alpha whiskey hotel

From Japan Today:

TOKYO — A 16-year-old boy arrested Saturday after attacking five people and injuring two of them with kitchen knives on a Tokyo street has told police that he had “some relationship problems,” investigative sources said Sunday.

So let me get this straight. Buddy’s having trouble with his girl, so he decides to impress her by going on a stabbing spree. But here’s the thing. Even if she is actually the kind of girl who is impressed by a man on a stabbing spree (and if she is, he sure knows how to pick ‘em), the guy couldn’t even get it right! I mean, he only attacked 5 people, and only 2 were actually injured?

You know you’re a loser when you fail at going on a stabbing spree to impress your girl…

Somehow, the Narita Express always manages to evoke the same blend of feelings from me.

For the uninitiated, Narita Airport is about an hour outside of Tokyo. There are of course many different ways to get to and from the airport, all with their own merits and drawbacks, but really it comes down to “where in the city are you?”. Airport Limousine Bus is great for people who live in Minato, Chiyoda, Shinjuku, etc. For those who live in the Northeast, Keisei Skyliner is for you. And, for the Shinjuku/Ikebukuro/Omiya crowd, there is Narita Express.

The Narita Express runs alongside the Yamanote Line from Ikebukuro down to Shinagawa or so, and then comes back up underground to Tokyo Station, before heading East and following the Sobu line out of the city. Now, I am fully aware that no country in the world puts its most expensive real estate right along the train tracks, but somehow the Narita Express is especially drab. The thing is, you should be excited to be on the Narita Express! You are, after all, leaving for some sort of trip. Maybe you are going home to visit family. Perhaps you are off to seal some business deal. You could be going to rendezvous with a special someone in some tropical destination. Or, on the other hand, you could be heading the other direction, glad to be back in Tokyo, looking forward to seeing friends again after a couple weeks away, or at the very least, looking forward to your nice comfortable futon after traveling for hours.

But the Narita Express is so depressing that it completely prevents any of these emotions from surfacing. All you can think of is the drabness of the surrounding buildings, the harried commuters that you see in other trains and on other platforms, the farmers out in the field struggling to finish a day’s work. Even the coffee, served from a pushcart in the aisle, seems drab and boring and lifeless and depressing. Oh, you get a flash of trees and nature — maybe 5 or 10 minutes’ worth — but there’s no time to let that sink in, as by then you are already in the phase of planning out what you will need to do once you get to the airport.

I wish I knew what the answer was. A trip should not start out or finish up that way!

CIMG0677
Originally uploaded by awh_tokyo

Just returned from Cebu again a couple weeks back, posted my pictures yesterday. This also serves as a test of Flickr’s “Blog This” feature which should post to LJ automatically.

Edit: It only linked to one photo, not a whole set, for some reason. Here is the link to the set.

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”…

You ran towards me, arms flailing, shouting at me in angry Japanese. Although I didn’t particularly agree with your rant, I was forced to continue listening to it as I put on my helmet, got my bike out of its spot, and waited for the engine to warm up enough that I could take off. And then I left you, Mr. Ranter, with my six-letter, two-word response to your ramblings: “Bite me.”

On my way home, I realized that this was probably quite rude of me. If you’re like most Japanese people I’ve met, your knowledge of colloquial English is nothing to write home about, but here I was assuming that you understood what I meant. So, in the interest of promoting a cross-cultural exchange of ideas and information, I decided to write this post explaining what the English expression “bite me” actually means. Essentially, the meaning is as follows:

Ah, I can assume that you are my neighbour in the motorcycle parking area at the hardware store. Nice to meet you. Now, as you can see, this motorcycle parking area is like most in Tokyo; it’s just a big square painted in the corner of a parking lot with a “motorcycles” sign on it. Riders are left to their own devices to park in a reasonable manner.

Now, my bike has a manual-shift gearbox; your first clue should have been the presence of a gear-change pedal down by the left footrest and the accompanying clutch-release lever on the handlebars. What this means, dear neighbour, is that at bare minimum, I have to be able to get into the left side of my bike enough to be able to shift into Neutral and push it out of my space.

By your angry shouting and frantic arm-waving, I can see that you are upset. But fear not, dear neighbour! I am not trying to steal your bike! Yes, it is true that my bike is just a dinky little 50cc moped, but so is yours.. And yours is 10 years old, rusted out, with an auto-shift transmission, and held together with marijuana-themed bumper stickers. I think I’ll stay with my brand-new one, thank you very much.

No, I am not stealing your bike, I only plan to swing the back end out a few inches so I can wedge myself in to put my bike in neutral. However, if it is really important to you that nobody even touch your beautiful rusted-out Jog, perhaps you might consider leaving more than 2 inches between your bike and the one next door.

See, as you can see, “bite me” is a very useful English phrase. Use it wisely!

I have posted up my most recent (and some older) test videos on YouTube. They are not public videos, though (other people appear in them…), so if you want to watch them, you’ll need an account (free) on YouTube. Make a YouTube account, then go to my profile where you will find an “Add As Friend” link. Click on that link and then wait for me to add you.

Anyway, once you’re added, you will be able to see these videos:

Most Recent Videos

• My 4th-kyu test, taken March 17, 2007, at Roppongi Yoshinkan Aikido in Tokyo. Sempai John Honeyman acts as uke for the techniques; Head Sensei Roland Thompson and Sensei Michael Stuempel grade the test. The test was about 14 minutes long.
  • 4th-kyu Test Ukemi (falling) and Kihon-Dosa (basic movements/posture)
  • 4th-kyu Test Kihon Waza (basic techniques)

Previous Videos

• 5th-kyu test, December 16 2006
• Kotegaeshi Doing some kotegaeshi for the sake of the camera

Bottle of wiper fluid—$4.99
Front bumper—$379.00
Getting pwned in front of the whole internet—priceless.

Basically, some guy posts to a BBS, “Some guy hit me in a hit-and-run, here’s his description, if anyone sees him please call the cops.” And minutes later, someone replies, complete with high-resolution photos of the accident and the driver peeling away, “You mean this guy?”

Yay for the internet!

[Edit: Apparently the news found out about it; the story is below:]

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…