Tokyo nights

Crisis?

I started to blog about the graduation ceremony I attended today, but it was boring (both the event and the post), so I erased it.

I'm happy to say that while today is rather chilly, Spring is on the way! Flowers are blooming (I saw an early blooming Cherry tree today!) and the daylight hours are slowly getting longer. Yay!

Spring is the season of new beginnings in Japan: a new tax year, a new school year, and for many people, a new apartment.

Yes, Tokyo Nights' lease is up for renewal and I've yet to get a frickin' notice in the mail. Usually you get something 1 to 2 months in advance, yet my lease expires...the Monday after next? It all kind of caught up with me a while ago. I originally thought my lease was up in April, so I hadn't seriously been looking for a place to live until recently. If for some strange reason my lease can't be renewed (and it better be a good reason, because my lease says I have permission to renew on it), I will have to bust my ass and drain my savings account to move out in one week. Nervous laughter is going through my head as I type this.

Finding an apartment in Tokyo that is affordable, foreigner and pet friendly, and not in the middle of a fucking rice field is an almost impossible task. Since I work out in Saitama, I can't move out to say....Shibuya, because it'll take me about 2 1/2 to 3 hours to get to work one way. It's gotta be the east side of Tokyo, and preferably in the northern area. If I could find something cheaper (chancy) and bigger than I have now (I can dream), then I probably wouldn't mind a change of scene.

I may be jumping the gun on the moving thing and my landlord's company may just be full of slow ass hoes who don't send confirmation letters out on time. Pray for MoJo because I'm calling them up tomorrow morning now that I"m on short holiday to get to the bottom of this fuckery.

Promotion time!

New recipes up at my food blog, Mochi.

Another two recipes will be added by the middle of this week! Check it out!

Racism

Short post 'cuz I have a virus trying to rape my immune system as I type this.

I was sitting in my office today going through the phone book-sized March publication of Suumo magazine (real estate listings) and bemoaning the hard time foreigners face finding a place to live in Japan with or without guarantors. I went on a wee tirade about the racism in Japan, only to be met by my second favorite coworker's shocked response, "There's no racism in Japan!'

Okay all of you foreigners living in Japan, you may go laugh now. I'll wait right here.

Done?

Right, back to the story!

So I turn around to him and say, "How can you say that? Do you know how hard it is to get a cell phone if you're foreign? An apartment? A credit card?" To which he replied, "I know. A friend of mine is Chinese and he had a terrible time getting an apartment." See, to me this would illustrate my point, but he just didn't get it. "Foreigners,"he continued innocently, "are  kind of like pets. Not many buildings want them. That's not racism, that's just the preference of the landlords."

I was bouncing in my chair and spitting by this point. "Don't you see that it's racism? It's like foreigners are considered to be undesirable animals! Like because we're foreign we'll damage the apartment! They expect us to piss on the floor and scratch up the walls! Don't you see how denigrating that is?!? What are we, cockroaches? And treating us different from Japanese people may not be violent, but it's still a form of racism! Denying services to a racial group, imprisoning them without evidence or access to a lawyer, harassment, the inability to vote unless we give up our citizenship; all that is RACISM!" I went off on this topic for quite a while, as you do. The lack of large, affordable housing for foreigners on or near the Yamanote line may have added a little fuel to the fire.

Eventually, to stem the flow of wrath coming his way, he turned to me and said, "I guess you're right. Japanese people don't understand what racism really means, so they don't realize they're doing it. We usually think it means violence towards another racial group, but it can be more subtle than that."  YES! YES! Now if only every other Japanese person on this island could have the same breakthrough! Then I could get my fucking Visa and Mastercard applications approved and move into that sweet 20 mat apartment near Tokyo station!

Go wrath! Changing one Japanese person's mind at a time! Put me on national TV and I"ll browbeat the nation!

Horrified

Today is a sad day for me. My favorite designer, Alexander McQueen, was found dead in his apartment of apparent suicide. I'm still in shock.

