Thanksgiving has come and gone, and I didn't eat a shred of turkey. It's pretty hard to come by in Japan. Still, the Sapporo JET crew managed to throw a pretty nifty Thanksgiving party. The presence of sweet delicious pumpkin pie and "our good friend alcohol" more than made up for the lack of gobbler.
The Japanese seem unaware of Thanksgiving's existence. But they more than make up for it with their enthusiasm for Christmas - or Xmas, as it's invariably written here. The Xmas shopping season started nearly three weeks ago! From department stores to MOS Burger, every place of business is prettied up for the season. Apparently Jesus was a capitalist. Unfortunately, the Japanese have also discovered Xmas music and stores blare it non-stop. Usually it's normal carols and such, but today I heard "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" while shopping. Zuh?
Xmas is apparently a couple-oriented holiday. That is, rather than spending time with your family, you go out with your significant other. And where, pray tell, is the most popular place to go? KFC (known as "Kentakki" here!). I am not making this up. I wish I could be here to see the phenomenon in action. Star-crossed lovers lost in each other's eyes, holding greasy hands across the table, feeding each other drumsticks, Col. Sanders beaming with pride at the love to which his eleven herbs and spices gives birth. Maybe next year.
Japan is usually thought of/portrayed as a society on the cutting edge of technology. Hogwash, I tells ya, hogwash! Any high-tech points earned by the taxis with driver-controlled doors (that is, they open and close at the whim of the driver) are more than lost to the fact that most of my teachers have the blight known as Windows ME installed on their laptops. From a visibility-of-technology standpoint, Japan seems to be on par with America.
The only major exception is the ubiquitous keitai (cellular phone).
Everyone - and I do mean everyone - has one. I've seen six year-olds text-messaging and seventy year-olds chatting it up in the park (much to the chagrin of the unwatched ducks in the pond). Unlike America (at least in my limited experience with a cellphone there), in Japan phones are used almost entirely to text message. (Calling someone from a keitai can be quite expensive, often 40 yen (about 38 cents) a minute.) So everywhere you go, people are mesmerized by their phones. People walking. People driving. And my favorite, people biking.
After three months of semi-contented Luddism, I broke down and got one myself. And I must say, my social life has exploded. Last night I was walking home from the subway station - while texting a friend, of course! - and a random Japanese guy approached me. After a lovely five-minute chat in which he demonstrated considerable NBA knowledge (he knew Sam Perkins, good shit!), he wanted me to come to his house to "meet his wife". Er, yeah, I decided this was not the best idea, though he probably did have a wife and didn't want to violate me. He was placated by my willingness to exchange keitai e-mail addresses. That evening, I received the following message from him:
"hello.do you sleep now?i wanna to make foreign person.I wish to see you. P.S. I wanna to introduce girlfriend for you.See you!"
(To elaborate on the girlfriend bit, he said he could find me some "sex girlfriends" after the NBA discussion fizzled. As delightful as that sounds, I have a date with someone whom I believe to be a non-prostitute on Monday. Goooooooo monogamy!)
OK, maybe this isn't the sort of social-life explosion I was looking for, but it's a start, right?
After a few false starts, Sapporo's legendary snowfall has begun in earnest. In a matter of weeks, the entire city will be an icy deathtrap. There is no salting of the roads or sidewalks (ostensibly for environmental reasons), which means that all flat, reasonably horizontal surfaces quickly become glare ice. It also means I get to learn to snowboard. Sidewalk or slopes, five'll get you ten I'm gonna break something before winter's over.
Aside: who in the fuck is "paxil"? I deleted your comment on suspicion that you are 1) a annoying blog-oriented bot, and/or 2) someone trying to be clever through non sequitur. If you are 2, sorry, but most of my friends tend to identify themselves in messages, dig?
STEAMY HOT UPDATE: I'm pretty sure the post by "paxil" was the work of blog-comment-spamming, a recent development in the wonderful world of wasting everyone's fucking time. If you're curious, the comment was about the mediocre-at-best High Fidelity, but every 6th or 7th word was a drug's brand-name, e.g. paxil, zyrtec, viagra. Weird.
National elections are taking place in Japan today. Political campaigning is a bit different here. Rather than TV ads (as in America), the primary means of getting your name out there is - ready? - vans. Yup. Vans plastered in your campaign posters. Vans with your loving supporters halfway out the windows, waving to everyone. Vans with enormous speakers on top blasting word of the bold initiatives you'll put forth once in office. For the last week there's been at least one such van in the vicinity of my apartment at all times. I think they just circle the block or something. It's kind of like a one-float parade everywhere you go. But they don't throw candy.
In other news, I'm back at Nakajima Junior High now. The kids have apparently made a collective decision to step up the sexual harassment of Brian during the day. In the 4 days since I've been back, I've had my crotch grabbed at twice, numerous ass-slappings, and a lovely illustration of a wang in mid-ejaculation handed to me during class. It's good to be home.
Recently the inimitable Josh pointed out that I hadn't posted a single picture of a school or students, even though I spend most of my time in school-like facilities full of student-like people. Guess it's time to come clean. I spent October teaching at Kaminopporo Junior High School (back to Nakajima tomorrow) and took quite a few pics during my last few days there.
| The first thing you'll encounter in the entryway of every Japanese school is a whole mess o' shoe cubbies. Teachers have to bring "school shoes" (typically tennis shoes) to swap into before proceeding to the school proper. Students swap into their school-approved shoes (part of the uniform), making them even harder to tell apart. |
| My workday invariably begins in the teachers' room. It's almost always located on the second floor of the school. We're packed in there pretty tightly, but it does the job. |
| In addition to the standard uniform, students also have athletic uniforms. The gents were chatting about proper springboardy-tower-of-death-thing (in the background) technique before I rudely interrupted with my camera. |
| Crazy-jumpy-death-thing is for boys! Volleyball is for girls! This gym is absolutely identical to the gym at Nakajima. Japanese schools seem to be heavily standardized in terms of design and layout. Classrooms are identical from one school to the next as well. |
| Lunchtime! School lunch is remarkably tasty. Every day, the designated kids don cute little server outfits and dish up/serve lunch to their classmates. |
| More lunchtime insanity. I ate lunch with the kids every day. Sometimes conversation was extended, other times it was like a bad blind date. |
| The Proud English Teachers of Kaminopporo! From left to right, Mr. Saito (I forgot to ask why he always wore a lab coat), Mr. Yoshimura, me looking as unphotogenic as ever, Mr. Tanaka (looking atypically serious), and Mr. Omichi. They kicked ass. |
Leaving was really sad. After my last class, all the kids made me autograph their English textbooks. I kid you not. Several took pictures with me, a few even gave me little goodbye letters! It's strange to feel so...I dunno, loved for doing so little.