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I’m not sure if you’ve ever been woken up by a shamisen concert, but if not, I don’t recommend it. A shamisen is a stringed Japanese instrument with a pretty distinct nasal sound. You’d probably characterize its sound as “Japanese.” I can’t really blame the shamisen-ist for waking me up. The concert, which took place directly below my apartment at the temple, started at around 11:30 a.m., so it was probably time to get up anyway. All the same, it was a tough start to the day. Now, I won’t say that I don’t like shamisen music. In fact, under the appropriate circumstances, it can be quite beautiful. When you’re being woken up by shamisen, however, it can also sound like a bunch of braying cats in a pool choking on nails. That was how my day started.
Soon thereafter, I received yet another (exceedingly polite) reminder about how properly to use my bathroom. You see, one of the quirks of my apartment here at the temple is that I share the toilet room with the administrative offices of the temple school. During the day, if I want to use the bathroom, I have to unlock one door from my apartment, enter the toilet room, and then lock the other door from within the room. Upon leaving, I’m supposed to unlock the door connecting to the offices and then re-lock the door from the toilet to my apartment. I seem to keep forgetting, though, to unlock the door from the toilet to the administrative offices, so the office ladies keep (very politely) knocking on my apartment when they want to use the toilet to ask me to unlock the door for them. The whole situation is incredibly awkward, but I’m trying to adjust to it.
It won’t stop raining in Tokyo! I think it’s rained just about every day since I’ve been here, and the weather forecast calls for thunderstorms for nine of the next ten days! I’ve been told that this is extraordinarily unusual, and the major news in Tokyo right now is the diluvial downpour overtaking the city, but regardless of its extraordinariness, I’m finding it to be a huge bummer.
Just as one of the nice office ladies finished explaining the bathroom protocol to me for the umpteenth time (though, it was, of course in Japanese, so umpteenth time or not, I still couldn’t understand it), I heard a pretty loud pitter-patter, pitter-patter coming from the spare bedroom in the apartment. Ordinarily, a leak in the ceiling, even a large one as was the case, wouldn’t be a major cause for concern. I would have liked to have just gone up to the roof to check it out, but I wasn’t sure the temple folks would take kindly to my do-it-yourselfmanship, so I reluctantly notified one of the office ladies that there was a large leak in my apartment. This is a great example of Japanese kindness and courtesy going a bit too far. Within a minute, I had both office ladies and one of the temple priests in my apartment excitedly chatting about the leak and trying to calm me down. I tried to reassure them that I was just fine and indeed calm and that the leak wasn’t a huge deal, but the more I spoke, the more concerned they seemed. Another one of the priests ran up to the roof to do something, and, finally, the leak stopped. After much bowing and apologizing on everyone’s part, the temple ensemble left my apartment, and I—finally—had my first moment of quiet all morning. Then the shamisen started up again.
So, living at the temple presents its fair share of oddities, but I’m trying to be easy-going about everything. I feel like it’d be pretty tough not to be easy-going about most of the stuff here.
There were a few other things I had wanted to write about tonight, but I got severely distracted while writing by the discovery that Google Maps has JUST added Street View for Tokyo! I’m pretty excited. Now, you can check out my life in Ryogoku in street-level detail! It’s pretty easy to find the temple. Here’s what you should do: search on Google Maps for “Theater X, Ryogoku, Tokyo, Japan,” center yourself on location A, zoom in, and select Street View. Then, while looking south, side-step about half a block to the west, and you should be able to see the entrance to the temple. You’ll definitely know when you see it!
Today marks two weeks since I’ve been in Tokyo, and life is slowly assuming a pattern of normalcy. I expect that to pick up even more once I officially start work next week. There’s still a great deal, though, that I’m getting used to.
I had a long meeting on Monday with Takahashi-sensei, who’ll be my co-teacher for the kindergarten and elementary classes at the school. I think she’s about 40, and she has three kids, ages 14, 12, and 9. I had heard really wonderful things about her, and meeting her only affirmed all of them. She seems really warm and energetic, and it seemed like she was really excited about working together for the coming year.