My prayers go out to his remaining family and all his friends, coworkers, and people he inspired. His genius will be truly missed.

Blog Voyeurism

These days, I think pretty much everyone has a list of blogs they like to read. Most people read their favorite blogs for one of two reasons:

a) The blog has information about stuff you'd like to try/read more about (i.e. food blogs, travel overseas, tips on how to make your own shoes, etc.)

b) They are so sensational and explicit that you become addicted to living vicariously through the described experiences

What's really fun is when the blog hits both A and B buttons, causing obsessive refreshing and several visits a day to keep abreast of new posts. 

I had a ton of these blogs that I used to read back in the day, but a lot of people gave up on their blogs after a year or two. Either that, or they got married and had kids and their blog became nothing but a constant litany of diaper anecdotes or how they think their husbands aren't attracted to them anymore.

A friend and I DO read a few of those kind of blogs by foreign women who married Japanese men and are now raising kids in the boonies of Japan, but we do it with a kind of soft horror. It's kind of a "be careful or this shit will happen to you" kind of warning. Barefoot and pregnant in Ibaragi prevention methods, you could say.

Lately I've been reading a few blogs (of the non-children in the woods variety) that are pretty interesting:

1) Satellite of Love

This one came to my attention through two fellow bloggers. We were sitting around at a Champagne bar one night and they started to talk about this very explicit blog. Very racy and shocking, they sez. Sign me up, sed I! Apparently this girl goes around picking up any young man she fancies and then brings them back to love hotels for hot sex. I kind of feel like I jinxed this one, because right when I started reading she decided to become monogamous with her favorite boyfriend and stopped posting salacious stories. The archives are a GREAT read, though. Is it very evil that I hope the monogamy doesn't last and she starts sleeping her way through Japan again?

2) Now I'm in Japan

Another girl who knows how to enjoy herself in Japan. I envy her ability to find super cheap clothes at flea markets around Tokyo that actually fit her. She seems like a lot of fun.

3) I'm A Seoul Man in Tokyo

Just started reading this one lately. We're both part of the Expat blog ring. Funny writing.

4) Really Japan Photos

LOVE this photoblog! Kind of inspires me to get a much slimmer camera than what I have now so that I can take photos on the go more. Love my Canon, but it's a big clunker that is too heavy to haul everywhere.

5) Workaholic Hostess

An American-Japanese working as a hostess in a foreign hostess bar. Interesting look at life from that side of the industry.

6) Oyl in Tokyo

Funny writer in Japan.

7) Welcome to Tokyo Meet Market

I actually found this blog on Satellite of Love's blog. She had written about some article that was posted about dating in Japan. I find this blog fascinating. It's a very good breakdown of the intricacies of Japanese dating. If you ever thought Japanese people were undeserving of their anal-retentive stereotyping, please read the post about the seating arrangements and timing schedules for a date. Yes, there are rules.

And outside the wonderful island nation that is Japan:

8) Slutever

Very interesting blog from London. It's a little bit Trainspotting, a little bit Bridget Jones' Diary.

9) Diary of a White Indian Housewife

I'm obsessed with Indian culture, hence the Indian dance lessons, my library of Bollywood movies, and my sad attempts to cook "authentic curries". I love her blog. Very cool look at being a foreigner in India.

10) Dealbreaker

Funny dealbreakers sent in from people all over. I agree with about 90% of them. Of course, I'm a bitch.

There are a lot more blogs (far too many if you take into account all the food ones I read, too), but I'll leave you with these ten to get you going. Almost everyone on this list is a far better writer than I am, so go enjoy!

Woher...spazieren sie?

The only foreign language that matters is English, didn't you know? That's what JR's train staff seems to think. Anyone who can't speak English or Japanese is a waste of time and should be brushed off and gotten rid of (unless we're running a bid to host the Olympics! Then we love all people! Multiculturalism, yah!).

