Thanksgiving in Japan

This weekend was essentially absorbed into procurring, preparing, cooking and cleaning for our Thanksgiving feast. The food shopping started in earnest Friday, when Rachel and I went shopping for American equipment essentially like rolling pins (beer bottles don’t quite do the job), a masher (mashing thirty potatoes with a dining fork seemed like a recipe for disaster) and a peeler. Miraculously, after spending a few hours wandering around Tokyo Hands (which has nothing on Target) we found everything. It might have gone faster, but I got really distracted by the “robo mop,” kind of a donut-shaped swiffer pad with a battery-operated ball in the middle that pushed the “mop” around. It was way too much fun to play with.

The biggest challenge was finding a big pot for making the soup and potatoes in. With the exception of drinks and ramen, almost everything in Japan is very small. I’m not a particularly big eater, but I wind up going through half a Japanese-family-sized yogurt container for breakfast. Serving size? I laugh at serving size. What we thought was “a very big pot” in the store wound up being pretty small once we removed it from its home environment. It could no longer benefit from being scaled against the other tiny equipment.

Our next challenge came in the form of telling the chicken butcher that we needed approximately two liters of chicken fat for the gravy and the stuffing (I don’t even want to think about this). Japanese people eat a lot less fat and grease than Americans in general, and he looked at us in horror as though we had asked him “So, along with the turkey, could we have two pounds of its feathers please?” His response was apparently something along the lines of “I don’t see why that wouldn’t be possible, but I don’t understand why you would want it.” He went home that night and researching gravy recipes and came back with an alternate solution. He offered us both what looked basically like liposunctioned chicken fat (eewwwww) and a very concentrated chicken stock (success!). Next, we were the talk of the town at the local grocery store when we bought five bags of potatoes and twenty-two apples. My backpack was essential.

My primary responsibilities were apple butternut squash soup, which I’ve made for large groups several times before, mashed potatoes, which are pretty idiot-proof, and apple pie. I was quite nervous about the pie because I haven’t baked much and sort of see recipes as suggestions. I don’t think I’m a terrible cook, I think my instincts are ok, but I’ve definitely had some unpleasant ventures into creativity/complete abandonment of common sense. The worst of these happened in 7th grade when I tried to turn lemonade pink through the use of red vinegar. I also once tried to bake three hundred cookies for my dorm holiday party after midnight (such is the stuff of the true all-nighter). I then realized I didn’t have a bowl large enough for all the ingredients—this was about halfway into the mixing process and all the way into the “I am covered in flour and don’t understand what I’m doing!” process. I had to be rescued by a friend who studied chemistry. I added the last bit so I can pretend I was making very complicated and high level mistakes.

I fully intended to stick to the recipe when making the pies, but then I got bored and thought they’d taste better with more egg and brown sugar. I understand baking isn’t the time for improv. Oops. Anyway, the pies were delicious and my lattice looked good, so I wasn’t an embarrassment to myself.

We also had the roast chickens we ordered, potato bread, stuffing, gravy, green beans, and cranberries. It was a very through Thanksgiving. Rachel can’t cook (once, she tried to make brownies and when it said, “flour the pan” she used the two cups of flour the recipe called for to coat the pan, then threw the rest away) so she made a beautiful “craft corner” of activities for the Motoguchi kids, so I have an array of hand turkeys with katakana script hanging from my walls now.

We wanted to tell them the story of Thanksgiving. I had an interesting conversation with my friend Sarah yesterday about how one can tell the Thanksgiving story. Like so many holidays, it’s hard to boil it down a tale that is both intellectually honest and morally satisfying. It seems hollow to describe the first Thanksgiving to people who have little knowledge of American history without mentioning the many things that happened to the Indians after they shared their food. On the other hand, describing the Trail of Tears and the Battle of Wounded Knee makes it very difficult to conclude the story with a celebration. Unlike Columbus Day, which I think is just a bad holiday, there’s something valuable about reflecting upon what we are thankful for with people we care about. I once went to a humanist seder that told the story of Passover as though it was an allegory for the liberation of all people from all oppression. I think a similar universalizing of Thanksgiving could be appropriate, and be a way to offer the Motoguchis thanks for their hospitality.

Rachel had to tell the Thanksgiving story in Japanese, which was a challenge because the idea of being “grateful” without being grateful TO someone was difficult to convey, and she wanted to avoid religious overtones. I think we wound up with a harvest story, which worked out well.

The Motoguchis brought over speakers for us to use. Each speaker was cubed shaped and about 2 inches square. I admired them because I thought they’d be an excellent fit for my nomadic life, and asked Tauru where they bought them. He promptly told me they were a present for me and I couldn’t refuse. They’re excellent speakers and so light that I’ll be able to take them anywhere, but I have to be more careful what I compliment and I definitely need to get them a nice goodbye present. Rachel and Brett advise I wait till I’m on my way to the airport to avoid a return gift. They are such a sweet family and their kids are adorable. Leon, who is ten, fell asleep on the couch immediately after eating, while Sue-chan wanted to be pushed around in the captain's chair.

Our other guests were Peter, who is from England, and James, from New Zealand. They’ve both been over here in Japan for about four or five years, teaching English. They worked for a program called NOVA, which employed over eight thousand English speakers teaching English throughout Japan. The program recently went bankrupt because it overextended itself, and my gmail-generated ad kept saying: “Job opportunities for NOVA teachers in China!” I guess its scanner picked up that I was a young English speaker living in Japan and went for it. Peter intends to stay on in the hopes that NOVA is able to right itself, and James has a job teaching business English for the next six months, then he plans to go back home.

All in all, Thanksgiving-in-Japan was a success and as a result, my apartment has Christmas lights (with eight different settings) and tons of leftovers. I’m excited about these last few weeks. This Thursday, Rachel and I are watching the Republican youtube debate with pancakes (it’s 9 am our time), Saturday is a neighborhood Buddhist festival, and Sunday I’m going to Kamakura.

Nama Gomi

Lest you think less of me, let me start this off by emphasizing that in general, I’m not a squeamish person. I don’t have an issue with spiders or snakes or blood. I’ve been called on to perform emergency evacuations of cockroaches and bats. In college, when the light was out and my roommates complained they could hear mice, I’d usually sleepily roll over and ask what they wanted me to do about it.

There is one thing I’m terribly squeamish about, however. In Japanese, there’s a word for it: nama gomi. Nama gomi (lit: fresh or live trash) is the food that winds up at the bottom of your sink drain. The food no one wants to eat. Think about it: all the potato peels and chicken skin and green bean ends and yogurt curds becoming slimy together and intermixing with soapy water. Now, this would be all very well and good if the nama gomi was mixing in a trash bag or a compost heap. But no. The problem with nama gomi is that you have to reach in and pull the slimy out of the sink drain with your bare hand and then dump it into a bag.