Later in the evening, Enchou-sensei, the head priest at the temple, took me and the other PiA fellow in the area out for a very traditional, very formal Japanese dinner. Tatami floors, silk screens, tiny tables, zabuton, and the works. I felt like there were about twenty courses, all of which were very small, and most of which were spiritually-problematic in one way or another. Though I’ve quickly gotten used to eating shellfish, sucking nearly-live shrimp out of their shells still made me a bit queasy. I also couldn’t understand a thing over the course of the 3-hour dinner, but I’m getting used to that too. One thing I could understand, however, was Enchou-sensei leaning in to me during the fourth course or so and saying, “I get you drunk tonight!” A few minutes later, the waitress placed before what looked like a huge pint-size glass of water. I was pretty excited, because this would’ve been by far the largest glass of water I had come across in Japan. I took a big gulp, and of course it was not water but shochu, a type of Japanese alcohol that tastes like pure vodka. I had heard that Japanese men derive odd pleasure from watching their friends get drunk, and I suppose this was my first experience with that. I couldn’t be rude and decline Enchou-sensei’s generosity, so I felt compelled to drink all that he bought for me. By the end of the night, I was definitely trashed, and though I tried to do a good job of hiding it, I could tell that Enchou-sensei was pleased.
I had plans on Tuesday to meet up with some previous PiA fellows and head to the beach, but it was drizzling and overcast, so we ended up in Kamakura instead. Kamakura is a small city outside of Tokyo known for its massive number of temples. We walked around a bit and checked out Kencho-ji, a large temple that serves as the national seat of Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism. I was also pretty excited to see the Daibutsu, a giant 35’ bronze Buddha statue built in 1252. Kamakura, I think, is more conducive to photo-blogging than written descriptions, but I forgot my camera, and the weather sucked anyway.
In the evening, we ended up at a karaoke club, and I learned that you can never trust people when they say, “we’re all really bad at it.” I was feeling a bit self-conscious and not really getting into it, but I loosened up a little after six beers. I think I pulled off an almost-recognizable rendition of Weezer’s “Across the Sea” and Nine Inch Nail’s “The Perfect Drug.” My first time in a Japanese karaoke club!
The British woma
n that I meant at the bon festival last week had told me about a huge bon odori celebration happening Wednesday and Thursday night in this part of Tokyo. I went last night and had such a good time that I returned tonight. It proved to be another crazy “made in Japan” experience. 
The festival, I was told, was huge, drawing 10,000 people from around the Tokyo area. In this regard, it was much, much larger than the little neighborhood bon odori I had discovered the previous week. As I learned, this was a special bon called Kawachi Ondo, where the same song is played repeatedly for two days though the lyrics are changed every time. There were thousands of people doing the same dance (though it was pretty complicated) over and over and over for hours on end. The whole event wasn’t nearly as charming as the smaller bon, and no one recognized me this time, but it was all pretty incredible nonetheless.
Check out this video of the bon dance:
RIDICULOUS. Doesn’t even begin to describe the day. I thought today would be story-free because I slept in until 1 (which was awesome), and it took a little while for me to wake up, get going, and even leave the apartment. I should know better than now, though, to expect a day free of ridiculousness. I should also mention that the deer-in-the-headlights sort of fear that characterized my first week here is subsiding, so, again, I think that’s a good thing. (Spoiler: the really ridiculous part comes at the end, if you want to skip ahead.)
I’ve been getting antsy to find a place that sells English books, should I ever want to buy books. I’ve walked into several local bookstores, but none of them seem to carry English books. I read in my handy Princeton-in-Asia Japan handbook (thanks, PiA!) that there is a large chain bookstore near Tokyo Station (sort of like Tokyo’s Grand Central), so off I went. It was a bit like a Japanese Barnes & Noble except the place was massive and sold everything from eyeglasses to decorative quartz. In fact, their website, as I just read, claims that the location I was at is “Japan’s largest comprehensive bookstore.”
