Not all those who wander are lost.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

A Soggy-Bottom Fate.



The damp lines hug the contours of my backside, rising and falling in perfect synchronicity with the topography of my body. It’s as if I’ve hired a moisture tailor to hand-craft a form-fitting brassier for my asseous A-cups. I wonder what the kids that I pass on the street think of it. Right at their eye level, two wet handprints clutching my bum for dear life, the fingers curled with a suggestion such innocent minds can’t quite grasp. Or what the mothers sitting outside of the kid’s classes I teach think. Irresponsible. For me, this has become an ordinary part of my everyday life. The bathrooms in Japan, or at least the ones in the establishments I tend to frequent, have no hand towels and as a result I simply do what I’ve been doing since I was old enough to wear pants; shake, wipe, repeat if necessary. Naturally this prompts the question, do Japanese people suffer the same soggy-bottom fate as well? Of course they don’t. They take advantage of the system that’s in place. Unfortunately for me, it’s a system I’ll never get used to.

They’re most often found at the exits to train stations and department stores, islands in the steady stream of people, though never fully static. Three steps north, a side-step, two back south, and wait. Calculating, profiling, judging body language and speed of their targets. Perpetually asking themselves, “will this person accept the package I thrust upon him?” They are the solicitors, handing out, right from the corporate mouth, advertisement stuffed tissue packets. They’ll distribute material ranging anywhere from borderline-pornographic manga and feminine products to gym memberships and language schools. However, having dealt with so many dishonestly prickish solicitors in South America, (“oh yes very good price, hotel nice, cheap”) my natural reaction when being approached is to brush them off and put my head down looking like I have someplace important to be. So until I wise up and start accepting these dehydrating godsends, I’ll just have to learn to deal with a sodden seat. Here are some pics of the latest culinary undertakings; sashimi and salmon cakes with wasabi yogurt sauce.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Shio No Kami, the God of Salt.




Squiggle, squiggle, fish hook, toe, one armed prostitute; the associations I’ve made for Japanese scripts are often times too distracting for me to focus long enough to sound out the actual words. I’m about 86 sounds deep and the only constant I’ve found in my sickly slow study of katakana and hiragana, is that the funnier my association, the easier it is to remember. I possess a veritable mental wasteland of snake charmers, hookers, and angry parents shaking their children. I’ve even got the “don’t taze me bro” worked in.

I sometimes find myself having to suppress a laugh at how unconventionally wrong these connections are for the situation I’m in. The drunken salary men on the trains probably don’t give two shits about the crude and sometimes pornographic plays that are unfolding in my head as I search for my stop, but the mother of two sitting in front of him might be concerned (if she wasn’t focused on making sure her first-born’s head stays well clear of said drunkard’s swinging elbows.) Speaking of…

Yes, you guessed it, they’re letting me instruct children. God only knows what the last batch of teachers must have been like for this to happen. I had my first kid’s class on Tuesday, they didn’t learn a thing, but they sure got their entertainment’s worth. It was about fifty seven and a half minutes of huge gaijin sweatily hopping around like a circus clown in a sauna. They say you leave your dignity at the door on those ones, I understand why.

However, I digress from my shooyu. I’m currently posted up (yes I do actually feel like an NBA player crowding out old ladies, though minus the sweat this time) at one of my favorite hangouts; the sauce aisle in the supermarket. Check that, the salty sauce section. Alliteration aside, the selection is massive! I haven’t the words in Japanese to describe how much a visit to this place brightens up my day. Maybe genki raised to the 7th. In English I’d liken it to a college student who’s smashed his brains against many a bag of Franzia, taking a trip to the south of France and discovering that he has a violent passion for good wine. So, much in the same way that the aforementioned student pokes his liver with those iridescent green bottles, I’ve made it a personal mission (against my blood pressure) to sample all available options. Momma always told you not to put all your eggs in one basket. Today’s choice: Okonomiyaki sauce. Here are some saucy results; a tofu mushroom curry and that delicious Japanese pancake, okonomiyaki.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Am I better or worse off than I was before?




3/13/10:

I wake up. My underwear have staged a walk-out. The freedom feels unfamiliar like my sense of decency is asking "how did we get here?" That road map would be printed with brown sugar and life. 6:37, which means it's really 5:37. I wonder how many ounces of sunlight it takes to pull me out of a dream, probably more for a pleasant dream. I roll over carefully, trying not to chafe my bits. No use, that threshold's been breached, no chance for more sleep.

The floor is cold. My slippers haven't yet reported for duty. Someday I'll have the amazing power of foresight, but for now my lonely feet will have to make do. I admire people who can implement a routine without losing interest. Repetition looks an awful lot like the mother of boredom from where I'm sitting. But I suppose it's only boring people that get bored.

Water. They say that everyone is naturally dehydrated in the morning and that the first act of a healthy person should be to saturate that parched throat. I pour more than a pint down the hatch. Refreshing. Heavy drinkers come to know this act as an inevitable fact of life. For me the worst part about waking up without a hangover is that this is the best I'm going to feel all day. There's no hump to crawl over, no easily attained sense of accomplishment. No satisfying crunch when improvement smashes headache. Monday mornings in unemployment are a hangover in themselves. They're nowhere. They're needy, like an attention-starved child. I've taken to locking them in the closet of a decent bit of literature until they promise to start behaving themselves.