It’s somehow somewhat acceptable for a woman to ask a man to kill a spider, or for someone to pale at the sight of blood. However, asking someone to take care of the nama gomi comes across as just plain spoiled. I also know it’s a silly fear—I’ve met people who’d probably be thankful for my nama gomi, who’d rinse it off and recook it and make it into something approaching delicious. This isn’t anywhere near as gross as the fact that we waste enough food for it to be someone else’s meal.

I still can’t get over my gag reflex though, so prevention is the best defense. I try very hard not to let nama gomi wind up in my sink and usually scrape plates and peel potatoes into my trash. The only good nama gomi is no nama gomi. However, when preparing a feast with several other cooks, there’s no legitimate way of saying “I’m sorry, I’m afraid of potato peels in the sink. Can you peel into this full-to-bursting and inconveniently located trash bag instead?”

We decided to put yesterday’s cleanup off till today, and I went to bed with a sinking feeling, envisioning the nama gomi that awaited my hand in the sink drain. Whole pieces of chicken carcass, plastered with apple seeds! Lurking orange pulp mixed in with squash peel! I was nominally tempted to open one of the bottles of wine our guests had brought over before approaching the beast, an occasional strategy for cleaning up other people’s vomit, but then Brett pulled out handfuls of nama gomi when he was filling up the sink and bagged it before I had to touch it. Now it’s safely outside of my apartment! One day, I'll grow up, but till then, back to prevention. I'm happy there's a word for it.

Pink Cheeks and Ripped Up Jeans

Every few days, I'll have a moment that reminds me just how little of what's going on I understand. On one of my first days here, I could hear someone broadcasting something on a microphone outside and saw a ton of helicopters overhead. I assumed the most dramatic: missing person, axe murderer on the loose, major earthquake. Later, I found out that the outdoor broadcast is a drive-by advertising strategy and the helicopters were just a coincidence.

The other day, I was on a walk and two very sweet-seeming older women stopped me. They pointed to my cheeks-- which were probably pink from the cold-- and discussed them at length, and then commented on the bottoms of my jeans, which are pretty ripped up. I stuck to my canon of polite incomprehension phrases for about five minutes, and then we said good bye. The conversation could have gone something like this:
"You have such lovely rosy cheeks! Are you cold?"
"I'm sorry, I don't understand."
"We're worried you're going to trip over your jeans. They look ripped up. You should be careful."
"I request your kindness."

Or it could have looked more like this:
"Your cheeks are a very unnatural color! You must either have roscea or wear too much blush."
"Thank you."
"It is very disgraceful to go out in such tattered jeans. Look how elegantly and respectfully Japanese people dress!"
"I would like to speak Japanese."

Given the 'if you don't have something nice to say...' mindset of most Japanese people and the kindness I have recieved, I think the first is much more likely, but they could have been talking about something else entirely unrelated and I could have misunderstood their gestures. I should just stick to pointing to my nose.

Rachel and I went on a turkey search today ("ho-luh tuh-keh" if you ever need to get one in Japan) and were surprised that people knew what we meant. Apparently, turkey's caught on as a Christmas food, but Thanksgiving has yet to follow Halloween in jumping the Pacific (the lack of blue laws is a testament the pilgrims never made it this far) so no turkeys are available yet. We decided roast chicken would be an adequate substitute, but the oven in the apartment is too small for roasting a bird, so we had to order one. While we were consulting with a man at the grocery store, a young women who spoke excellent English offered to help us, and explained the seasonal turkey dilemma. She directed us to another store, where the butcher on the first floor led us up several floors to where we finally ordered chicken. People are so helpful! Tomorrow's goal is finding cornmeal.

Among the best smells ever

Wood fires you can smell in people's houses when you walk by on cold days.

Among the best inventions ever: kotatsu tables. People drape a blanket over a table with an electric heater under it and then sit with their legs and feet under the table. The blanket keeps in the heat. It's right up there with my bathtub and clothes steamers.

Sankeien Garden and Back to the Future

On Saturday, I went to Sankeien Garden, a park a little south of Yokohama that houses the oldest pagoda in the region and has period houses from throughout Japanese history. It was located in a part of town that housed all the foreigners in the second half of the 19th century, and there was still a large ganjin presence. Poor Rachel had work to do, so Brett was kind enough to take me.

The park had a lake in the middle, an inner garden and an outer garden. Arched bridges over the lake connected the two to each other. Towards the far side of the inner garden, there was a tall hill with the pagoda at the very top. The colors have changed slowly this year in Japan, so the whole hill was light green with pops of orange where there were particularly precious trees. When I used to fly home for fall break in October, landing in Manchester was almost like descending into a fiery ocean because all the trees would be so bright. I bet the park would be even prettier in a few weeks once the colors change, but it was neat to see the begining of that.

I wanted to cross all the bridges. My favorite two were a bright red bridge that arched over the lake and a massive flat stone that perfectly fit across a stream. We went up the hill to look off the observation deck-- from where we could see the Pacific ocean and Yokohama's many lovely factories. I had some oxygenated water. Oxygen is delicious but I think I prefer lemon flavor.

On another peak of the hill was the pagoda. Around its base, people had made hundreds and hundreds of stacks of small, flat rocks, stacking three or four rocks on top of each other as though paralleling the style of the pagoda. I'm still trying to figure out what this was online. Maybe it was an offering. Maybe one day some parents wanted to take a lot of pictures of the pagoda and their kids got bored so they told them to make a mini-pagoda out of rocks and then lots of other kids thought it was a good idea and then it became the customary thing for kids to do while their parents took pictures of the pagoda.

The houses were all absolutely beautiful. When I go into stores in Japan, I'm overwhelmed by the clutter and the information overload coming from all decorations, but I think when something is intended to be beautiful in Japan, it is elegantly minimalist. If I ever designed my own house, I think I'd want to incorporate a lot of Japanese elements. I love the mats on the floor, the rice paper panel walls, and the tables which stand a foot or two below the floor.

We were allowed to go inside an Edo period house that had belonged to a wealthy samurai family in the Hida region. I was struck by how much social space there was- a huge central audience room for town meetings, a fancy reception room for important visitors, and an entry room about the size of my kitchen and living room combined. In Yokohama nowadays, houses are so small that people rarely entertain guests at home. Population growth, I guess.

We decided to walk back to Minoto Mirai, the "port of the future" about 45 minutes away. It was fun to walk towards, because we could see its lights all the way there. Behind the central park, there's a tall building that Brett calls "the apple wedge" that reminds me of the ship hotel in Dubai. The architects designed Minoto Mirai to look like "the future," and it looks almost eeriely like the UAE from far away.

I've been to Minoto Mirai a couple of times, but don't think I've ever really done it justice here. It's a hard place to describe. It's a futuristic ocean-side shopping mall complex/park/fairground/museum. Its train station is on the bottom floor of one of the malls and the train goes straight through the mall. It's home to one of Japan's biggest "clocks"--giant ferris wheels with huge digital clocks in the center. (I rode it with Saori a few weeks back.) In the daytime, it feels campy and at night, just plain exciting, but it's well enough executed to escape tacky entirely. At this time of year, all its plazas and stairs were covered in perriwinkle lights which were reflected in the fountains.