I purchased a day-planner (which appeased the type-a side of me); the current copy of Tokyo Journal (Japan’s main English-language ex-pat magazine); several copies of Time (for use with my adult classes); and a copy of Remembering the Kanji 1: A Complete Course on How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Japanese Characters, a kanji book that I’m really excited about and that’s supposed to be pretty effective (more on kanji and Japanese language another time). I was pretty excited to see that the cover story of Time was (coincidentally!) on Japanese entrepreneurship, which seemed pretty random to me, so I thought it’d be perfect for my classes. When I got home, though, I discovered that the magazine actually publishes a separate Asian edition, so I guess it wasn’t so random after all.
Anyway, after the bookstore, my next stop was Akihabara, Tokyo’s insane electronics district and allegedly the largest clustering of electronics stores in the world. I headed right to Yodobashi Camera, the largest store in Akihabara. The place had 9 stories (!) and was frightening as hell. It was certainly the largest electronics store I’ve ever been in. Consumer massiveness seems to be a theme today. Comparing it to Best Buy doesn’t do it justice. Most of the aisles went straight from the floor all the way to the ceiling, giving the store an intimidating labyrinth-like quality. I wanted to get out of there quickly, so I headed right for the digital cameras. I was prepared just to replace my old Canon that had recently broke so as to avoid having to ask a bunch of questions to a salesperson, but I was stopped by a salesman who spoke fluent accent-less English (he grew up in Alaska, he said). I did ultimately end up spending quite a bit of time at the store, and I’d say he was the only salesperson there who spoke English at all. The guy explained that Americans always go right for the Canons; he ended up selling me on a Fujifilm model that had more megapixels and a better zoom (and was much cheaper!) than the Canon I was about to buy. So, expect pictures hereon forward!
Two other noteworthy tidbits about Yodobashi: first, the store music that kept playing on repeat (a bit annoyingly, in fact) seemed weirdly familiar. Well, I just read on Wikipedia that the “store’s theme song is a bouncy cover of The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Now it makes sense… sort of. Second, I was also in the market for a new alarm clock, so I had my English-speaking salesman friend show me to the clocks. He showed me the high-end models, and I thought it was pretty strange that they didn’t have a radio feature, so I asked to see the alarm clocks with music. Then, he showed me some plastic crap models that woke one up to a single pre-recorded jungle. I was confused as to why this was so complicated, so I again explained that I wanted an alarm that would wake me up to the radio. “Oh, like in the movies!?” he said. So, apparently Japan has 9-story electronics stores, but it doesn’t have alarm clocks with a radio function.
As I was walking back to my apartment from the train station, I passed a Chinese restaurant that said (I thought) was open until midnight, so I made a mental note and planned on doing a late dinner. I headed back out to the place around 9:45, but it was closed, so I guess I had read the sign wrong. It was raining hard, so I didn’t want to look for a place to eat, so I just ducked into the closest restaurant. Bad idea, of course. The restaurant was a Korean barbeque place. I wanted something quick and easy, and Korean barbeque—as I was about to learn—is neither quick nor easy.
My first problem was that I couldn’t read a single thing on the menu, and there were no pictures this time. The waitress (whom I would learn was Chinese) spoke pretty much no English. These factors combined presented something of a conundrum. I thought it would be rude to leave, so I just asked for “chicken and beef,” not sure at all about what to expect. The waitress came back out two minutes later, placing in front of me one plate of raw beef and one plate of raw chicken. A moment later she returned with a bucket of hot coals. I sort of got the idea of what I was supposed to do.
Through a strange combination of bad Japanese and mime, we were able to have something that resembled a conversation. It was late, and I was the only person in the restaurant, so she kept watching me eat, so a little conversation seemed to mitigate the awkwardness. By the end of dinner, I felt I had a new friend, sort of. Because I live in a neighborhood without a lot of Westerners and because simple tasks like ordering dinner often require lots of awkward back-and-forth, I’m finding it somewhat easy to make lots of such “friends.” I’m pretty sure the girl at the hyaku en (100 yen) store knows me by now for all the times I’ve come in saying “what I need is…” while pointing my index finger at the Japanese translation of some English word (tape measure, wrapping paper, notepad, etc.) that I’ve typed into my electronic Japanese-English dictionary. (I realized tonight that what I’ve actually been saying to her is “what I need to eat is…” which explains a lot!). Anyway, the same “friend-ing” process had happened at lunch today with the owner of the Indian restaurant (though the guy is actually from Nepal) that I ate at. I guess I even came across as affable enough to receive a 50 yen discount off my meal!
Now, here’s the (most) ridiculous part of the day where I accidentally end up at a Japanese salsa club. And by “accidentally ended up,” I mean I followed a sign that said “salsa” down a back alley and proceeded to climb two flights of stairs of an unlit building (I later learned this was the back entrance). So, right across from the temple is a third-story window-front with the Japanese word サルサ in huge green neon flights. The word is written in katakana, the Japanese syllabary used to write words of foreign origin, and such words are thus usually pretty easy to decipher simply by sounding out the letters. For example, the Japanese word for “cart” is “kaato” (カート), and the word for “taxi” is “takushi” (タクシー). This is all important to understand for the story.
For a while, I couldn’t figure out what the neon word actually said, and this had been bugging me for a week because, like I said, katakana is easy to read, and it looked like a simple word. I knew that サルサ spelled “sa-ru-sa,” but try as I might, I really couldn’t figure out what the sign was trying to say. I had more or less given up and half-heartedly convinced myself that it said “sales” (the letter “l” and the letter “r” are interchangeable in Japanese, hence the mistakes/amusement of a Japanese person speaking English), though I didn’t really believe this to be the case. As I was walking out of the Korean barbeque place, though, I looked up at the sign—and in an epiphanic moment—knew at once that it said “salsa!”
Giddy over my revelation, I decided to check it out. I figured it would be a bar that played salsa music (seems like a safe bet, no?) or maybe even a Mexican bar. Regardless, I figured it would be some kind of bar. Nope. Like I said, I followed a sign down an unlit back alley, climbed an unlit spiral staircase, and saw a metal door with the word “welcome” on it that was otherwise totally inconspicuous. I tried the door, but it was stuck. I had come too far though to turn back now. I tried the door, this time pulling harder.
I wish I hadn’t. What I saw was a long, rectangular room with a wooden floor, and except for the one wall covered in a floor-to-ceiling mirror, the place was plastered in kitsch glow-in-the-dark outer space wallpaper of ringed planets and crescent moons, much like what you might find in the bedroom of a six year-old in the ‘90s. What I did not see was a bar. When I stepped into the room, everyone stepped what they were doing and looked at me. In this case, “everyone” encompassed seven people: the couple dancing, four people on stools at the end of the room, and a short man sitting in front of a stereo whom I took to be the deejay. Once again, I thought it would be rude just to walk out, so I sauntered down to other side of the room and took a seat next to a full-bodied Japanese woman in four-inch heels. I signed my name on a list and paid a 600 yen cover charge which sorta peeved me since I didn’t expect to stay very long (I learned at the end of the night that this was the only fee involved; all food and drink was complimentary). I “ordered” a beer which was handed to me from a small refrigerator behind the registration desk. As I nursed my beer and small-chatted with the woman next to me, I realized that this “salsa club” was more like a salsa studio. People came here for the express purpose of salsa-ing; consuming alcohol was a secondary affair. What I had been expecting (and hoping to discover) was exactly the opposite.
I sat there for a while watching various permutations of the same six people salsa dance, drowning in that seventh-grade dance type of awkwardness. Everyone kept staring at me, probably wondering who the hell I was and what the hell I was doing at a salsa club in Ryogoku at 11 p.m. on a rainy Sunday evening. I tried to smile back. I was about to down my beer and peace out when the full-bodied, 40 year-old woman asked me to dance.
