Real Life Boogaloo: JAPPPPPPAAAANNN

lemme start off by saying, Jesus fucking Christ I hate my computer. It crashes like a billion times a day, and I had JUST finished writing this post when it crashed yet a-fucking-gain. So if I'm a bit brief this time around, do excuse, cause I've said all this once before. But I'll be as informative as I can.

Most importantly, I am not working. That is not to say that I am not employed, because I am. Full salary. Its just that they haven't found a school for me yet. So, basically, I'm getting paid 250000 Yen/month to live in Tokyo and partake of its fruit.

So. I'm actually not living in Tokyo, but outside of it, in a city in Chiba prefecture called Kashiwa. Its about an hour outside of Tokyo, and its pretty quiet up here. Chiba has a lot of farms, and a lot of suburban "bed-towns", so its a pretty mundane kind of area. Kashiwa city itself isn't so bad, there are a number of good restaurants (one tapas bar in particular is slowly becoming a favorite amongst my co-workers and I not just because the food is so damn good, but also because there's this very wealthy, old, drunk Japanese guy that has taken a serious liking to the lot of us and regularly covers our tab), a decent Jazz bar called Nardis, and a few more rowdy night-life spots, most notably a bar called Buffalo's. Speaking of bars, its probably interesting to mention that there is this awful chain of "british pubs" called Hub whose function in Japan is to allow Japanese women a place to pick up foreign men. Ridiculous. Mostly, though, I spend my time up here studying a bit, exploring the suburb of Kashiwa I live in (called Sakasai) as well as Kashiwa proper, eating instant noodles, I'd like to be biking more (200 yen/day is a steal) but mostly I spend my time trying to get out and meet people as much as possible. Kashiwa is a rather pretty area as well, tranquil even, so I can't say I dislike it up here in the least, but all in all its nothing compared to the debaucherous behemoth that is Tokyo.

I live near what must be the nexus of 1st-world hedonism. If you want it, you can find it in Tokyo: music, clubs, insane fashion sense, butt-to-balls crowded trains, something referred to as Spice that is really quite like how I imagine Frank Herbert's creation of the same name would be, people peeing everywhere (puts NYC to shame), fast cars, ultra-short skirts, a disturbing amount of androgynous individuals, the list goes on and on. One of my favorite things about Japan is how concerts tend to go down here. Where as in the states if there were a good show, it might be the headliner plus one or two opening acts that I actually want to see, and the rest of it be garbage. Not the case here: where ever there is one band I want to see playing, there are usually at least 4 other bands that I want to see on the bill, and not just "oh, cool, they're playing too" want-to-see but "holy FUCKING shit, I never thought I'd see a line up this epic." for example I saw Black Cobra (US heavy stoner jamz), Coffins (Japanese grunting, pig-fucking, death/dooooom metal), Melt-Banana (Japanese something or other - seriously, now more than ever I know not how to describe what it is they do), Terror Squad (epic, thrashing harcore, complete with sing alongs and a crowd surfing saxophonist), and Barebones (Boris-collaborating hard rawk) all on one bill, and on the 13th of next month there's a Lightning Bolt/Guitar Wolf (OMGWTFWTFWTF!!!) bill at the Shibuya-O Nest.

So a typical day in Tokyo goes something like this: yesterday, I headed in at around 3 PM to meet up with a friend in Denenchoufu to check out a spot that both she and I are thinking of moving into. Oh, a little background: I'm paying 81k Yen/Month to live out here in Chiba, when I could be paying (and this is a hell of a find) 51k Yen/month to live not only in Tokyo, but in Denenchoufu, which is one of the most expensive/nicest areas of Tokyo and is home to a scary amount of well known artists, musicians, and politicians (PM Hatoyama lives there) and is also about 15 minutes from Shibuya. So anyway, I get into Denenchoufu, and surprise surprise, yet another Japanese festival of some sort is going on at the train station. I swear, they throw these things at least once a week - its always a surprise, but never totally unexpected to stumble across one. So we check that out a bit, and then head to the house which is really awesome: its an old Japanese-style (gigantic) house that's got the rarest of commodities in Japan, Wifi, as well as a sizeable garden, a REALLY sizeable kitchen, and a number of other desirable features. The only downfall is that while there are 3 bathrooms, there's only 1 shower, and a house that has a maximum occupancy of 16, that might be a bit problematic. At the moment, there are only 6 living there, and if/when I move in I'll be the only westerner.