Seems harsh, but this was exactly the kind of attitude I witnessed on Sunday when I was coming back from my extravagant cheese shopping (a post on my food blog is soon to come). This poor foreign woman with a back pack was trying to ask directions somewhere from the train staff. They kept shrugging their shoulders and making shooing motions at her to move away from the ticket window. I was really pissed off by their behavior. Cops in Japan are notorious for this whole "fuck off it's too challenging to help you" bit, too.

Remembering what it was like when I first came to Tokyo, I decided to intervene and help the woman. She was standing in front of the big area map in the station with a very upset look on her face. I approached with a smile and asked if she was okay. In perfect English with no accent, she responded, "I don't speak English." Fair enough. After two long blinks (my way of processing surprising or unpleasant information), we established she spoke German. Bugger, bugger! Why couldn't it be one of the foreign languages I still speak well? Why not French or Spanish? Okay, no need to panic! I took two years of German in University.....6 years ago. I was reading Goethe in the original language...with a dictionary. I wrote a huge thesis on Faust in German...with a little help from Babelfish. I can give simple directions!

It took us less than 3 minutes of conversation to establish that I now speak about as much German as I do Greek. I could understand exactly where she wanted to go, yet couldn't find the words to explain how to get there. I couldn't even remember how to say right or left and some bits came out in Japanese. This travesty in several languages went something like this:

"Wir sind hier...und du, woher gehen sie? Nach Asakusa-bashi? Spazieren?!?..um, Kottotori-dori, ano Kottotori strasse...muss...zu ....gehen. Hai. Es ist sehr....tooi yo. Uh, *nervous laugh* Es ist besser....um...densha...er, le, zie, der tren aus gehen. No, the TRAIN. TRAIN. Ja, choo choo? Locomotiv? "

I was right pissed at myself by this point because I'd let my German deteriorate. Plus, her map didn't show anything past Iriya station. We were closer to Kita Senju, so fat lot of good the map did us. I wasn't sure how to get her back down to Asakusa-bashi without having her backtrack all the way to Iriya. I tried to ask one of the train staff to give me a hand, but when they saw another foreign face, they assumed I was with the woman from " one of the unpopular countries that don't speak English" and they refused to assist me.

Finally, I got the woman to understand that rather than spend the next hour and some change walking around lost, she should just hop on the Hibiya line and then take the train from Akihabara to Asakusa-bashi. She could be there in about 10 minutes. She gave me a dubious look, thanked me in German (I replied in Japanese by accident) and then disappeared off into the world.

Tokyo is confusing until you've gotten lost here enough times.

I was going to rant on how the xenophobic people of Japan need to get their act together and welcome foreigners more if they want a strong economy and birth rate but...I can't be arsed right now. It's snowing!

MySpace Eikaiwa?

Before Facebook was a household name, I admit that I made a MySpace page back in the day. I made the MySpace page when I moved out to Fukushima, because I craved contact with people who were not other English teachers (my views on the male English teacher in Japan are well documented on this site).

I didn't use it all that much, but over time managed to build up a fairly big list of friends. Then the ex and his stalker came along, and I deleted my account. I did start up another one eventually, but just found it so boring I couldn't be bothered to update it much. I mean, MySpace can't hold a candle to the FarmVille application, right?

To be fair, I have met some nice people in Japan through MySpace that have become good friends. We go for dinner, go to clubs, watch concerts, etc. It's pretty nice. BUT there is a dangerous animal on MySpace that you have to be careful of when you start adding Japanese people to your friends list. This organism preys on foreign people in the city with only one objective in mind: free English lessons.

It will start out very innocently, of course. You will connect on MySpace somehow (you search them, they search you, a friend recommends them, etc.) and you send a few emails. At first it's all generosity on their part, with invitations to show you around the city, introduce you to new places you haven't seen before, etc. Excited and touched to finally break through the exclusive clique that is Japanese society, you agree. Remember you are just looking for friends, not a relationship.

Before accepting any of these invitations you should have the following:

1) Your excuse to leave early. My favorite is to have a friend call me with an "emergency" or "forgotten plans"

2) Your cell phone. Otherwise #1 will be useless.