I figured I didn’t know when would be the next time I’d be in a Japanese salsa club, so I said yes. I was terrible, of course. That much should go without saying. My prior knowledge of salsa dancing was limited to the one night each semester in college when my eating club was compelled to go off tap by the Alcohol Initiative and hosted a salsa night instead. But I don’t think I ever went, let alone went and danced. So I sucked pretty badly at the salsa dancing, but I had fun. My seventh-grade dance awkwardness gave way to bar-mitzvah awkwardness, which is easier to endure and which, as some of you may know, has its own peculiar charm. Two songs later, everyone in the room (including the deejay) was gathering around me trying to give me a lesson. They were all in salsa attire (of course), and I was wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and running shoes. The awkwardness was getting a bit heavy to bear by now, so I asked for another beer (which, at this point, I still thought I’d be paying for), downed it, and left (out the front entrance this time).
The whole experience was so fucking bizarre that had it not happened to me, I don’t know if I would believe it. Here’s the proof:
Every morning I wake up and think that there’s no way today can possibly be as bizarre as the day before, and each day, I am proven wrong. Today the temple and the school celebrated Jizō Bon, the festival for the Buddhist patron saint of children. It ended up being a surprisingly long, busy day, and I barely left the grounds of the temple.
Around 10 a.m. all the children from the school shuffled solemnly into the main sanctuary of the temple to pray for (or with?) Jizō for protection and blessings for the coming school term. I wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but the ceremony involved lots of incense and flowers, and the kids looked really cute in the sanctuary. As interesting as it was, though, we were (of course) sitting on the floor in tea ceremony position (I learned this is actually called seiza style) which is painfully uncomfortable, so I was happy when the ceremony ended. Next, Enchou-sensei entered the sanctuary and told some long story about Jizō. I didn’t understand a word, but I’m pretty sure I laughed at all the appropriate times. In this regard, the whole experience was pretty similar to the Latin salutatory address at my graduation.
The school was celebrating the saint’s day with a matsuri (festival) for which we had all spent the last week preparing. Though school was technically not in session this week, the children spent every day at the school learning dances and songs, practicing taiko drumming, making crafts, and getting dunked in the pool by me. I had expected the school’s matsuri to be a quick, low-key affair in which parents came and which their kids dance for thirty minutes. Again, I was mistaken. No detail was deemed too insignificant in preparation for the matsuri.
I was already exhausted from the day, and I was looking forward to resting for a bit at my apartment before I had to return to the school for the start of the festival, but just as I was about to fall asleep, someone started knocking on the door. The headmistress handed me two envelopes: one contained half a month’s salary for August (which I thought was pretty generous, considering I don’t officially start work until September), and the other contained some sort of ticket. After much confusion and a fair bit of Japanese/English back and forth, I was able to piece together that the ticket was for an afternoon performance of The Magic Flute which was apparently being performed in honor of Jizō at a theater next to the temple. As I mentioned, I was exhausted, and the last thing I wanted to do was spend my afternoon watching an opera, but I felt I couldn’t decline the kind gesture, so I accepted the ticket.
As a side note, I find it extremely odd (even eerie) that after a week on the job at the Sénat when I was working in Paris I was also given a complimentary ticket for a performance of The Magic Flute. Weird, right?
The theater, oddly named Theater X (although I later learned that it’s pronounced “chi,” as in the Greek letter) was tiny, seating no more than 200 people. I was a little distressed to be told there was no intermission, but then I learned that entire opera (somehow!) had been condensed into 90 minutes. As Papegeno launched into his first aria I felt relief—in a twisted misery-loves-company fashion—in knowing that at least no one else in the theater would be able to understand the opera either since it was in German. A moment later, though, all my schadenfreude-esque hopes were squashed, for the libretto, of course, had been translated into Japanese. And so, I found myself sitting through an incredibly bizarre child’s German-Japanese abridged rendition of Mozart’s opera at a tiny theater adjacent to a Buddhist temple in Tokyo.
