alpha whiskey hotel

Well, the folks at Tokyo Times posted a story about a fun party trick sold for Japanese salarymen to be the life of the party. It’s a costume kit called “Harro! Gaijin-san” that includes a fake pointy nose and stick-on round blue eyes.

I’m actually pretty thick-skinned about stuff like this, but I really do wonder how long a similar product would last in the west: the “Konnechuwa! Mr. Nip” kit that includes big fake buck-teeth and slanty-eyed glasses…

Any foreigner who has been here long enough will undoubtedly be familiar with the “Here in Japan…” speech. The speech is a little lecture given to foreigners by people in some sort of authority, always in response to some violation of the rules or societal norms. I have two problems with the speech:

1) First of all, the pedant in me is bothered because the speech is just plain incorrect. “Here in Japan, people don’t jaywalk!” (Well, I’m here in Japan. I’m a person. And I’ve just been caught jaywalking.)

2) More seriously, there is the unspoken belief on the lecturer’s part that whoever has committed the transgression has done so because he is foreign (rather than simply because of human nature), and that a Japanese person would never commit the same act. I’ve heard “Here in Japan, people obey the speed limit!” (which is of course why every police motorcycle in the country is outfitted with radar) ; “Here in Japan, everyone returns their rental DVDs on time!” (which is why video stores have late return policies) , and even “Here in Japan, we make a reservation when we want to go to the data centre!”

Anyway, the reason I posted this was to write about the best “Here in Japan…” I have ever heard. What was even more surprising was that the recipient was Japanese. I was at the Fuchu License Centre Motorcycle Test Track waiting for my own motorcycle test, and I heard the examiner berating some poor fellow who had just failed his license test by getting too close to the edge of the S-Curve, a pylon-lined curvy path that you have to navigate without hitting a pylon. This fellow had apparently been licensed to ride in the States, and was testing to get a Japanese license. The examiner shouted at him.. “Oh. So they gave you a license in the States, did they? Well let me tell you something… Here in Japan, WE DON’T KNOCK OVER PYLONS WHEN WE DO THE S-CURVE ON OUR MOTORCYCLES!”.

Guess he got told!

So I was in the plumbing section of the hardware store the other day, looking for something. An employee of the store came up and asked me if I needed any help:

By the way, the answer ended up being 食器洗い機 “shokkiaraiki”…

A recent addition to convenience store shelves here is a shock rag entitled “Foreigner Crime File”. Intended to highlight crime committed by foreigners, presumably to incite hatred and a desire to rid Japan of immigrants, the magazine features photograps, articles, and stories about foreign crime.

The cover features cartoons of non-Japanese people, all with glowing bloodshot evil eyes, and all of whom look like contestants in some Stereotype Contest. The back cover features a world map giving a “danger rating” for each country, decorated with knives, guns, and skulls. The inside is full of headlines about how Tokyo is decending into lawlessness at the hands of “degenerate criminal aliens”. There are articles featuring photographs taken on the street of (somewhat gross, but obviously consensual) public displays of affection between foreign men and Japanese women, featuring captions such as “Hey nigger! Why are you touching a Japanese woman’s ass!” and “Asshole! Go back to your own country and kiss your own women!”. There are articles describing the differences between Korean prostitutes and Japanese ones (hint: kimchee aroma). There are photographs of foreign men drunk on the sidewalk (Japanese men, of course, never get drunk). In short, they haul out every disgusting stereotype that they can think of in order to make their point.

As you will have guessed, this magazine has caused quite a buzz among the foreign community in Japan, but try as I might, I just can’t bring myself to be too offended by this. It’s hard to describe the reason exactly, but essentially I liken it to the 3-year-old pitching a temper tantrum and calling you a poopy-head. Sure, at the moment that he says it, he hates you more than anything else in the world. But any legitimate point that he may have is completely and totally lost in the over-the-top delivery, the childishness, andthe poor execution of the message, and you find yourself actually amused at the crude attempts to offend you, and embarrassed for him that he failed so completely.