3) Your escape route, complete with train schedules. Otherwise you may be trapped in whatever place they choose to bring you.

If you're really lucky, you'll get the hybrid. This is an organism that not only wants to practice their English with you for free, but is also willing to sleep with you, should they be lucky enough to get you inebriated.

Let me give you a case study to further illustrate my point:

Girl A (who in no way resembles me. *cough* ) unwittingly met a hybrid on MySpace. On the surface he seemed friendly and interesting, if somewhat eccentric, and she agreed to go out for karaoke. Now, Girl A is no fool, and she chose a very public area for their meeting. She also had prepared all 3 suggestions on the list above, and therefore considered herself safe enough. They met in Shibuya (his choice, she hates the Hachiko meeting place with a passion), and they wandered off to their destination.

Only 5 minutes into their night out, Girl A realized she'd made a mistake of epic proportions. Eccentric did not even begin to cover the behavior of the hybrid, as he sang with more passion than necessary, stamping his foot on the floor (off the beat, no less) for emphasis during emotional parts of the lyrics. He also had a tendency to sing with his eyes closed, throw his head back, and was the most off key singer she'd ever had the misfortune to cross. Trying not to giggle, Girl A downed as many tequila sunrises as she could during their two hour stay and sent hilarious play by play texts of the hybrid's antics to her friends on her cellphone.

When they exited Karaoke, Girl A wanted to escape, but tenacity is the hybrid's most outstanding feature. He suggested an Okinawan pub up the road, coaxing Girl A with tales of delicious island cuisine and Orion beer. Within 5 minutes of sitting down, the hybrid laid out the first part of his agenda: He wanted to improve his English. What does he suggest? Why nothing but a STUDY SCHEDULE that Girl A could partake in to teach him English. During and after the Soki Soba and Goya Champuru, the hybrid continued to suggest study aids he would like Girl A to bring and the "benefits" (wink, wink) that she could enjoy if she helped with said studying. Girl A never ate so fast to get out of a restaurant in her life.

After leaving the bar, the hybrid changed tactics and went into phase two of his agenda: sleeping with a foreigner. Pathetic attempts to grab Girl A's sympathy ("I came here from Yokohama. There's no more trains, and I'll be stuck here overnight") were put into play with little effect. When the whole "let's get naked in a love hotel, we're not far from the hill" ploy failed to gain him access to Girl A's panties, he tried to get her to take him home to her apartment.

At this point, Girl A was feeling tired, disillusioned, and a fiery wrath backed up by delicious tequila. She looked him straight in the eye and told him to fuck off. It's a crude, but effective way of getting rid of the hybrid. She left him to find his own place to stay for the night/way home and returned to her apartment in a huff. Though she was tired and somewhat drunk, she also took the time to block his ass from her MySpace page.

The story should end here, but didn't I say hybrids are tenacious? Soon the hybrid discovered one of Girl A's friends on MySpace and began using that person as a method to get information on Girl A. He also kept changing his cell phone email so that he could bombard her with text messages even after she blocked him. Weary of his ways, Girl A finally had her then boyfriend call up the hybrid and threaten him with bodily violence if the hybrid did not leave his woman alone. And there ends our story.

The moral of this story is that MySpace is no longer just the home of angsty tweens desperate for strangers' approval through photo comments or people from third world countries looking for VISAS by marrying foreigners. It is now home to several types of predators that are on the lookout for innocent whiteys in Japan. Men are as vulnerable as women, although I believe men encounter more hybrids than women do. Use MySpace at your own peril!

Lights, camera, action!

When you're a teacher in Japan, you are essentially a product to be marketed. You are a money maker, a PR Patsy, a sweetner, if you will, to draw in those money making bees (i.e. students or parents of students). This means that when your school is doing a PR drive to bring in new students, you might be "volunteered" to take one for the team and be in a commercial. You will end up with your face on the billboards of train stations, in newspapers and pamphlets, on websites, and on TV (unless you're not photogenic. Ugly teachers are hidden away until students have already payed their non-refundable membership fees).

