for 90 minutes just to tell me things like 'wow, you are sexy boy' and 'can i touch your golden hair' and 'what blue eyes you have, little boy', which only took them a matter of seconds to say in Japanese. My boss turned out to be a really great guy, despite the fact that he would repeatedly rub my hair and poke me in the eyes in the middle of our conversations. I'm no freshman at Culture Shock High though, so I took it all in stride. Before long I was poking him in the eyes too, and we laughed and frolicked (and bled a little) the rest of the way back.
As we neared Hiraka on the main road, we were still completely surrounded by rice paddies and the occasional house here and there. Worried that one of those houses might be mine, I crossed my fingers and began a silent prayer that I would at least have plumbing and hot water. Just then the woman in the group interrupted my prayer, saying something about Hiraka's main street. I could have sworn she was talking about the road we were currently on and nearly pissed my pants, a feeling of impending doom coming over me. I now wished my contract here was revocable instead of renewable. The woman saw the look of surprise, or more likely fear, on my face and added 'oh no, not here... we'll be to main street in a few minutes.' The entire car got a real kick out of that little misunderstanding. 'Ha ha ha' they all laughed aloud, 'You thought you live in rice paddy.' 'Yes, ha ha ha' I pretended to laugh along as I carefully felt my pants for wet spots and continued my prayer.
The resemblance of a real town did soon appear in the distance, and within minutes we were surrounded by houses and small stores instead of endless rice paddies, the streets became narrower, and there were now people about. My boss told me they were taking me straight to my new home, so when we pulled up to a small English conversation cram school, I was a bit confused. 'This is it,' my boss said with a smile, dismissing my consternation with a wave of the hand, an invitation for me to get out and check the place out. My next thought was that not only were they going to make me teach classes at the local middle school all day, but I was going to have to tutor the same kids, and their younger siblings, in English at night so they could all get ahead of each other (which makes perfect sense of course... but please don't get me started on Asian cram schools).
I soon realized when we went in the side door that the house contained two separate parts, the front one belonging to a Filipino woman who runs the cram school and the side/back portion now belonging (actually, being rented) to me. I was definitely impressed. The place was small but incredibly cute. It was one big room with a small counter separating the living room from the tiny yet cozy little kitchen, and two doors at the back. One door led to the toilet, and the other led to two more rooms, the outer one containing a washer AND dryer (a rarity here in Japan, although it will only dry about one shirt at a time, and it costs a ton of money to operate... you bastards back home don't realize just how lucky you are to have industrial strength dryers at your disposal... I've resorted to hang drying all of my clothes) as well as a nice sink/mirror set, and the inner room containing my bathtub and shower. A very nice setup indeed, and I haven't even gotten to the best part. Between the two doors at the back of the room and I stood a set of wooden stairs leading up to some unknown destination. Being the observant, intelligent young man I am, I noticed that there wasn't really any place for me to sleep downstairs, and it immediately occurred to me what awaited me at the top of those stairs: MY VERY OWN GAMEROOM! I rushed up the stairs and kicked upon the door (nearly breaking the flimsy Japanese thing in half), expecting to find a pool table, full entertainment system, a mini-bar, and hot, scantily clothed Japanese women waiting to greet me with cold beers in hand. Instead all I found was a bed, a nightstand, and a lamp. Oh yeah... my bedroom.
Yes, so I now live alone in what might be considered a two-story house, although I've seen plenty of economy apartments back home with as much square footage. With the quaint wooden staircase in the middle of the first floor and a cozy bedroom upstairs all by itself, the place is incredibly cute and has grown on me quickly. I like it so much, in fact, that I've actually kept it pretty tidy, despite my sometimes rather disastrous attempts at cooking. And best of all, it is centrally located, and I'm not talking about in the center of my rice paddy. It is directly across the street from the community center where my (non-school) office and boss are located. It is less than a five-minute drive to my school. And more importantly, it is right down the street from the handful of hostess bars in town.