Today:

That was the journal entry from exactly 3 months ago (to the day). It never fails to amaze me how dynamic life can be. In only the short span of a dozen weeks I find myself leading a decidedly different life. Even the day to day changes are noticeable; the mannerisms I’ve subconsciously taken on as a result of my brain trying to blend my 6’4 frame into a shallow sea of Asians, the willingness to commute more than an hour for good food and drink, the breakfast routine…

If I had absorbed even just a fifth of my stepfather’s uncanny ability to turn any situation into one of worry, I’d say these rapid changes weigh heavily on my mind. Will I wake up one day and be someone else? Will these modifications in personality be visible to the people who’ve known me for years, or are they subsurface? Am I better or worse off than I was before? However, the truth is a bit more selfish. To be completely honest, I’ll be satisfied if the trip is nothing more than just interesting. I want to have memories I can fondly look back on when I’m too old to do this sort of thing. I want stories that’ll captivate the imaginations of my grandchildren. I want to eat food that’ll make people’s attention pique when they hear about it. So, I’ve given up trying to actively control these alterations, it’s too exhausting a task. Instead I’ll grab one of the comfy chairs, make sure my seatbelt is fastened, and passively reflect on the adventure that’s unfolding.

Here are some pics detailing my first attempt at making sushi rolls! Enjoy.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Lady alcohol’s infamous reputation




My day breaks. My mind aches. I find that all the beautifully distilled nothings whispered into my bloodstream the night before were just cheap and hollow threats. Lady alcohol’s infamous reputation stays harshly true to form. She coos you onward throughout the night, gives you strength and courage, confidence and charisma, she lulls the banal and carves up boredom like it’s a holiday roast. But when the first light of morning washes the sleep from your eyes you won’t find a trace of her smile, only the lingering scent of something that once seemed so pure and has now gone to rot. That smell must be how roses feel the day after Valentines, or a Christmas tree on December 26th.

It’s always the same. I don’t know why I fall for it every time; I’m like a Loon repeating the process over and over but each time hoping for savagely different results. “Maybe this will be the time I’ll wake up feeling ready to conquer the world.” It takes my woozy coconut a few extra nanoseconds to see there’s no validity in this statement and the words “perhaps next time” have just left my mental mouth when I notice that there IS in fact a glaring difference to this morning. It’s a Japanese woman, literally glaring. She looks to be about 75 years old, which means her actual age could be anywhere from 40 to 100. My thoughts linger for a second on the implications of why she’s invading my vision so early on a Tuesday. I wonder what I look like to her and if she’s already drawn preposterous generalizations on the same magnitude as guessing her age give or take sixty years. Does she harbor any sense of shame about how her country has devolved to the point where rough-looking gaijin like me can fall asleep in strange places? Or perhaps she’s stifling that sense of longing that’s reminding her of what it was like to be young. How not knowing where you are was perfectly fine because the only obligations for the day were to find some food and explore a bit. Heh, I guess the exploring part got impatient and showed up early, before I’d even sent out a formal invitation. Well, the day has to start somewhere, I guess this is as good a spot as any. First things first, I need to get off this train…

Thursday, June 3, 2010

You're going to pay me for this?



I can feel a lone bead of sweat slowly tracing out a path behind my left ear. It’s taking its carefully measured time much in the same way that a predator would stalk its prey. The difference, however, is that the slowness is more akin to a death march than a hunt, where all parties involved know exactly what lies at the end of the road. The destination is announced, just like my bead of sweat, non-verbally and well in advance. Anyone who’s ever lent thought to the matter knows that it’s usually the sweat of fear that bares this sickly sluggishness, as if the brain has been terrified into instructing the body’s pores to pump sap instead of salty water.

My mind drifts back to the issue at hand, the source of the fear. In 15 minutes I’m expected to lead 7 Japanese teenagers through an English lesson. No biggie right? The anxiety arises when I think back to what it was like during those years. Too cool for school and not caring were in, destruction and disruption their accomplices. I couldn’t be taught; I learned everything I needed to know about life from the older kids and pornographic magazines. Day-to-day life usually consisted of seeing how many swear words you could fit into a sentence and it still be correct grammatically. “Fuck” became a noun, though none of us really quite knew what it meant. If ever questioned about it, or the definition of any word, the clever ones would find a means to pass the heat onto someone else, and in this way the social structure was ever-changing. I remember spending hours on the internet searching for insults vile enough to be dropped in my circle should the need ever arise. Some were luckier than others in having older siblings to spoon-feed them offensive gold. Additionally, these kids already had a knack for keeping on their toes. If you weren’t always ready you might miss out on the last bowl of Lucky Charms, and trust me, 13 year old envy rarely runs deeper than that last bowl. If these kids are even half as terrible as I was, Karma must have been napping…