This seems wrong, but in Japan your public image is everything. This is why if your school has only a surplus of ugly teachers, you should contact modeling agencies and hire foreigners for the day to pose as your staff. The professional photographers will take pictures of the models sitting in the school with "students", and make up a bunch of posters and pamphlets. If you could afford premium models, you're all set! The handsome young men on your website will attract horny, unfulfilled housewives who control their husband's money, and who think they might like to learn English as a hobby. Not REALLY learn it, and like study or anything, just sit around repeating the good looking teacher's words and giggling. It's a social thing! Get your girlfriends together and oggle a foreign man up close for an hour a week! It's cheaper than a host club! You can go for coffee after and discuss how young and handsome he is, in Japanese!

Some people don't give a shit about being used for PR and just do whatever is asked of them. I, on the other hand, prefer to avoid having my picture taken at any cost. But when you're trying to make sure you're employed next year, and your boss is holding your new contract hostage until you do his bidding, it's funny how your vocal damnation of whoring out teachers for profit can change. Next thing you know, you're smiling uncomfortably and making stilted small talk with a blank student in front of a camera crew during your lunch hour.

Yesterday afternoon I was warned by my coworker that she and I had been chosen to appear in the promotional video of our school (the school wasn't going to tell me until right before the shoot, so I wouldn't run away. Sneaky bastards). Lucky us. Our mission was to make small talk with students on camera to show how wonderful our English program is. Let's get one thing straight about my ghetto school right now; despite several kinds of English classes they have to take (reading, writing, conversation, grammar, etc.), some of our kids still can't spell "study" by the time they're 3rd years. We aren't exactly running a world class second language program here, and our kids aren't exactly eager, bright eyed waifs starving for knowledge. I wasn't sure how the director was going to work magic and fool people into thinking our school is the next Waseda Jitsugyo.

We gathered in a classroom to begin filming at exactly 12:45. The schedule promised that they only needed a few seconds of film and that we would be done by 1 p.m. Falser words were never spoken. The director of this fuckery was a perfectionist who took it all way too seriously. I hate perfectionists. It's  probably because I'm so far from being a perfectionist myself. If it's done half-assed, who cares? It's done! That's my motto! I felt like I was trapped in a nightmare with Joaquin Phoenix, Mariah Carey and Tyra Banks. We had to repeat our pathetic dialogues several times so that the director could get the cameraman to move around and film us from different angles. We also had to try different locations in the classroom. My smile began to slip after the seventh take and I could feel my bitch face was just itching to make a guest appearance.

The chosen students were, to be frank, not the brightest crayons in the box. Most of them were from the athlete classes and half of them look at books like they're alien artifacts. We do have a few smart kids in our advance classes, but none of them were chosen. I asked them simple questions, the kids looked at me blankly. I prodded them, they gave a completely wrong answer. I smiled, they looked desperate. This is how our lunch hour went. The director had us redo several takes because the kids weren't facing the camera or were refusing to answer my questions. Eventually I broke down and asked if we couldn't speak in Japanese, or at least allow me to help them in Japanese since they were so nervous and uncomfortable. I was given the most emphatic NO and told the whole point was to show the kids "having fun speaking in English." I shrugged and struggled on.

After going through the multitude of camera angles (that would do the Wachowskis proud), and going over our dialogue several times, I was allowed to escape about 40 minutes after taping had begun. 10 minutes to eat my lunch, get my class materials ready and hit the bathroom before next class! Alright!  As I was walking out the door, I asked the director if the taped conversations were okay, considering the broken English of the students. His reply was, "Oh, don't worry about that. We're going to dub a speech by the Principal over your dialogue, so no one will hear the English anyways. It's not important"

I am still enveloped in a rosy cloud of pride that I didn't stoop to violence. It was a near thing I tell you.

Self-promo #2000

Upped another new recipe on my food blog "Mochi." Check it out here.

Japanese Advertising

Just a quick example of the stunningly brilliant names used by Japanese ad execs to get us buying their products:

That is all.