The rent is rather high on the place though, especially considering I live in a place where I can reach a rice paddy by walking in pretty much any direction for no more than 100 meters (i.e. - the Japanese countryside). At 70,000 yen a month (about US$600), it's not such a steal. Fortunately, the people in my office who picked the place out for me realized this and subsidize a little bit of it, so that I pay about US$420 a month. After paying my monthly utility bills, however, that figure shoots over US$500, more than a fifth of my monthly salary. Could be worse, I suppose. I was paying almost as much to live in a tiny little dorm room in Hong Kong last year. And this new place came almost fully furnished. A wide screen TV (not to be confused with a big screen TV, although it is fairly large) and VCR sat atop the dresser downstairs, and I soon purchased a used Pioneer component stereo with 100 watt speakers for a mere US$70 so the neighbors would be aware of my arrival. I finished my first-ever full entertainment system off with a cheap new DVD player for about US$90 to play the 150 or so DVDs I bought on my China trip. Ooooh yeah!
Much like Houston, but obviously for different reasons, it's next to impossible to get around here without a car. The nearest 'cities' (i.e. - more than 30,000 people and a few major stores) are less than 10 km away, but there are very few buses that run between Hiraka and these cities. Grocery shopping is about the only thing within walking distance of my house, so a car was a definite necessity from the start. So I went out and bought a Toyota Supra Turbo, one of my many dream cars. It only took a few hours to glue all the pieces together, and now it sits proudly on my shelf at home. As for a real car, there was no need to buy one, as my office kindly leased me one free of charge (except for gas) for the duration of my stay. YES, THEY ARE THAT COOL! My boss told me about this on our drive home from the airport and I thought there had to be some sort of catch. You know, like 'well Jay, we only expect you to work 6 1/2 days a week. Those extra few hours on Sunday are yours to drive this little puppy wherever you please. Have fun. Don't forget you can't drive it outside of a 2 km radius of your house. Enjoy yourself. Please also be advised that you can't have any girls in the car. Take care. And oh yes, we kindly ask that you not get in any accidents or we will have to cut off your fingers. We sincerely hope you enjoy your new car.' And I also figured it had to be one of Japan's ubiquitous K-cars, the tiny little vehicles with yellow license plates that all run on 600cc engines and put my old Ford Festiva to shame in a showdown of pure wimpiness. So much to my surprise when I went up to the office later that day, a rather new and decent-sized Toyota hatchback named Vitz, a model not carried in the US, awaited me. It was love at first site. The big eyes. The broad grin. The tight curves and ample width in the rear. She was just my type. I imagine if I had shopped for a car myself here, I would have picked out the exact same model. And seeing as how gas is well over three times as expensive here as in the US, her small size means she is a low-maintenance woman. And there is something to be said for low-maintenance women.
With such a fine setup and at least a year ahead of me in my new home, I began my first week of life in Hiraka very optimistically. First came the part where I meet the locals (and inquire about their daughters). Even though I'm extremely outgoing and have rarely experienced difficulties making friends in new environments, I remember thinking before arriving here that it would be hard to meet people in the countryside, and the only greetings I should expect from the locals would be inquiring stares and an occasional 'Ha-ro' (hello) from the children. I couldn't have been further from the truth. I settled in and made friends faster here than in any of the four previous experiences I had living in Asia, and those were all in major cities packed full of people. Saturday fell on my third day in town, and an older female co-worker who lives right around the corner from me dropped by my house to inform me of the 'natsu matsuri' (summer festival) for our small neighborhood. At first the use of the word 'matsuri' (festival) evoked thoughts of traditional outfits, parades with decorated floats, lanterns, and endless kitsch game and food stalls lining the streets. My face lit up and I quickly exclaimed 'I wanna ride on the float, I wanna ride on the float. PLEASE let me write on the float!' She looked a bit perplexed for a moment before she realized what I was talking about. 'Oh no, it's not that kind of festival. It's just all the adults in the neighborhood coming together to get sloppy drunk, fraternize, and possibly molest the new foreigner.' I pondered the offer for a second. 'Oh, I see. Count me in then.'