I hurried back to the school, and the matsuri was in full-swing. The kids seemed to have a good time playing the games (many of which had taken hours to prepare), and the parents enjoyed watching their children perform. I spent most of the two hours eating ramen and giving enthusiastic thumb-up’s as children demonstrated counting from one to ten in English for me. At one point, a parent tried to explain to me the difference between a kimono and a yukata, but I left feeling more confused.
It took another equally large group of volunteers several hours to clean up after the matsuri. I couldn’t help but wonder if the many hours invested into hanging up and taking down the Japanese lanterns really justified their display for two hours. Despite the bad weather and despite my fatigue, I found the whole festival to be really wonderful (in fact, I’d say it was the nicest Jizō matsuri I’ve ever attended!). I again wish I would have had a camera (maybe I’ll work on that tomorrow). When the clean-up (finally) was finished, I presented the principal and all the teachers with gifts, which I thought went over pretty well. Much prolonged, deep bowing was involved all around.
And that’s how I spent my Jizō Bon.
Many of you are aware that brevity is not one of my virtues, so I apologize in advance if this posting is a bit lengthy, but there's a lot on my mind. Also, after a week here, tonight is really the first time I'm going to bed pretty excited that I'm here, so that's probably a positive.
Today began like the last few days: dragged myself out of bed, went downstairs the courtyard, played with 228 Japanese children on the school playground. It was the three year-olds turn to go swimming today, and I was asked again to help out. Can't deny that it was pretty fun. There was even time afterward to play in the mud with the kids. At some point, the following thoughts crossed my mind: 1) I have a Princeton degree, and I am playing in the mud, and 2) I am actually getting paid to play in the mud.
Anyway, what I would like to write about are two different, crazy experiences I had today. One reaffirmed for me Tokyo's magnanimity and anonymity and the other, its smallness and its charm.
The first story concerns my prolonged attempts at securing a Japanese working visa. While in New York over the summer, I had submitted paper work to Tokyo Immigration to apply for Certificate of Eligibility, which, I was told, would allow me to apply for a visa. My Certificate never arrived before I left for Japan, so I entered the country on a tourist visa. Now, I wouldn't care so much about actually obtaining the proper visa and the legality that comes with it, except I need a working visa to apply for a Gaijin Card (Alien Registration Card), which in turn allows me to purchase a cell phone, establish a bank account, join a gym, etc., all of which I'm anxious to do.
I was informed yesterday that my Certificate of Eligibility had finally arrived, so I assumed I was all set to become legal finally! This proved to be, as with most of my assumptions about Japan, rather naïve. So, one of the wonderful ladies from the temple office accompanied me to Tokyo's central immigration office in the Shinagawa district today so I could apply to upgrade my Certificate to an actual visa. The immigration office pretty much resembled your local d.m.v. but with a few notable differences: it was immaculately clean (like everything in Tokyo), there was no yelling and pushing, and it was oddly efficient (also like everything in Tokyo). We waited in a line, received some forms, filled them out, waited in another line, received a number, waited forty minutes, were summoned to the counter, and that was that. I was told I would receive a postcard in the mail in 2-3 weeks when my visa was ready, at which time I would have to return to the immigration office for a repeat experience.
On the one hand, I was dumbfounded by the cog-like bureaucracy, but I also couldn't help but marvel at its effectiveness. Everything seemed to get done so long as one waited in the right lines at the right times and had the proper forms filled out correctly. But my journey through immigration wasn't over yet.
For whatever reason, Gaijin Cards are issued not by the immigration bureau but by local municipalities. In my case, this meant my ku's (city ward's) central office. So, we schlepped from the immigration office across the city to the Sumida-ku municipal ward office. There, I again waited in a line, filled out some forms, waited some more, had my picture taken, waited in another line, and again, I was told to return in 2-3 weeks after I had obtained my visa from Tokyo Immigration.