Somehow, Japan has gotten me in a holiday mood already. I'm blaming it on all the lights. This weekend, we're having a modified-Thanksgiving-in-Japan with the Motoguchis (who gave me my hashi)and some friends from England and New Zealand. I'm attempting to make an apple pie from scratch as well as mashed potatoes. Advice is very much appreciated

Still Abroad in Yokohama's Chinatown

This week, I've explored three very different places in the Yokohama area. Wednesday night, I met my friend Saori in Yokohama's Chinatown. Saori and I were friends back in ninth grade, when her family was living in the states for a few years. I thought I'd never see her again, so it's fun to be just a few trainstops away after eight years. She's in her last year of vet school, the exact job she wanted when she was fifteen.

When the Yokohama seaport opened for international trade in the mid-19th century, there were special designated areas in which foreigners could live. Although those laws have long since been abolished, there are still high concentrations of foreigners in these zones, such as Yokohama's Chinatown and Motomachi, which I'll write about later. Yokohama has the largest Chinatown in Asia and one of the largest in the world. It had several wide pedestrian streets with gates arching over each entrance, and then a plethora of winding side alleys. I think of Chinatown as having red gate-arches, like the Chinatowns in Philadelphia and New York, but Yokohama's Chinatown had arches in silvery green and purple as well as the traditional red.

I was surprised by how somehow very Japanese Yokohama's Chinatown felt. I don't think I could have purchased bootleg DVDs there or a small turtle that might give me samonella. I am sure I couldn't have found a slightly sketchy but very efficient bus service that could take me to Kyoto for under a thousand yen. The food reflected this difference too-- Chinese food in Japan seems to contain less spice, sauce, and grease and more seafood than American Chinese food. There are foods I thought of as "things available in Chinatown"-- ie mochi with red bean paste--that are available everywhere but Chinatown in Japan. My Japanese friend told me that Chinatown in New York frightened her because you could see plucked chickens hanging to be cooked.

My experience in American Chinatowns has been limited to semesterly trips on the Chinatown bus and dim sum for the most part, and I never had the illusion that I was anywhere but a cool part of New York/Philly/DC. But going to Chinatown in Yokohama brought home the perhaps obvious point that Chinatown in every city reflects back its setting, both because of market demands in the city, and because of the adaption and diffusion of culture. (There's probably an interesting book on how each Chinatown has been shaped based on which era and part of China most of its inhabitants came from, too.) I guess on some level, I expected a universal "Chinatownness" and instead found an interesting hybrid of what the Japanese would like in a Chinatown and what Chinatown's inhabitants have adopted from Japan.

I'm going to stretch this a little into a somewhat related thought on hybridization and authenticity. When I think of Indian food, I think of chicken tikka massala, although I learned earlier this fall that that dish is in fact a hybrid invented because the British balked at the spiciness of Indian food. Now it's one of the most popular dish in Britian. While this makes me feel kind of dumb for thinking of it as Indian food, I think labeling it as "inauthentic" food makes Indian and British culture static and ignores the possibility of Indo-British culture.

I'm going to go to bed, but tomorrow I'll write about seeing a historic village and garden and Minoto Mirai.

It's Christmastime in the City

After dealing with computer-mayhem on Sunday, I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Tokyo. Tokyo may have the longest Christmas season in the world. Festive trees and lights were everywhere, and there were lots of 5th Avenue style church displays. Contemporary American Christmas decorations were mixed in with red and crème paper lanterns running along the sidewalks. I’m a little overwhelmed by the consistent sensory overload but it also makes every block feel exciting. Fast food vendors were out, selling hot dumpings and okonomiyaki and yakitori. It smelled amazing. It put me in a festive mood. I'm excited to have the Motoguchis (the family who gave me the haishi) over for Thanksgiving.

I wandered around for awhile. I’m not really sure exactly where I went although I’ve tried to retrace my steps online. Two older men in business suits separately stopped me during crowded street crossings to tell me I was beautiful, that they made a lot of money, and would like an hour of my time to get coffee. On the one hand, I can imagine that this sort of thing would happen to Scarlett Johansen in Lost in Translation (which I still haven’t seen) which is flattering, on the other hand, I was surprised and somewhat offended. I can’t really figure out how much leniency to give because it’s really hard to flirt in a second language but there’s also a lot of hype about ”compensated dating” in Japan. I don’t know how much credibility this has or how common it ever was, but maybe there’s more blurring of the line between dating and prostitution.

I wound up near the Harajuku temple just at sundown. It was surrounded by a park that was very much like a more groomed version of the park I ran through the other day. Again, I was surprised by the contrast between the frenetic climate of the street and the elegant calm of the park just 20 meters away. I didn’t go in the temple because it looked as though something important involving dressed up people was going on but I’d like to go in a temple sometime soon.

On my way back, I got nervous the train was headed the wrong way, and asked my neighbors if we were going to Kikuna. They were very sweet, and from then on, they told me at every stop, “This is not Kikuna. There are seven more stops” etc. At one point, I buttoned up my coat and I think they were worried the ganji girl had misunderstood or was impatient, so they affirmed that it was not Kikuna. I get lost a lot, but have never gotten that much directional support before

Cellphone as Wallet: Forget the iPhone

I've been a bit hard on technology lately because of all the problems with my computer, so I decided to take a break from that and discuss all the cool things that Japanese phones can do that my American cell phone can't.

I got a phone a few weeks ago and picked out the absolute cheapest kind, the kind that came free with my plan. It's a shiny red razor-style phone that I'm still trying to figure out, but it was free! (My first 'free' American cell phone looked kind of like a metallic brick. When it broke, someone on my hall wanted to start a riot by throwing it through a window.)

-My phone has about 30 different alarm sounds, including my favorite, "tequila" which sounds like a bunch of happy people interupting a vaguely South African song.
-You can insert over 500 pictures and images into text messages and emails.
-People check the internet routinely through their cell phone and even have special separate email accounts attached to their phone.
-Ads/billboards have an embedded code so if you point your phone at them and press a button, your phone opens up the website affiliated with that product so you can learn more/buy it.
-Video conferencing is a standard feature on free phones.
-Free streaming of weather reports, news headlines and sports statistics (This was the case in the UAE too).
-MP3 capabilities
-Instant Messager
-Ability to watch TV or movies for a fee
-You can pay your bills through your phone.
-Phone as ID
-A prepaid rechargeable train pass embedded in your phone so you can swipe your phone where others would insert a ticket.
-The ability to use a phone like a credit card, swiping it in restaurants, grocery stores, and bars.

I think the e-commerce (i commerce? cell commerce?) function impresses me the most. I held off on getting a cell phone until January of 2005 when a friend convinced me I was inconviencing others. I think I should avoid sharing this, lest I seem like a technology-barbarian.