The only thing that bothers me a bit is that Family Mart, a convenience store chain that employs many of the same Degenerate Criminal Aliens™ that the magazine tries to offend, chose to sell this thing. On the plus side, some regular Japanese folks seem to realize that this thing is nasty—never in my 30+ years have I seen anyone as akward and embarrassed as the manager of my local Family Mart when I plunked the magazine down on the counter in front of him…

Last june, I bought myself a used scooter. Believe me, this thing is not a big “get out of my way” hog by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it’s powered by the very same engine and drive train that runs such things as chainsaws and weed-whackers. Still, it can pretty much beat a car in Tokyo (traffic here usually only moves at about 40 km/h, and I can blow right past huge lines of cars that are waiting for red lights…)

The thing’s been great for me; No longer is Tokyo for me just a collection of islands that surround the train stations that I go to. Now I have a great understanding of how it all works together. Every day I get to witness people going about their lives as I travel from home to the dojo, from client to client, from the office to dinner with friends… That said, there are still some things that just stick in my craw:

1. Cyclists who ride on the wrong side of the street. The moped law says that I have to stick in the left (outside) lane. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve moved right to avoid a parked car and almost come to a head-on collision with some cyclist who is riding up the wrong side of the road. If you’re gonna be on the road, obey the laws of the road, yeesh.
2. Motorcycle riders who have magical feet of balancing. These guys ride along with their feet 1cm above the pavement, going 50 km/h. Presumably the feet are out there to help keep them balanced, but come on. I can keep my bike upright at 10% of that speed. And let’s be realistic; if your motorcycle decides that it’s going to break the law of gyroscopic procession and tip over when you’re going 50 km/h, there’s not much that your feet are going to be able to do to prevent that.
3. In a similar vein: Scooter riders who ride with their knees stuck straight out to the sides. Seriously, guys, if they need to be aired out that badly, you should probably just take a shower or something.
4. Utility trucks with lights and sirens. OK, the gas company, I agree with 100%. Even the water company, I could see them having to go to some emergency. But the electric company?! “We’ve got an electricity leak down at Tameike! Ohms and volts are spilling everywhere! Better put on the siren!”
5. The fact that ambulances have to beg people to move out of the way. Jeez, people, there’s a dying person in there. Yes, that dying person needs to be somewhere even more urgently than you do. Deal with it.
6. People who throw cigarettes out the window. Even in Toronto, this one always annoyed me, in a “litterbugs!” sense. Now that I’m on a scooter, it takes a much more personal meaning. Since none of these geniuses has managed to hit me yet, I don’t know from personal experience, but it’s only a matter of time before I find out first-hand that it is neither fun nor conducive to safe riding to have a crotch full of burning tobacco.
7. Left-Hand Drive + Expensive Car = Motorcycle Lane Gets Blocked. It doesn’t happen with cheap left-hand drive cars (garbage trucks, delivery vehicles, someone’s crappy buick station wagon that they bought while they were transferred to the USA). And it doesn’t happen with expensive right-hand drive cars. But you take a Mercedes, put a steering wheel on the left side, and I can guarantee you that that person will be half in the motorcycle lane and half in his own lane every single time he pulls up to a red light. Since the left-hand drive would tend to make him sit right of his lane, the only reason I can think of for this phenomenon is that the guy thinks of himself as More Important Than Everybody Else™ (he is a middle manager, after all), and it gets his goat that people on $400 scooters are just blowing by his expensive car while he sits in traffic.

Even so, it’s a lot of fun.. Just had to get that off my chest.

I found myself with The First Cold Of The Season™ the other day and discovered to my chagrin that I was completely out of DayQuil. I neglected to buy enough during my last trip home, and you sure as heck can’t get it in Japan without a prescription.

Japan in general seems less keen on the idea of self-medication than we do in the west. Even asking questions about your medical treatments is a bit odd (Doctor: “You’re sick, I’ve got to give you medicine.” Patient: “What sort of medicine?” Doctor: “White pills and brown powder”). I remember my friend lecturing me a bit (about taking medicine without asking a doctor first) after I gave her some ibuprofen to help with the pain of her broken wrist. What I mean to say, I guess, is that there aren’t a whole lot of people around who can “recommend a good brand of over-the-counter cold medicine for me”. Nonetheless, I was out of DayQuil, and I hate having to budget for how many times per year I can get sick, so I decided to hunt around for a Japanese brand that I could “trust”.

So, standing in the “cold medicine” section of the pharmacy, I was faced with a bewildering array of choices. How on earth do you even choose what’s good? At home, you have “the brand my parents used to give me when I was a kid” as a guide. At the very least, you can go for “brand recognition”—anything that there’s a TV commercial for must be good. Well, and of course you can’t discount the placebo effect. For both my mother and sister, Advil is more effective than generic Ibuprofen because they think it is. Not only do I not have my “childhood brands”, but I also don’t have TV ads (pharmaceutical ads don’t make the one Japanese TV show that I watch), and certainly I don’t trust any of them enough for the placebo effect to kick in.

All of the drugs say roughly the same thing… spending any amount of time with a dictionary will show you that they all claim to cure fever, runny or blocked nose, cough, phlegm, watery eyes, etc. The worst thing is that I was standing there, deep in the thick thick cloud of stupid that for me seems to accompany the first few days of any cold. So, I grabbed a random box that said “extra strong” and was done with it.

And, for about 2 minutes, I was surprised at how cheap and effective the medicine was. Comparing the “active ingredients per tablet”, the Japanese brand compared favourably with the DayQuil (actually, with the generic no-name DayQuil substitute). This surprised me greatly, as Ibuprofen, for example, costs $10.00 for the equivalent of 13 American-strength pills (200mg). Unfortunately, my happiness was short-lived, as I actually noticed that on the Japanese box, I was looking at “active ingredients per 6 pills”. So, the Japanese stuff works just fine, as long as you take 12 pills at the same time, which means that a single dose is about $4.00.

Yeah, I did find some working Japanese pills, but for the money, I think I’ll get more Generic DayQuil Substitute™ next time I’m in Canada.

Yesterday, after having spent the previous day and a half cooped up at home with the flu, developing a severe case of cabin fever in the process, I awoke to a beautiful clear blue sky.

I headed out the door to catch the train to the office as always, but for some reason Fred, my trusty bicycle, caught my eye. Looking sad and neglected, he seemed to scream “Take me! It’s been far too long!” Well, both Fred and the beautiful weather were beckoning, so I really had no choice but to duck back inside to grab my helmet and cycling gloves.

Thank you, Fred! The short 6.8-km ride into the office helped me remember the things I’d forgotten… It helped me remember the little merchant streets, with thousand-year-old shops run by million-year-old men, selling fish and flowers and books and stationery, the vendors selling grilled yams from the backs of trucks (you can smell the smoke for miles), the old ladies out doing their grocery shopping and looking for a bargain, and the young mothers pushing kids around in strollers to enjoy the weather. It reminded me of the dingy little street-level train stations, where a train pulling in or out disrupts street trafic for 5 minutes. I got reacquainted with the delivery trucks, no bigger than a station wagon, making deliveries of fresh meat and produce to the little mom-and-pop supermarkets around.

Essentially, this bike ride helped me rediscover a lot of things that I love about Tokyo; the sort of things that it’s easy to forget when I spend too much time getting onto the subway and popping back out through a hole in the ground at my office, or at some client in a corporate center downtown, or at some big polished shopping area.

I’ve got to do it again soon!

Maybe next time I’ll take the long way around.

Don’t think there’s a whole lot in specific to say here. Just making a general update (I have been getting modified comic strips in my mailbox each morning suggesting that I make an update (hi Victoria)).

I’ll report that I passed my first Aikido grading a couple weeks back. Now I have the rank of 9th-class (as opposed to my previous rank of “absolutely nothing”). Very cool, but it’s made me realize even more that it’s a long long path that I’m on. The training for the test, and the intensive midsummer training before that, took quite a lot out of me and I finally hit a wall in the week after my test. I’m only now starting to recover a bit and really want to train again.

Things are finally starting to get comfortable at work — in the past little bit I’ve wrapped up two projects which have been lingering around (and causing stress — not because they’ve been difficult, but because they’ve been lingering). It’s really nice to be able to go home on Friday with no thoughts about coming in for a few hours on the weekend “just to clear off the plate a bit”… On the other hand, I’m sure it’ll get busy again before too long, so I’d better enjoy it while I can.

Time is fast approaching to figure out what I’m going to do about going home at Christmas… I can’t believe it’s been almost a year already. It’s already past Thanksgiving at home!

Hmm, I guess that’s about it.. If you haven’t been paying attention to the photo galleries recently, go have a look — there’re a bunch of new photos in there (and a new version of the Gallery software).

It took a little longer this year than last, but summer has finally arrived — with a vengeance. It’s been a solid week of mid-high 30’s temperatures and oppressive humidity. You can see from the picture that Tokyo’ air quality, normally known as stellar (ahem) has taken a hit as well.

I’m glad I bought that air conditioner and fridge (with ice maker) now…

Three weeks ago, I moved into my first “real apartment” here in Japan.

I must admit that I was a little bit surprised to discover how ill-at-ease I’d been in the temporary apartments. Realistically-speaking, there’s little material difference between my new apartment and my old one. True, I do have more space, but I can’t really use it now (due to lack of furniture). It is closer to work, but since I’ve been working in a far-away client’s office for the past month, I haven’t really noticed that either. But I’m so much more comfortable and relaxed here than I ever was before.

I suppose that just having a sense of continuity, of knowing where my “home” will be for the next couple years, of having a place in the world, is more important than I originally thought.