Why the process to obtain a visa and an alien registration card are completely separate and why both are even necessary in the first place, I'm not sure. A former PiA fellow who lived in Japan from 2002-2004 recently remarked to me that many things in Japan "make a different kind of sense" than they would in the U.S. His comment was in response to my remark that the Japanese address system "doesn't make any sense" (there are no street names, and buildings are not numbered... at least not in the Western way). His characterization seems appropriate yet again as I reflect on my adventure through Japanese bureaucracy.
Now, one of the more positive parts of the entire 5-hour ordeal is that I greatly enjoyed my time with the woman from the office who chaperoned me/spoke for me. While her English isn't perfect, it's infinitely better than my two-month old Japanese. Between broken English and broken Japanese, however, I was surprised by how much we were able to communicate; we talked about our families, of course, but we also talked about the implications of linguistic systems on cultural difference (English, for example, is subject-verb-object, while Japanese is subject-object-verb). The afternoon spent together left me feeling pretty good about how much my Japanese has improved in a single week (on a scale of 1-10, I've gone from roughly 0.1 to 0.5). There's hope for me, still!
That was story #1. Story #2 begins later in the evening back at my apartment. Through all the immigration craziness, I hadn't had time to eat anything all day (sorry, mom), so I was pretty hungry by 7 p.m. There's a nice-looking sushi restaurant in the neighborhood that I had had my eye on, but the menu is entirely in Japanese, and I had been too intimidated to eat there. Given my realization, however, that I had been in Japan for a week and had not yet had sushi--along with my new-found confidence in my Japanese--I thought this would be the perfect occasion to give it a try.
I couldn't read anything on the menu, but I was able to order a set plate of varied sushi. When my food arrived, I didn't know what anything was on the plate (I later determined that one of the items was ikura, salmon roe), but I figured sushi of any kind had to be safer than some of the other foods I had already consumed in the prior week. The sushi was amazing, and I got down to one final piece of sushi on my plate that I was pretty sure was shrimp. The Jew in me really didn't want to eat it, but I didn't want it to go to waste. Summoning my best Japanese, I tried politely to offer it to the middle-aged man next to me at the counter who appeared to suffer from a woeful lack of dental care. He stared blankly at me, and I could feel my Japanese-confidence balloon beginning to deflate. He then said something back to me, smiled appreciatively, and took the shrimp-like piece of sashimi from my place.
I was feeling pretty darn good about the whole transaction (especially that my Japanese had pulled through!), and that would've been the end of it had the man not tapped me on the shoulder a few minutes later. He was apparently offering me a fresh piece of his sashimi in exchange. I didn't really want it, but I didn't want to decline his kind gesture; I also had no idea what it was, but it looked white, harmless, and most un-shellfish-like, so I thought I'd go for it. I was about to chopstick it off his plate when I suddenly recalled a little trivium of etiquette I had heard somewhere or read: when taking food from a common plate or someone else's plate, one should flip around the chopsticks so as to use the clean end. This sort of strikes me as common sense, but like I said, I definitely remembered it being distinctly explained. So, I quickly flipped my chopsticks around and grabbed the fish with a quick but sincere arigato. At this, the man let out a little shriek of joy and clapped his hands. He seemed to explain the situation to the woman to his left, who joined the applause. By this time, the sushi chef behind the counter was staring, wondering what was going on, and the man repeated the anecdote to him. I thought I heard him say something about how I might as well have been born Japanese. Then, the chef, too, began applauding, staring awestruck at me. I felt like quite the gaijin (foreigner) celebrity.