I still have a little bit of a love-hate relationship with the cell phone. I like to be with the people I'm with and not feel obligated to answer a ring. I usually keep my phone on vibrate. One thing that impresses me in Japan is that people very rarely talk on phones on the train or in restaurants. I guess there are enough other things to do with your phone here.

I don't understand why the US is so far behind in terms of affordable cell phone technology. It's not just the phone-- my reception was more consistent in the Serengeti than it is fifty miles out of Burlington.

Misbehaving Computers, Perfect Parks, and Korean BBQ

I've been in an on-going (although I suspect resolveable) battle with my computer (I'm on Rachel's backup computer now). It has a acute neurological condition that impedes its ability to recieve sensory imput (from me). It starts with the left mouse button and then spreads until it ignores all my input whatsoever. My father suggested I take the battery out and then put it back in, and this helps it for about twevle hours, but then the neurological disease wins again! Tomorrow I'm going to take it to the Acer center in Saitama, a suburb on the other side of Tokyo. (If anything exciting happens, I'll be sure to post about it, but I don't get a "bloggable" vibe from computer repair.) I feel bad, because the people at the computer store don't speak English, which means Brett has to come with me. He's being very nice about it, but I hate to be a burden when they are already hosting me.

My frustration prompted me to go for what turned out to be my favorite run yet in Japan. Brett had mentioned a park a few miles a way, and I decided to try to find it. Japan is full of pretty parks, but this one takes the cake. The base of the park was built around a large pond with waterlilies and other flowers. A dark, wooden boardwalk crossed over the pond. Apparently, it's so picturesque that it was part of the set for a popular TV show. It was raining just a little bit, and I could hear frogs croaking in the pond.

Behind the park was a nature preserve stretched up a hill, and I could run along a number of ridges overlooking the park. (Yokohama is a bit like one big stadium run; it's hard to run for more than a third of a mile without running up a steep hill or several flights of stairs. While this makes it hard to fight an easy run, it also means it's hard to have a run without some amazing views. I always find myself on top of some hilltop, looking over rooftops in a valley I hadn't known existed.) I got up to the ridge by running up through the neighborhood alongside the park, but I zigg-zagged down flat paths bookended by flights of stairs.

It reminded me a little bit of running on Roosevelt island in DC-- to get to Roosevelt island, you run past the Kennedy center and the Watergate hotel, over this long highway of a bridge. Then you reach the island, and there's this thick canopy and it's humid and lush and primordial and it feels like you could see dinosaurs around the corner. This park had the same moist otherworldly quality. It was a quarter mile from downtown Myorengi, with its neon signs and 7/11s and nearly constant train traffic. Running through Myorengi is an exercise in lateral movement.

Tonight for dinner, we went to a Korean barbeque downtown. I'd never had Korean barbeque before, and really enjoyed it. There's a grill in the center of each table, and you order thinly sliced meat, mushrooms, and vegetables, and grill them. There's a special brush you can use to dust the mushrooms with soy sauce once they are on the grill. It was delicious, and flipping the slices over was excellent Haishi practice. I even tried tongue, which was surprisingly good (although a little chewy. Ok, full disclosure, I put a LOT of lemon on it but apparently that's normal). I may be the world's worst former vegetarian. My only defense is that I only eat meat when I eat out.

I think food that is inherently communal--fondue, shabu shabu, Ethiopian food, Korean barbeque--is the most fun to eat. One of my friends used to joke about opening a restaurant that served a different communal dish every night of the week, and if she ever goes through with it, I'm glad to have an insider connection. I also think it's interesting that, while we eat soy sauce in the US, it's usually not mixed with other sauces, while in Japan, it's often mixed with hot sauce, lemon, or wasabi-- and the better for it. (My sister and I used to put lemon juice and soy sauce on our popcorn when we were growing up.)

On Being Flapped

I was talking to my friend Eleuthera, of Dumbledore theory renown, about culture shock the other night. Before this fall, I thought I was fairly immune to culture shock（The term I used was unflappable, but I might have spelled it unflaapable.） This may seem like a naïve thing to think, but I had a few fairly hard-core travel experiences in Tanzania, including washing myself in a bucket of water heated over a fire and hiding in the trunk of an armed car as we drove near the Burundian border because there had been reports of Congolese bandit activity. In　Tanzania, I was never confronted by my difference so much as my privilege. I ended every day heart-broken by how hard the lives of the people I met were, how optimistic about the future they were, and how little I could do for them. My time in Tanzania was a period of emotional growth but it didn’t force me to reevaluate the way I saw the world in the same way.

I’m learning a (obvious) lesson— differences between cultures aren’t about different foods or different languages or holidays so much as about different ideas. I knew this in principle, but it feels a little different than criticizing the oversimplification of multiculturalism in practice. On the one hand, I feel like I’m getting to learn what my country does well (public radio!) and what it fails at (public transit!) better. On the other hand, I think I sometimes wind up being more judgmental than I mean to be.

I'm not sure how to capture this, so I'm going to focus on two areas: one is gender and sex, and the other is civic engagement. Both really deserve more attention than I’m about to give them, but I want to hold off till the end of this trip.
I posted a little bit about this before, but I feel like at this point, I’ve gotten a handle on the things I like and don’t like about the way we handle gender and sexuality in the United States and I feel ready to dish out judgments. I struggle with the things that are unfamiliar in other places—from homosexuality and flirting being illegal in the UAE to twelve year old porn stars in Japan. Are those laws enforced? Is the U15 idols just a special case? Do the extremes say something about society as a whole or are they just extremes?

One thing I’m coming to believe is that one thing that is very special about the United States (I can’t say unique, because I think I might observe the same thing in parts of Europe or India or Latin America, and I won’t say immature, but it’s what I grew up with and I love it) is our belief in fairness and our capacity for outrage. I know we’re apparently in a quarter-century long civic engagement slump, but I do think we live in a country where people get angry when bad things happen to them—or to others-- and want to act on those things. It’s not about actually rioting, protesting, writing a letter to the paper, walking out, or running for office, but even contemplating taking those actions in a fit of anger. In the UAE, people can’t do that because they are afraid, and in Japan, harmony is assigned the highest value. The acceptance that you can’t change your world is a challenge for me to swallow, and I never know where to take the conversation next.

I understand why my trips to Europe didn’t force me to reassess my views in the same ways as being in the UAE or Japan has. Views about smoking in public places aside, liberal Democrats make great Europeans. I can’t really figure out why being in Tanzania didn’t challenge me in the same way, though.

In some ways, Tanzania was much more ‘western” than either Japan or the UAE—they may have been occupied and drilled for oil, respectively, but they never were anyone’s colony. Another factor was probably being there with three friends, and being able to experience and talk over the differences with them as we all encountered them. A third variable may be that I had studied Africa—especially Tanzania—for years, and obsessively read travel accounts and Peace Corps memoirs—so was prepared for the things that had surprised others. Although Japan and the Middle East are both pretty popular obsessions—and pretty amazing places-- I never caught that bug and went to both places armed with just what I could cram.