This place represents everything that I don't have at the moment: the apartment I live in (Leo Palace) is barely furnished (its got a table, 2 chairs, a refrigerator, the tiniest kitchen ever complete with 2x electric burners, TV, and dsl), and while it isn't cramped, it sure lacks a whole lot of character, and is located near basically nothing. Its also way outside the city, which I still don't understand because my company arranged for us to stay here, but my office is in Iidabashi, which is right in the middle of Tokyo, so whenever I have to go into work (which is rarely) I have to travel for over an hour and pay, round trip, about 1400 Yen. On the flip side, this house that I want to move into is close to the heart of Tokyo, is cheaper, is ultra-furnished, and possess a very distinct atmosphere about it. There are no bad sides to this place.

After that, my friend and I headed to Shibuya to meet up with one of her friends who worked the same year as I at Concordia College, but at a different site. We talked for a bit, and then went to a real bangin' tiny little Italian restaurant. We ordered a salmon chowder, the best vinegar-marinated octopus I've ever had, escargot, and spaghetti with a red mushroom sauce. All very well prepared, and surprisingly well priced though, once again, I was disappointed by Japanese beer. From there I headed to Okubo to check out a Japanese hardcore band I like called Vivisick at Earthdom, where I'm trying to squeeze myself into the concert promotion circuit through a guy who promotes there often. Killer show, and right near the end another friend who lives just outside of Tokyo texted me asking if I wanted to hit up a club with him and some of his boys in Shinjuku, so I was off again. I met up with them around 1130 PM at the station, where as I was waiting I witnessed 1 man peeing on a police station, and another incredibly drunk guy fall over not once, not twice, but three times (in a similar vein as that guy in the video James posted). We got a few Chu-hi's (kind of like Japanese Zima I guess, but way more popular and not at all marketed towards women) and drank those on the way over to the club cause there ain't no open-container laws over here. Stayed at the club until about 530 AM both because its wicked fun and also because the trains stop at around 1 AM and pick up again around 5 AM, so I kind of had no choice. We left, picked up some ramen at a restaurant close to the station my friend and I were going to, and I got back home to Chiba after a nice nap on the train a bit later. So yeah, there's a lot to do around here.

Oh, but I did actually sub for 4 days at a middle school down near Kyoto. Great time, though no thanks to the company I'm employed by. See, I was supposed to have received already available lesson plans from the school through my company via fax at the hotel they were putting me up in. I did not. The school did not know this, so on my first day, after I introduced myself, the first questions I got asked were those pertaining to a lesson plan that I didn't even know existed. A bit awkward (...) but I made it work in the end. Honestly, I'm not sure if I'd really call what I do "teaching" so much as "being a spectacle" - I'm foreign, so the kids don't give a fuck what it is I'm saying, they just want to watch me and ask, and if I can hold their interest or, better yet, make them laugh, then I've done my job well. That's not to say that I don't have to make lesson plans, use texts, and direct a class - I do - but in addition to that is my responsibility of keeping them engaged. In essence, I'm a clown. Haha, but seriously, they just want to watch me and ask, for example, "do you love me?" or, more frequently "do you love you?" I lie, a bit. The boys ask the questions pertaining to loving things; girls aren't so much concerned with having actually asked a question as they are with you opening yr mouth and making sounds. The reaction I got from one girl (and they all come up in groups, and giggle while staring at you for about a minute before what I guess is the "leader" gets the guts to ask you something) when I said that I lived kind of near Lake Erie in the states was... I'm not sure how to describe it: she started shaking her hands quite quickly while bouncing up and down with an immense smile on her face, and the screech that came from that mouth can, presumeably, only be equivocated by a banshee or some similar creature of the night. And that was it, there was no attempt to communicate anything more than the fact that she was over-excited. In response, I kind of just looked at her, with one of those blank stares, for a few seconds because I could not for the life of me figure out exactly how I was to react to this. Being ~8 hours from NYC also elicited some seriously unbelievable reactions.

Oh, but it wasn't all faux-celebrity, oh no. On the other side of that egoistic peak I had breifly attained was the fact that I had to administer a reading test for the 9th graders. Big deal, right? All I had to do was read a short story twice to the class before they came up to me, one by one, and recited one of 4 sections of the story. Unfortunately, that story, called "A Mother's Lullaby," was about a dying ten-ish year old girl cradling and singing a lullaby to a younger and much more critical little boy under a tree as she stared out at all of the charred dead bodies surrounding her right after we had dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. I have no idea what the feeling is called that I experienced as I read this story to the class, but dread, embarrassment, shame, sorrow, guilt, and many more all slammed me in the face at the same time. And to add to it, Japanese kids seem to have really bad allergies, so as I'm reading it, they're bowing their heads to read it as well and sniffling a bunch, so, in essence, I was up front telling them how badly America fucked them in the ass during the war, and they all seemed to be crying.

Oh, and check out this flyer for the Halloween party I was invited to. From what I can gather, its like Cirque du Soleil on a bad meth trip. I think the video gives a pretty good idea. Oh, and you can see this kind of stuff on the streets too, its not like this is some ultra-fringe culture: