Tokyo nights

To bush or not to bush

This post may seem a little crass so for those not into such kind of talk, please move on.

I had a few girlfriends over two weeks ago for a visit (the official statement being that it was to see me, but we all knew they were there to play with the cute cat) and the conversation suddenly veered south off into the realms of the gutter.

Not that I minded.

Not in the least. My mind lives there a good part of the time anyways.

Not that that surprises most of you, but for those precious few who might still think otherwise, I wanted to clear that up.

Anyways, what kind of shocked me were the people who brought up the topic. These two lovely ladies and I have never had the kind of friendship (until now) that turned to such vulgar conversation, so I was surprised our relationship was heading into those waters.

Not that it bothered me, mind you.

Not in the least. I could talk about such things forever. Well, not forever. Eventually even I would get tired of it. I think.

I answered any questions they asked, but was surprised when it seemed that as the person with the most experience (no, I am not that kind of girl. The other two girls led a very sheltered life), somehow I was becoming the sexpert of the group. WHAT?!? Suddenly I had a flash of Sue Johanson and the Sunday Night Sex Show (Okay, I need to go on a small tangent here to talk about Sue Johanson for a second. Sue Johanson is a very popular sex educator with shows in the states, Canada, Brazil, Israel and 20 european countries. I thought she was the coolest little old granny to ever pick up a dildo until I had the misfortune of covering her talk at a community college back when I was doing the journalism thing. She smashed my idealistic image of her when she turned out to be a total cunt. She freaked on a fellow journalist about something and totally deserved the title of Queen Bitch. My world was shattered and I will never trust another granny peddling sex advice).

Anyfameturnspeopleintotyrants, having been the only girl out of the three of us to have slept with a Japanese man, I was brought to the witness stand to give a statement clearing up the many myths surrounding ...Japanese equipment.

Now, while I may have seen a few in my day, I haven't sampled a broad enough cross section of the population to have a rock hard argument (pun intended) on what's true for the group as a whole. All I could offer was an educated guess as to the accuracy of some claims.

While all the speculation and theory was flying around the room, we somehow got onto the topic of bushes. Namely that Japanese people as a whole seem to prefer it out and proud. This of course, goes against the grain of anyone who was raised or spent a significant amount of time in North America. We do not like it out and proud. We seem to prefer it beaten, on the run, or better yet, non-existent (thanks to some brilliant techniques imported from Brazil).

This bush effect goes both ways in the gender stakes and during my many, many hot springs visits I have witnessed some bushes that could be nominated for the guinness book of world records. You'd think the girls were wearing furry "t-backs" as they call thongs here. (Am I the only one who has misread "T-backs" in katakana as tea bags and then got all weird because they were advertising men's thongs? Only me? Okay, where was I? Ah, yes, the bushing.) Now, these furry ladies weren't limited to your typical onsen grannies, but also included young women. Fashionable young women who might be the toast of the town in Shibuya or Omotesando. I was shocked to the core. Surely these girls had seen enough episodes of Sex and the City to know that it is verboten to be running around with the equivalent of hairy DIY underwear?

A few muttered conversations with foreign male coworkers under cover in crowded Japanese pubs let me know that things weren't much better on the other side of the partition. "It was like a walnut, no a hazelnut, sticking out of a huge bush." said one shell-shocked Canadian. "The bush was so big I couldn't see anything at all. From the waist down it could have been a girl with John Cleese legs," said an amazed American.

I consulted my Japanese girlfriends to get the lowdown. They were all shocked that I wanted to bushwhack nature's nether garden. "Why would you do that?" asked my friend A aghast. The ex also had similar views on messing with what God gave me. "Why would you wax or trim? When it grows back it's more coarse and prickles. Soft and natural is best."

While I have slowly been adapting over the years to Japan's different culture, I don't think there will ever be a time when my protests to the bushes majoricus of Japan will roll over and die. While I think every woman should be in charge of her own garden, there are certain aesthetic standards that should be the norm (just as there is an acceptable length for the grass on your front lawn).

Maybe Japan should do public service announcements about it on the trains. It would certainly be more greatly appreciated and enrich more lives than this does:

Drunken hijinks

The company party

Yes, in Japan company drinking parties are an absolute must. No worker in Japan can truly bond with his coworkers without that all important social lubricant known as alcohol.

I thought being an educational company, my workplace wouldn't bother with all that. Ah, how naive I was.

When I first hear about it, I was thinking about skipping the party since it was on a Friday night and I have better things to do with my time than sit with people I see in the office all day. My other foreign coworker promised to go if I went, and frankly the mention of free alcohol and food ended up being too good to resist, so I found myself signing up.

The meeting place was a convention hall that often does weddings. We were to assemble by 5:30 as the party would start promptly by 6 p.m. Always one to spot an opening to leave work early, I convinced my coworker to leave with me at 4 so that we would have about an hour to hang around and drink coffee at Starbucks before the start time of the party. We arrived promptly at 5:30 and were asked to draw a piece of paper from a box. Naively thinking it was for some kind of prize draw, I happily complied. Then I found out it was for my seat at the tables. I was not amused. While the people who work in my office with me are truly wonderful people, the same cannot be said for the surrounding offices. All I needed was to end up at the same table as my supervisor or the principal.

Once people started to trickle in I noticed that a lot of them weren't employees at our school. Who were these people and why did I have to sit next to them? Turns out our company invited not only staff from our high school, but also people from the several juku (cram schools) they own and the kindergarten they just bought out. Since our school is adding on a junior high school next year (I am so outta there before that!) all they need now is an elementary school and they will have a full elevator school system (you can keep moving up through your education without sitting entrance exams). The top brass of the company were also in attendance, sitting at the same table as the principal.

Once we were all in, the doors were shut. Kinda made me feel like we weren't allowed to escape. This feeling was reinforced when the principal began his extremely long speech. Then the juku principals were all introduced, and the Encho (principal) of the kindergarten, then all 13 of the teachers from the kindergarten (along with their bios, hobbies and what kind of children they were). It was the longest 30 minutes of my life.

Eventually we were allowed to eat and food was wheeled out for us. Pretty nice fare actually, with a nice fish dish, meat filled dumplings, salads, potato gratin, cake, etc. We also received a few of the big bottles of beer and oolong tea. Then the drinking began...

Damn. While I will never condone the rampant alcoholism of Japan, I can sort of understand why some salary-men get into such bad condition that they can't get home on their own. Every time I took a sip from my glass of beer, another staff member showed up at my table to fill it up. It's this weird custom that if you are a new member of the company (kouhai - or junior, if you like), you have to pour beer for all the senior staff. Even I had to get up a few times and pour the beer around. I knew that at least once during the evening I had to pour for the principal of the school, but every time I swooped by his table, another enterprising staff member had beat me to the punch and filled his glass.

I spent so long trying to get my chance to pour beer for the principal that my fish became a cold, congealed mass, my potato gratin was eaten by another person, and my cake given away. All in all, I had two bites of salad and one small dumpling the whole night. Oh, and about 2 tall bottles of beer thanks to the never ending beer pouring parade. By the end of the night, I was a swaying, word slurring mess.

Towards the end of the dinner, after glad handing and pouring my little heart out, I did get to top up the already full glasses of the principals (my own school's and the kindergarten's). My duty fulfilled, I went back to my seat with a sigh of relief just in time for the karaoke to start. I had been warned that the principal was a fan of Enka (kind of like Japanese blues) and sure enough, he stumbled up on stage and began to sing with the help of one of the science teachers.

After about another 30 minutes, the first party was over and we were free to escape. The second party was going to be at a karaoke place but no one was under obligation to go. As for me, being the karaoke freak that I am, I got my other foreign coworker in a headlock and demanded he accompany me for at least one hour. We all stumbled the two blocks down to the karaoke place through a maze of hostess bars (losing a few teachers on the way, casualties of the seductive lure of huge hair and too much make up).

Within the first half of Karaoke, I witnessed the principal wearing a cushion cover on his head, singing on the table, the English teacher confirming my gaydar by not only singing a Morning Musume song, but dancing the choreography as well, and the strict, scary music teacher boogieing out to some country song while kicking like some Russian Cossack dancer. It was, in short, hilarious.

After screaming a few songs with the staff, cheering on the drunken Enka antics of the brass, and trying to no avail to find and sing with my teacher crush, I gave it up for the night and stumbled out into the rain.

Drunk and disoriented (the company party was in a city I have never stopped in before), I ended up in a maze of hostess bars and seedy snack pubs. I stumbled around for a good ten minutes or so before I ended up asking for directions. Seems that in our drunken stupor, the whole group of us ended up walking around in circles to get to the karaoke place when it was just a straight walk from the event hall. The station was literally a two minute walk in a straight line on the same street.

It was an interesting party, but the drunken hijinks and food don't make up for the boring speeches and inability to get through a meal. I don't think I'll go to the next one.

Hot boys, alcohol and rats

So I finally got my ass down to a host club in Kabukicho. I was really nervous, but I went with two fabulous Canadian girls so I was brave enough to walk in the door.

On our way to the chosen club (Acqua, if you're interested), we had to walk up the main drag that is riddled with host clubs. The club next to the one we had chosen had very aggressive hosts who tried to pull us in, but we had already made the choice to visit one specific club so we kept going.

The front of the building is really amazing with a huge, lit up sign and pictures of the most popular hosts. The downstairs entrance also seemed quite impressive with a sliding door and lots of lit up cases of expensive alcohol.

That is where the glamour stops.

Things to remind yourself of when you're bitter about your job

This goes for everyone in Japan, but especially English teachers.

1) Going to your job puts money in your pockets. We all need money, right?

2) It gives you something to do (anyone unemployed for a long stretch will appreciate this). Trust me, sitting at home for months at a time with no money and nothing to do DOES get old.

3) You can practice your Japanese on staff/students (anyone writing the JLPT next weekend will appreciate this).

4) You can continue getting a visa and stay in Japan longer (it's debatable how many people still appreciate this).

5) Your boyfriend/girlfriend doesn't want you to leave.

6) (if you have a lot of unnecessary pride -- like me) you want to finish the contract you signed and not let the job beat you.

7) Money. Did I mention that yet?

8) Even though flipping off your boss and walking out the door sounds good in theory, you realize that once you were expected to pay rent or buy food the only person laughing would be the RE-PO man.

9) You need to stay at your current job until you find a better one.

10) You realize (to your immense shock) that you actually LIKE a lot of things in Japan. Living here is often much more convenient that back home. And the winters are milder (for Northern Canadians).

Tell yourself these ten reasons repeatedly and try not to kill anyone.

Disgusting

I kind of wrote a similar post about this before (relating to the boyfriend and I), but I get so tired of all the bullshit I read about Japanese men who are dating/married to foreign women that I wanted to address it a little more in depth. I can only apologize in advance for the long rant form this post takes. My emotions overcame me.

I thought I would do a little research on the Internet and used google (both the Japanese and Canadian versions) to see what would pop up under the words "Japanese men foreign women". It was disgusting.

About 90% of the sites dealt with two things: the high divorce rate between Japanese men and foreign women, and what bastards Japanese men are.

Is there a small group of bitter, foreign women out there who wrote these pages?

The misconceptions that are littering the Internet are so stupid. And what's worse, people are just repeating these ideas without any basis of experience. It's all things like "I heard Japanese men are...." or "A friend of a friend once dated a Japanese guy and..."

How about writing something you actually know from PERSONAL EXPERIENCE?

Let me clear up a few things....

Myth: Japanese men aren't interested in foreign women.
Truth: Many men ARE interested in foreign women. A lot of the time they are shy, worried that you don't speak Japanese, or think you may not be interested in them. If you are, go speak to the boys! They may be too shy to approach you without some encouragement. Make eye contact, give them a smile and you will get results.

The Odakyu Line

Okay, so Japan has this little problem with suicides. I think the estimate was a person kills themselves every 15 minutes in Japan.

There are many ways to kill yourself in Japan, but one of the most popular in larger cities (namely Tokyo) is to jump in front of a train. Freaky enough as it is to imagine a person taking off their shoes at the platform and judging the perfect moment to jump, the thing that disturbs me more is the fee that train lines charge the family of the deceased.

Basically it breaks down to how long the train was stopped due to the suicide and the calculated revenue lost due to that time lapse. For example, if the JR Yamanote line (one of the busiest in the world) is stopped for 15 minutes and during 15 minutes an estimated 12,000 people use the line at 250 yen a head, the family is charged 3,000,000 yen (plus an additional inconvenience/clean up fee I believe).

You would think considering the high cost to the families that people would choose a different method of killing themselves. But sure enough, every single day there are train delays due to "Human accidents".

The worst example of this is the Odakyu line. Now, I take this line to work every day and almost every day it is delayed. About 75% of the time, it's due to suicides. Why is it so popular, you ask? Turns out the Odakyu line is the cheapest one to kill yourself on. Seems there is a hierarchy of lines from most expensive to least, and Odakyu is right there at the bottom.

Good for families, bad for commuters (ME ME ME!!!)

Now, when I first came to Japan, I was absolutely horrified by the suicides and the offhand way people talk about them. Although if I grew up in a society where people kill themselves all the time maybe it wouldn't bother me either. My first day of work in Tokyo, a woman said to me, "If you go to work on Mondays, make sure you leave extra early." When I quizzed her as to why, she said, "Monday has the most suicides because people can't face another work week. Your train will be delayed." Apparently being late for work is far more horrifying than the poor soul who threw themselves in front of the train.

I have to admit that after being here for over 3 years, I'm starting to get blasé about the whole suicide thing. "Train late? Probably another suicide. Geez." My assimilation is about 75% complete.

"Japan is the only country with four seasons"

I hear this from students all the time and they are serious about it.

In the book series I use with advanced students (American Headway) there is a question about immigration that goes "What would you miss about your country if you moved to America?"

The answers were (in no particular order):

1) Green Tea
2) Rice (or some variant of Japanese food)
3)"Japan's four seasons." 

Why? Because "Only Japan has four seasons." I admit, the first few times I heard it I thought they were joking. And apparently America has yet to discover the wonders of green tea and Japanese food. I'll conveniently sweep the sushi place near my parent's house under the rug, shall I? =P