I think the biggest difference may be that I saw the differences in Tanzania as “differences in level of development” rather than “alternative choices.” In a way, I think this is an accurate lens, but I also wonder if it reflects my own bias. Was I unwilling to see Tanzania as deliberately different?

That’s a dangerous type of jingoism. ‘Everyone would be like us if only they could afford to be.”

Overall, I’m really enjoying this feeling of being flapped. There was a moment in 10th grade history when we learned about Locke’s treatises on government and the social contract and it felt like my whole head was exploding. I thought I suddenly understood the foundation for revolution and rebellion and legitimate government. In a great college class, you can count on a moment like that every two weeks. Now, I feel like I get a moment like that almost every day.

When it comes to fashion, Paris has nothing on Japan

Someone asked me to write more about Japanese fashion based on a comment I made in an earlier post, and I take requests.

In general, there’s a strong visual orientation in Japan. The food in the grocery store—especially the fruits and vegetables—looks almost too pretty to eat. (I keep imagining orange farmers in California going ‘This orange is perfect. I’ll send it to Japan. This orange…a little brown…they’ll never accept it in Tokyo. To the East Coast it goes!”) I’ve heard some Japanese importers are gaining interest in production in India because Chinese manufacturers are more interested in targeting quality for price than refining small details.

Given this visual orientation, it’s unsurprising Japan is a very chic country. Both men and women dress creatively and elegantly. I don’t know much about high fashion, but I’m really impressed with everyday style here. The basic ‘uniform’ among women consists of a neutral colored top, usually black, a colorful skirt, rounded out with a pair of carefully coordinated knee high boots or pumps with black knee-highs. (A daily dilemma: do I try to blend in by wearing heels because almost all Japanese women seem to, and look ridiculously out of place and tall, or do I wear less chic shoes?) In general, tops are modest and shins are covered, so the focal point of most outfits is the leg, from the knee to the mid/upper thigh, which is almost invariably bare. Now it’s getting colder, the ensemble is topped off by blazers or trench coats. Women wear jeans, but much less frequently than in the States or Europe.

Variations on the schoolgirl outfit are also popular—pleated skirts, white blouses with navy sweaters, knee socks. At first I was confused and thought maybe college women wore uniforms in Japan, and then I realized that women far older than myself were dressed this way. (I’m trying so hard not to have an opinion yet on what this means. See my above post.) School kids usually wear uniforms—the younger boys wear navy shorts and knee socks. They have two different colors of cap, one which they wear when walking to school, and one which they wear coming back. Apparently, this is so members of the community know which way the child is supposed to be going, and can look out for them (or maybe prevent them from skipping class?).

Among men, the two dominant styles I’ve seen are punk rock or business wear. Suit jackets have three buttons rather than two, and Japanese men typically wear all buttons closed. I’ve heard that this style of suit jacket’s become popular among the Late Night Shots crowd in the states, but I imagine Japanese men pull off the slim cut a little bit better. The punk rock style involves skinny jeans, graphic tees, often white belts, and a mane of orange hair.

I’ve attempted to go clothing shopping twice in Japan, and both times made me feel like I was going through puberty all over again. (It’s sort of like a special Franksteinian abnormal puberty though, with out the accompanying booklets about growing up.) The largest size of jeans is a 28—which’ll fit but then be way too short. Tops are just an out-and-out disaster. If I wore them out, I’d definitely be an embarrassment to myself. It’s too undignifying to go into, but I’ll leave it at I’m glad I don’t need to go bra shopping. I’m a pretty easy fit in the states, so it’s an odd feeling to be in a place where I’m built so differently from the average person that all clothing looks so wrong. I think it was one of the times I’ve been the most conscious of being a minority here. All in all, I’m glad I shop for the sake of recreation and not necessity.

Harajuku

There's an urban legend that if everyone in Tokyo came down from their apartment or office at the same time, there wouldn't be enough room on the streets for everyone to fit. I believe it. The only experience I've had that even comes close to approximating Saturday afternoon Tokyo pedestrian traffic is walking back from the Mall after the 4th of July fireworks in DC. At the train stations on the Tokyu line and along pedestrian throughfares, there are posters that show how a lit cigarette in an arm extended down is at just the right height to burn a child's face. I was a bit skeptical of the likelihood of this event, but am starting to wonder if there out to be signs demonstrating that a studded belt is at just the right height to take a child's eye out.

I spent last Saturday afternoon exploring Harajuku, a Tokyo neighborhood about twenty minutes from Shibuya. It had a lot of fun pedestrian side streets, with well-edited second hand clothing stores, vendors selling international treats like kebabs and hot dogs, and a lot of orange-haired people with facial piercings. Some of the pedestrian streets were striped down the middle by fenced-in playgrounds that stretched on for several blocks. I saw a couple of girls sporting the Gothic Lolita style. I continue to be surprised by the youthfulness of Japanese mainstreet fashion, so I think the girls-dressed-like-dolls were less surprising than the woman-dressed-as-schoolgirls.

The main street through Harajuku is called Omote-sando and is comparable to Paris' Champs Elysee (Nell, if you're reading this, you know which song to cue up). It had the regular major designers, but the buildings they were in were more note worthy than the window displays themselves. (I'm much more prone to noticing clothes than architecture at this point in my life, so these buildings were really special.) One store offered a modern twist on a Japanese castle, with a large rock base and then narrower upper-stories made entirely out of reflective glass. Another had an almost blinding window display with what looked like eight foot neon glow sticks in an array of colors dangling down from the ceiling. Another clear-glass building had glass turrets and a tall, slender, tapered tower ending in a point. It looked like an ice castle. Along the sidewalk, there was a shallow stream with a concrete bed about six inches below the sidewalk. The sidewalk extended over it at the entryways to shops and restaurants. I can't tell if it was modern art, or a pretty drainage system, or both.

Some of the shops themselves were intriguing. At one, I was handed a "how to shop" guide, written in both English and Japanese with detailed pictures, at the door. The store was minimalist, with a row of t-shirts hanging on a rack straight down the middle, and a lot of LED displays above what appeared to be shelves of tennis balls on all the walls. My "how to shop" guide told me (least I be an embarrassment to myself) that customers were to browse through the t-shirts in the middle and when they found one they liked, take note of its id number. The LED displays I'd seen were the t-shirt ID numbers around the wall. Customers found the t-shirt they wanted, went to its section, and bought the canned t-shirt labeled with the right size and color. I didn't like the shirts much, but I was impressed by the concept.

Most benches in Tokyo aren't like American benches at all. They are like a double-decker railing angled slightly on its side. I wouldn't have known it was a bench if people weren't sitting on it, but it was surprisingly comfortable. (I had to try.)

Overly Intelligent Design

Tonight's a bit colder than the last few nights have been, and I bought some tea at the conveni. I don't have a tea kettle, so I figured I'd make it the same way I made chai before I had a tea kettle in college-- by pouring in very hot water from the sink. (This is probably a crime against tea.) My Japanese sink has a cool-- and deceptively simple-- control panel that allows me to pick exactly how hot I want my water. Pleased with myself, I filled my cup up and set my tea to steep and settled down to write another blog post about my weekend.

Then I heard water running in the bathroom.

I went in and didn't see water coming from the sink or from the bathtub. I slid my under both faucets just to be sure, and felt nothing. I was about to conclude it was all in my head, or just water rushing through the pipes, when I noticed water going down the drain in the bottom of the tub.

I guess I accidentally pushed some panel when I was heating up the water in the sink that causes the tub to fill. (And, interestingly, apparently the tub can fill from bottom up.) I know I said I'd have the whole bathroom figured out by the end of October. I do, I promise-- everything but the kitchen sink. I didn't know that was part of the picture.

I'm just going to pretend my apartment is like the castle in Beauty and the Beast. My applicances noticed I was heating up water for tea, discussed it among themselves, and decided I probably was going to want a warm bath. Why thank you, appliances. That's an excellent suggestion.

Puritanism, Sashimi and Karaoke

Friday night, I met up with Brett and three of his colleagues at a restaurant in Naguro in Tokyo. The set-up was really nice-- each booth was curtained off by a hanging bamboo panel with a space at either side for the waiter to put the food in and clear dishes. The tables each had a bell you rang for service. It had a much more private feel than the typical restaurant, sort of like eating in someone's home.

Brett's colleagues ranged in age from about 23 to 28, and they all spoke English very well, which was nice for me. We ordered the way people seem to do everywhere but the US--lots of small dishes that everyone shared and that came out bit by bit. (I'm completely sold on this, but our Greek friend Theo complains he prefers eating the American way. "I want a big steak that I know is mine and that no one else can touch.) Highlights included bamboo shoots in chili powder, fish intestines in chili powder (ok, this wasn't a highlight, but I wanted to mention it for bragging rights), chicken meatballs rolled in raw egg, yakitori, okonomiyaki, and sashimi. I've been a little bit scared of sashimi throughout my trip-- fish is a newly acquired taste in and of itself, and raw fish just seems wrong--but last night I discovered how good it was when dipped in soy sauce mixed with ginger and wasabi.

It was also the first time I'd tried sake (believe it or not, I never drank ouzo in Greece), which tasted a bit like white wine and was very good. We also had something that everyone wanted me to believe was tea, but Brett eventually told me (much to his colleagues' dismay) that it was Japanese whiskey mixed with tea.

We talked a bit about places I ought to visit in Japan, and then they asked me about the front-runners for the 2008 election. I asked them what they thought of the new Prime Minister, Abe, but it was generally agreed that Japanese politics was too boring to warrant discussion. Two of Brett's colleagues, Taku and Nobu, had lived in the United States, and we discussed the unfairness of the fact that American men like Japanese women, but American women are usually uninterested in Asian men. Nobu said that he was extremely sick of American women patting his head and calling him cute. Yeah, ouch. I asked what they thought of American women, and they said that we dressed terribly but had nice proportions and long legs.

Nobu said he believed American society was inherently contradictory because of the tension between liberal democratic values and Puritanism. I think we discuss this a lot in the States, but it was interesting to hear a foreigner express this, because I've wondered what side of America comes across more. In the UAE, where I was so careful not to show too much leg or arm, I felt like American was loose and wanton in contrast. Still, in some ways, we seemed like an early-to-bed country, with speed limits and smoking bans.

I sometimes feel like young American women walk a tightrope between seeming like nice girls and like sexually comfortable women. (Is this a self-imposed dichotomy rather than a reflection of other people's views? Yes, to some extent.) Social success is about getting the balance just right. I think the only way to erase this dichotomy is to act like it doesn't exist, but, honestly, I can't let go of wanting to come across as a nice girl. In Japan-- and in a lot of Europe-- I get the impression these two things aren't in tension at all.

I was going to tell Nobu that I saw a similar tension in Japanese society-- the culture of shame, the six day work week, the extreme politeness and formality as opposed to the binge drinking and sexual liberation. So many Japanese businessmen pass out on benches on weekends that you can buy ties and boxers at almost every train station. Sex is openly part of public life and provides another venue for commercialization. However, I realized that it was a reflection of my own lens that I saw these two elements as dichotomous.

I think Japan has a great social formula-- people are judged on how they treat others and how hard they work, not their personal decisions. If allowed to pick and choose, I think I'd import Japanese attitudes about sex but leave the binge drinking. However, I'm finding it much more of a challenge to my self-conception of myself as personally socially progressive than Swarthmore ever was. It does everyone a disservice to label sex as "bad," but I think there is a lot of value in classifying it as "serious." Are the two inseperable as a social message?

I'm curious what I'll think about all this in a month. I've read some people accuse Japan of having sexual liberation without sexual equality (fodder for Catherine McKinnon), but I haven't talked to enough people to even comment on this.

Anyway, after dinner, we all went out to a karaoke place. I imagined an American-style karaoke bar with a stage where one person got up at a time and everyone else watched. My ability to sing is, well, on par with my ability to use hashi, dance, drive, and write in cursive. I tried to see it as an essential rite of passage.

The karaoke place we went to had small rooms that each party went into. The rooms had a table facing a screen, and a circular booth around the table. Someone picked a song and then we all sang, passing around the two cordless microphones. The singing was more like shouting, except for Brett, who was pretty good--or practiced. Favorites included "Complicated," "Hips Don't Lie," "It's My Life," "American Pie," and a Japanese song with an English chorus that went "You're got to be lucky and you've got to be strong." Eventually, we all started dancing. It was really fun.

It's been a really good weekend, and Rachel just got back from her trip to Ottawa, so the week ahead will be less lonely than this one. Tomorrow, I'll try to write about Harajuku, a funky So-ho-like shopping area in Tokyo, bizarre store concepts and terrific buildings. It made me feel like there's just more imagination in Japan than anywhere else I've ever been.

Halloween in Japan

A couple of people have asked me what Halloween in Japan is like, so I thought I'd give it a shot. It's a very new holiday, and one of my friends told me it started at Tokyo Disneyland and then spread out from there. It's an ideal holiday for Japan-- cute, kid friendly, commercial, neighborhood-oriented, with the potential to make it sexier.

Houses aren't decorated like houses in the states yet, although I saw a few pumpkins and shopfronts were very festive. I also saw tons of Halloween merchandise in stores the past few weeks. I imagine there will be pretty fantastic sales tomorrow-- I think the merchants may have over-anticipated the demand for plastic pumpkins and ghost doormats. I'd consider going with an orange/black graveyard style decor for my apartment, except I really hate orange. The costumes I saw were very elaborate and adorable. My favorite was a felt crab costume that looked as though it had taken some parent the better part of the summer to construct.

There's a holiday in February that reminds me a little bit of Halloween in its seemingly pagan roots. On setsubun, the father puts on a demon mask and the children of the house attempt to drive him out by through dried beans at him, chanting, "let the evil out, let the good come in." It's celebrated in February 4th, and marks the changing of seasons-- I guess it's a bit like Groundhog Day. It also reminds me of the "Sing Back the Sun" spirit of solstice mummers festivals. I think the tale of St George slaying the dragon was supposed to suggest the defeat of winter and the return of the sun.

I used to start planning out my Halloween costume in June. It's funny how when you're little, the passage of time is marked by all these special days. I remember in elementary school, even St. Patrick's day was a big deal. I would wear all green, and build villages for lepruchans with the other kids in the neighborhood in the "meadow" across the street. Over the years, those days stop mattering as much. Valentine's Day? Drink wine in the dining hall. St Patrick's Day? Green earrings so your friend stops pinching you. Now, the landmarks are due dates for assignments and departure itineraries and visits from faraway friends. I don't think any of my favorite days in the last year have been holidays (except, possibly, Thanksgiving and a holiday a friend and I made up because we needed it). I agree that the commercialization of holidays-- and I don't really want more stuff or more candy or more decorations-- but I'm very pro-things-to-get-excited about. I guess this is the time in life to begin creating my own traditions.

The Ramen Museum

After the rain stopped this weekend, I went to the Ramen museum in Shin Yokohama with Rachel and Brett and the Motoguchis, a Japanese family they are friends with. Before going, I had some misconceptions about both the ramen and the museum concepts and I thought we were just going there because there wasn't much to do in Shin Yokohama. I stand corrected.

Ramen in Japan means far more than the crunchy instant noodle packages we have in the United States. It's a thick soup with noodles and other accoutrements, and each region has its own speciality. It's an extremely popular dish (the museum was packed with adults who were locals at 7 pm on Sunday) and has become a cultural phenomenon. A friend told me there's a Japanese western about a ramen shop, and it seems there are dozens of blogs just about ramen.

Museum also isn't quite the right word-- upstairs there was a gift shop and exhibits featuring iconic moments in the history of ramen development (the invention of microwaveable instant ramen, a replica of the first-ever ramen dish eaten by a samurai in the 17th century), but downstairs was a historical noodle extravaganza.

Below the conventional museum was a two-story replica of a bustling Japanese town from around 1958. The dimly lit streets were packed with museum-goers and alongside there were pubs and even a 'love hotel' patrons could step into. Police, with thickly drawn-on eyebrows, stood ready to answer questions. As we stayed in the museum, the sky overhead grew darker. It was a little like MainStreet or Epcot, but with an attention to real life detail Disneyland lacks. I could hear the sounds of stray cats mewing and war planes-- taking troops south to Vietnam?-- overhead. It was so convincing that when I got "lost" in a dark ally I felt nervous momentarily (this was all inside the building.)

There were old fashion booths with shooting games, palinko, and this game where everyone was given a small, brittle piece square with a shape etched in it. The goal was to cut your shape out of the material using a needle while leaving both the inside and outside intact. If you were really good, you then tried to write your name on the surface of that cut-out. None of us got that far. The kids all played a game to win a prize where they went to each booth and played "rock paper scissors" with the booth attendants. If they won, they got a sticker on their card. If they lost, the attendant punched a heart-shaped hole out of their card. To win, they needed to get six stickers before losing three hearts. The Motoguchi kids were good at rock paper scissors, but the odds were against them. The attendants were unyielding, even in the face of five-year old Su-chan's tears. We later found out the prize was a lollipop with a bowl of ramen on it. Should have figured.

Eventually, we went to the town square, around which were ramen shops run by chefs from 8 of the best regional ramen shops in Japan. Part of the premise of the museum is that visitors can try all the types of ramen in Japan without leaving Shin Yokohama. I had a 'floor guide' with multilingual descriptions of all the varieties. The English translations are very cute, so I have to share some of the best excerpts:

-Id Shoten: "Pork bones boiled at high heat let out melting gelatin, emulsifying the fat in the soup, which gives the soy sauce base a mellow sensation."

-Keyaki: "Amber soup contrasts nicely with a pure white bowl. Fine stripes of cibol, chopped green cabbage, orange carrots and black Jew's ears make a colorful pile in the middle of your bowl. Having your stomach excited by the aroma of miso, you can't wait to sip the soup. First, you may feel the richness of the soup, and then the mildness in the far back of your tongue. You will also feel juicy of grounded meat and hot pepper in it, and you will not want to stop your spoon."

-Hachiya: "Hachiya has succeeded in making ramen of a powerful taste by adding grilled lard to the noodles and broth. The lard masking the surface of the broth will be a shock to those who visit Hachiya for the first time." Yum, lard and fat-emulsifying gelatin.

-Harukiya: "The bowl looks simple, but when you sip at the soup, you feel multiple levels of complex flavor and richness combined with fish aroma excite your brain. You will not come to yourself until you finish the whole bowl."

Our brains excited, we got Komurasaki (pork, chicken broth, seaweed, garlic) ramen first. It was delicious. You order from a vending machine, diner style, and choose between king size, regular, and sample size. Unlike Japanese convenience store food, even the sample sizes were huge, so we pretty much came to ourselves and were able to stop our spoons after two samples, despite the excitedness of our brains.

The Motoguchi family was politely encouraging of my efforts to use hashi throughout the meal. Su-Chan was justifiably amused by my chopstick-as-fork technique when I wound noodles around the sticks spaghetti-style, and I think they were embarrassed she'd brought attention to the fact I was an embarrassment to myself. On the way out, they gave me my very own pair of hashi they had bought from the museum gift shop. They are beautiful, and it was so sweet of them! Even though I have silverware in my apartment, I'm going to try to practice eating everything with them.

Chatting with the Graveyard Shift

Japan is in what feels like an artificial time zone. It's thirteen hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, but should probably be more like fifteen hours. It gets dark around 4:30 right now-- I think December will be interesting, although I leave a few days shy of the shortest day of the year.

In the morning, I usually am more work focused, but as the afternoon wears on, I look for more of a break from work and sign on to gchat. Unfortunately, this coincides with the middle of the night back home. Luckily, in college, someone is always awake at 2 or even 4 am. In general, there are three possible scenarios: a) they are upset or restless b) they are very drunk or c) they are urgently trying to finish a paper/problem set. In the first case, I feel useful, in the second amused, and in the third, annoying.

The unfortunate thing is that my friends who have graduated from college and have real jobs are for the most part much more sensible than I am and go to bed shortly after I wake up. In general this is true of my family too, but lately my mother's been up late because of the Red Sox. Thanks for the long innings, Boston!

Ichi, ne, san, shi, go!

Friday night, I went out to a local bar with Rachel and Brett where we met up with some of their friends and played a half dozen rounds of Yatzee. It was an ideal game for me because I'd just learned to count to five (ichi, ne, san, shi, go!) and could show off/practice. Everyone was very good humored, and the game descended into hilarity a few times as people struggled to master the differences between our names. (The shortened forms of our names wind up being much more similar in Japanese...Ray-chan, Bray-chan, Bree-chan. My name actually winds up being more like Badee-chan. I enjoy the way my name is reinvented in different languages. The Mudasiganas call me Bliss and in the UAE, people thought my name was Berry. It makes me wonder what I do to other people's names.)

I was talking to this man who had to be at least fifty. He asked me if I had friends in Japan, and I pointed to Bray-chan and Ray-chan and tried to indicate I had another friend named Saori somewhere. He then asked Rachel something I didn't understand and she answered, then he asked me a question and pointed to his nose. I really wasn't sure what to do, but I'd worn the phrase 'I'm sorry, I don't understand' out for the evening, so I figured I might as well also point to my nose.

Everyone burst out laughing. Apparently, in Japan, you point to yourself by touching the tip of your nose. He'd asked Rachel if I was single, and then asked me if I wanted to date him. I'd responded by looking bewildered and pointing to myself, diffusing a potentially awkward situation. There are perks to being too oblivious to be awkward!

One dynamic I'm struggling with a little bit here is how common and acceptable it is for older men to go after young women and girls. In the United States, we certainly idolize youth and it isn't uncommon for women to marry men ten or fifteen years older than them, but men in their thirties and forties don't date girls in high school and college. As a result, when a man who is 50+ talks to me, I assume he is being fatherly and not trying to hit on me. I would have assumed he was kidding if Rachel and Brett hadn't given me a crash course on vehemently expressing disinterest on the way home. Apparently he'd gotten really persistent, and Rachel had told him I didn't have a cell phone or an email account. We're not quite as far along technologically back in the US of A. The whole thing struck me as more funny than anything else, but it's good to bear in mind in the way I perceive interactions here.

Rain on a Tin Roof

Today's been a deliciously lazy day. There's a typhoon coming through (which apparently just means a large rainstorm, but typhoon sounds so much cooler) and it's almost too rainy/floody to go outside. I was out fairly late last night so I slept in virtually forever. I love mornings when you wake up and then go back to sleep and are just sleepy enough to fall back to sleep but not entirely so you have a little bit of control over your dreams. This is the first week I can remember where I've gotten enough sleep every night. I sort of went through college pretending caffeine and sleep were perfect substitutes, but now I'm realizing it's better when they are complements. In Greece, there were a few nights where I was so tired I fell asleep on my floor. If anyone ever tells you dinner ends at 2 or 3 am in Greece, believe them. I thought my boss was exaggerating!

My upstairs apartment is so nice in the rain. It makes fantastic sounds on the roof and I can hear the wind beating around the walls. I've spent most of the day upstairs reading a book about an American gangster in Tokyo after World War II.

I had to venture out to run errands earlier today. Unfortunately, I packed for Abu Dhabi where it never rains, so I had to settle for old gold flats and a borrowed umbrella. I think it might be time to buy more all-weather clothing. I succeeded in not being an embarrassment to myself because I discovered there were plastic sleeves outside the grocery store to put your umbrella in so it didn't drip. After you put your umbrella into the plastic sleeve, you then put a rubber band around the top to make sure it stays tightly on. Dryness is a serious business.

If the rain continues to be this bad, I'll probably post more later.

La Vie Quotideinne

One thing I really like about Japan is that it's socially acceptable to say, when apologizing, "I am an embarrassment to myself." I have had several noteworthy daily life successes this week, and I think they are in part due to the mastery of this key phrase-- because I often am.

The other day, I went to go visit a friend a few train stations away. I'd last seen her when I was in ninth grade, so it was fantastic to catch up. We rode a very high ferris wheel called a 'clock.' From the top, you can see all the way to Mount Fuji on a clear day. We ate at Subways for lunch. A critical difference from the United States: they put wasabi on the sandwiches. Yum.

On the way back, I had some ticketing confusion involving accidentally using a fare adjustment machine when I didn't need to. As a result, my ticket was just really messed up and the ticket machine wouldn't let me exit the station. I went into the little help booth to try to explain/pantomime the situation, an added challenge because I didn't really understand what had happened. After I had tried to act out trying to leave and the machine barring me from leaving (I could have used a volunteer, pretending to be me and the offending machine simultaneously was tricky)while repeating "I'm sorry. I don't understand. I am an embarrassment to myself," the station attendants decided I was lost. I was able to communicate that I did indeed live in Kikuna, and then they said a lot of stuff. I explained that I didn't understand and was totally an embarrassment to myself. They were enthusiastic and said a lot more stuff. Finally, they gave me an unnecessary refund and let me through a back gate. I think I was becoming an embarrassment to them too. I felt bad but I kind of count the interaction as a success because I was able to a) exit the station and b) convey that I felt bad.

Speaking of success stories, I've mastered my shower and my bathtub now! I'll confess, I don't know how all the buttons work, and have to fill my bathtub manually instead of setting it to fill to a certain number of cubic millimeters, but it's a far cry from falling and not being able to get up. My bathtub itself is phenomenal. I think it could fit three American-sized people in there. If it was deeper, there would be enough space to tread water. I've always been more of a shower person than a bath person, but Japan may convert me. I sort of just want to hang out in my bathtub with a book after work. In Japan, water is heated as it is used, so bathwater doesn't get cold and showers don't run out of hot water. In addition, no energy is wasted heating unused hot water.

One thing that I'm still adapting to is how rule-abiding people are. I took the train into Shibuye (downtown Tokyo) the other night and participated in "the Scramble" at Hachiko Crossing. It was chaos, made slightly more terrifying by the fact that it was raining and everyone was holding umbrellas that seemed aimed at my eyeballs, but decidedly organized chaos. Everyone waited until the signal to cross and people truly scrambled. There was none of this "I'll make the car wait for me" leisurely American stuff.

Closer to home, I live about a third of a mile from the train tracks. Ninety seconds before a train comes through, traffic barriers go down and a flashing light blinks. They sometimes go up immediately after the train passes, but if there's a second train following it, they stay down. This means that pedestrians, cars, and bicyclists wait two minutes between trains. Occasionally, I've treated the traffic blocks like hurdles when running , but all the people waiting the full two minutes for an "ok" signal looked at me with concealed horror. I get it. I'm an embarrassment to myself. I try to follow the rules better now-- time saving isn't worth the social stress.

Today for lunch, I went to a nearby Japanese diner with Rachel. At the door, there was a machine with pictoral representations of the food and prices. We decided what we wanted and pressed the corresponding buttons. Then we got tickets with our meal and drinks orders. (It reminded me a little of the sandwich machine at WaWa.) We took these tickets to the counter, and gave them a waitress/cook. A few minutes later, she brought out our meals, which were still cooking on hot plates. The procedure is like this: for the next ten minutes, you shield yourself from the oil/grease by folding your paper placemat in half and putting it in front of your dish and reach over the placemat with your haishi (chopsticks) to turn your meat over as it cooks. The food was delicious and I was not an embarrassment to myself!