To celebrate, I decided to take the long way back to the temple, walking down Keiyo-doro Ave. rather than through the (unnamed) alleys. As I was walking home, I noticed bright lights coming from between two buildings, so, with no place in particular I needed to be that evening, I followed them to Ryogoku Park. I had walked through the park a few days earlier, and it had struck me as, well, "quaint" would be a nice word. "Dilapidated" also comes to mind. Tonight, though, it was nearly unrecognizable. Japanese lanterns in shades of bright pink, orange, and green hung from the trees, and a 10' high taiko platform, complete with drummer, stood in the center of the park. Around it people danced in two concentric circles, hora style! The women were all done up in traditional Japanese kimono, and the men were all wearing, well, whatever the male equivalent is. I forget the word. I had chanced across a Japanese bon festival!
It was incredible to see, and I really wish I had had a camera on me at the time. I was enjoying watching the taiko and dancing, and I noticed that there were tons of little kids running around, also in kimono/kimono equivalent. Some of them, I swore, were kids from the school that I spent the week throwing into the pool. Sure enough, a little giggly five year-old girl ran up to me and grabbed my leg. "Eigo no sensei!" ("English teacher!) When I bent down, she gave me a huge hug and kept yelling out "eigo no sensei." Up until that point I had avoided attention and felt pretty anonymous, despite being the only white dude there and the only person in shirts, sandals, and a t-shirt. Now, though, more kids apparently recognized me and ran over to offer their hugs. I felt pretty loved. I could see that parents were beginning to wonder whom their kids were hugging, so a ring of adults formed around me, and we began chatting in broken English/Japanese. I've been told that Ryogoku is a pretty small, tight-knit neighborhood, and I could see that within minutes a lot of the parents at the park were looking at me and talking. A lot of them came over to wait in line to introduce their children. For the second time that night, I felt like a celebrity!
One more quick thing before I wrap up: after the kids and parents all left, I stayed at the festival for a bit longer to continue watching the taiko and dancing. I noticed that there was an old (65?) Western woman in full kimono in the circle who knew all the dances very well. When the dancing finally ended, she came over to say hello. She had a British accent and said she had lived in Ryogoku for thirty years! She was a bit eccentric but very kind and seemed to know an amazing amount about the history of Ryogoku. She also said she worked part-time as a sumo commentator! I got her e-mail address, so I'm hoping I can take her out for coffee sometime. She seems like an awesome person to know, and who knows, maybe I can score some sweet sumo tickets from it?
So, those are my two stories. It's pretty late here, so I'm not going to devote any more space to reflecting on them. Besides, I really hope they speak for themselves. As I said at the beginning, I feel like I've had a lot of crazy/bizarre/awesome moments in the last week, but tonight was really the first night I was legitimately glad to be here. I guess it's all that gaijin love.
Wow! A blog! I never thought I would be one to have a blog, but inspired by Sam's out-of-college blogging initiative and jealous of some of the other Princeton-in-Asia fellows' awesome blogs, I thought I'd give this a try. I've been in Tokyo for a week at this point, and I feel like I've had so many crazy stories at the end of each day, so I hope this blog will serve as a forum to record them and to share them with friends and family. It will also save me from repeating the same stories over and over again in e-mails.
For those of you who are unaware, I am spending the year on a fellowship living and working at the Eko-in Buddhist Temple in Tokyo, where I'll be teaching English to small children. Crazy, huh?
The name for this blog comes from the title of a famous 1953 Japanese film that I was forced to watch for REL 222: Religion and Modern Though and Film at Princeton (thanks, Professor Stout!). According to Wikipedia, the film is "regularly listed as one of the ten greatest films ever made." I thought the blog name was somewhat clever, but then I noticed that some self-proclaimed "dumb arse" had already started his own short-lived blog with the same name! It is my hope, however, that this blog will be superior in that 1) it will have more than a single posting, and 2) it utilizes the proper, pretentious diacritics in its title.
At the moment, at least, I'm excited about this blog, and I hope to update it regularly. If I discover within myself the necessary tech savvy, I may even try to post some pictures on here. Also, at some point, I may try to include "backdated" posts with stories from my first week here. Please stay in touch while I'm abroad, and feel free to share your comments, thoughts, feelings, reactions, and (gentle) ribbing on here!
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