I showed up at 5 pm to a nearby parking lot, now occupied by a tent, several tarps covered by tables only a foot high, and quite a few older men sitting around grilling 'yakitori' (roast chicken on a kabob) and trying to tap a Japanese-sized keg. I only recognized one of them, a rather odd fellow from my office, but walked over and joined the group anyway. They were rather nice guys and made sure I got plenty of beer and chicken in me over the next few hours as the rest of the neighborhood showed up. There were very few people my age there, but the beer more than made up for that. There was one cool guy there who looked about my age named Shige. When I expressed an interest in soccer, he shot up from his seat and sprinted around the corner out of site. I felt bad that my merely mentioning soccer offended him so badly, but a few minutes later he got over it and came back. And for some reason he brought a soccer ball with him. I guess he brought it as a way of apologizing to me for his rude and sudden departure. I accepted this gesture of kindness and kicked the ball around with him a bit. He told me he and his friends would be playing soccer the next night and I was welcome to join them. So the bastard had been faking; he liked soccer after all! Not that I minded, as I had just found a new soccer team and made a new friend my age.
The night dragged on into the wee hours of the morning until only about five of us were left breathing. We dragged each other down the road to the one karaoke joint in town (Big Star), but all three of their rooms (in case you're wondering, that is VERY small for a karaoke establishment) were occupied. So we were left with no choice but to crawl back to my place to enjoy a DVD on my new entertainment system. Within five minutes everyone except for myself was passed out on my floor, but it took me a while to notice as I was doing my best in my inebriated state to find a DVD with Japanese subtitles. I finally found one and popped it in, and ten minutes later noticed I was the only one in the room laughing at the TV.
The next evening Shige came by and we went to play indoor soccer at the local gymnasium. His friends were quite surprised at my presence, and even more surprised that an American was going to 'attempt' to play soccer. I tried explaining that I played soccer for over 10 years back home, but they would have none of that. After all, they protested, everybody knows Americans don't/can't play soccer. Suddenly the night's pickup game was to become a passionate one for me. Having been away from sports for some time though, I decided to warm up first before opening my can of whup-ass. As everybody else put on his equipment, me and another fellow kicked the ball around. He kicked the ball in the wrong direction and I effortlessly ran it down like a true soccer stud, doing a little Maradona spin on top of the ball just to show the guy what he was in store for that evening. Well, being the true soccer stud I am, my right foot slipped off the ball at an awkward angle and planted sideways into the gym floor, and the rest of my 170 lbs. of pure muscle came crashing down on top of it. I heard a nasty cracking sound, and was worried that I had damaged the gymnasium's nice wooden floor. I realized on my short trip into that nice wooden floor, however, that it was just my ankle. What a relief, I thought, as I lifted my leg and allowed my ankle to return to a semi-normal angle, as it would be very embarrassing to damage the gym floor on my first outing with these guys, especially during warm-up.
So yes, having yet to open my can of whup-ass on these guys like Bush on bin Laden, I managed to severely injure my 'good ankle' (the left one has been rolled three times) while warming up and nobody even saw it happen. So when they saw me limping off to the side as they were about to start, they were naturally a bit surprised. 'Oh, I see... the American can't play after all.' With that I turned and limped right back onto the court, grimacing with every step. 'Who me? Oh no, I'm fine. Just my arthritis acting up.' I bravely hobbled around the back of the defense for the first thirty minutes of the game until our first break. I removed my shoe to find a grapefruit in the shape of my ankle inside. At that point everybody got a good look at just how bad my 'arthritis' was and suggested I take it easy for the rest of the evening. I consented and sat on the sidelines crying for the duration of the match. Four days in my new town and I was already gimp.
To help ease the pain of my swollen grapefruit, the boys and I went to get me some ice... cold beer. Yes, there is nothing better for damaged body parts then a few cold ones with your buddies. Except for maybe almost a dozen cold ones with your buddies. Followed by karaoke and nasty Japanese sake of course. One of the guys was even kind enough to sing a slow, sad song to my ankle, which I could no longer feel at that point anyway. It certainly did hit the spot; that is until I had to wake up a few hours later for work with a throbbing ankle I couldn't walk on and a throbbing head that felt like it had BEEN walked on.
Holding back the tears and cursing myself for not remembering to bring Tylenol with me to Japan, I hobbled across the street to my office. I could see the office across from mine, with its huge windows facing out on the entrance of the building, buzzing with the usual coffee-induced morning high of the busy Japanese public servants. They could see me as well, and as usual they all stopped for a moment to wave and smile before buzzing back to their hives. Not one of them seemed to notice the immense effort I was putting into dragging my ankle/grapefruit behind me to work. I came inside and changed into the indoor slippers that only come in one size - Japanese. I burst into my office ready to show off my battle scars, only to find it empty. So I went across the hall to the beehive and inquired about locating some ice, at which the buzzing stopped and was quickly replaced by curious stares. 'Ice? You want ice? You want ice for your coffee, silly American boy? You drink too much Starbucks, I think. We have no ice here for your coffee. Only honey.' I pulled up my pant leg to reveal my gargantuan ankle and explained that I needed the ice to reduce the swelling. At the site of my juicy grapefruit, the buzzing began again, but this time the busy bees all came swarming in my direction. They sat me down in a chair and one of the kind female bees, possibly the queen, buzzed down the hall to the kitchen to fetch me some ice and a towel while the others made sure I was comfortable. They also brought me some coffee.
My boss arrived a few minutes later and I limped over to my office, now dragging my grapefruit-ankle and five pounds of ice behind me, to tell him the heart-breaking news. He listened patiently, but from the look on his face I could tell he was barely holding in the 'YOU STUPID RETARD' that longed to escape the tip of his tongue. In true Japanese style, he merely smiled and nodded his head several times until I finished, then reminded me that he explicitly told me the first night I got there not to play any sports or get myself hurt until my insurance card was made. I seemed to have missed that part, possibly because he told me after serving me a king's share of beer at his place the first night.
My boss insisted I have the local doctor, supposedly an avid and aggressive hockey player in his younger days, check me out. His 'office', a large extension to the back of his home with quite modern facilities, basically serves as the local hospital. The doctor saw me almost right away, and after determining where my ankle was supposed to be under the large mass of purple and blue flesh, insisted that I have an x-ray. I explained that an x-ray really wasn't necessary, as I had rolled the other ankle many times before and never got it x-rayed and I surely hadn't broken or fractured anything. My protests went unheard, however, and as a last resort I feigned allergies to radiation. This, too, was in vain. So I entered the cancer cell expecting to find some old, piece of crap x-ray machine that probably rarely got to inject people with its cancer rays anyway. I was obviously a bit surprised to find a state-of-the-art machine that looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. It towered over me and was about four times as wide as me, and at first I thought the nurse was going to make me get inside. Instead, she made me stand up against it and hold the built-in handrails, and with the flip of a switch the world slowly started spinning as the machine rotated me into a horizontal position. Even though I enjoyed the euphoric feeling of being on what felt like a glorified barber's chair, I thought it was a bit overkill when I could have simply hopped up on an already horizontal examining table and shot the x-ray from there. Then I realized that every other patient I had seen in the office that morning was well past the menopause years or beyond the saving graces of Viagra, and having a machine like that suddenly made perfect sense. Who would have thought I would find something like that in my little town of Flat Deer, Japan though?
The doctor took enough shots of my ankle to give me the world's first case of ankle cancer, and then after reviewing the x-rays in the backroom for several minutes he returned with a solemn look on his face. Speaking to me for the first time since entering his office, and in very broken English, he told me the good news. 'You have slight fracture.' Brilliant! Well done old boy! Guess those x-rays weren't necessary after all, huh Jay?! I tucked my tail, and my head, between my legs and quietly made my way back to the main office to await further instructions. As it turned out, a cast wasn't necessary, but I would have to get the ankle taped once a week until it got stronger. And fortunately, the ice hockey doctor just happened to be the best taper in the prefecture, or so my boss told me later on. He really did tape me up nicely. And he, like my boss, was also kind enough to refrain from telling me what a retard I am for fracturing my ankle while warming up for a pickup game of soccer. But then again, I've always said that injuries are a lot like women - you never know when they are going to come, and when they do it is rarely from much effort on your part.
The rest of my first week in Hiraka was rather uneventful compared to my first weekend here. I gimped around town with my boss and visited all of the elementary schools, preschools, and community centers, all of which I will make occasional visits to throughout the year. I also managed to get invited out almost every night to consume large amounts of alcohol by various people and organizations in town, and passed the remaining nights that week doing my best to kill my liver in an attempt to appease my poor ankle. Neither one of them were too happy by week's end.
***TO BE CONTINUED***
Like I said, it was never continued. But maybe I should start recording my adventures here in Beijing... if you thought I was sarcastic about Japan, you ain't seen nothin yet!
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