My theories of Japan

Today was also mind-numbing, but in a different way. I went to get tickets to a concert by my favorite Japanese band, Do As Infinity. Tickets to their regular shows go for up to ¥5,000, which may not sound like a lot to regular concert-goers, but it’s a lot in my opinion. Luckily, I found that they will be playing at a school festival right here in Kanagawa prefecture, and tickets are only ¥2,500! Sounds good, right? Sort of.

Japan Truth #139: If something sounds convenient or simple, it is actually several orders of magnitude more complex and/or inconvenient than you first thought.

As I am not a student at Tōkai University, two weeks ago I had to send in a postcard to enter a raffle. I won! What did I win? The privilege of paying for tickets. Not just that, but the privilege of spending over ¥1,000 and almost 4 hours travel time to go pay for the tickets. What did I learn?

Japan Truth #842: Even if a place sounds like it might be nearby (and even if the distance really is physically short) it will take at least 1 hour longer to get there than you first thought, even if you don’t get lost.

So now I have tickets to a Do As Infinity concert. That’s certainly nothing to sneeze at. Now for the hard part, which is finding a date.

I ate at a kaiten zushi (conveyor-belt sushi) restaurant for dinner today. I’ve found that when I start missing the “screw you” in-your-face attitude of America, kaiten zushi really helps calm me down. That’s right, when I’m homesick I don’t go to McDonalds, KFC, Dennys, or or any of the other bastardizations of American fast food that are readily available here. I eat raw fish. Here’s why:

McDonalds, KFC, Dennys, and etc. in the US are the crappiest places to eat that you can imagine. They’re dirty. They’re staffed by people who aren’t interested in service or hygiene. They serve you grade F everything, with a side of saliva (if you’re lucky). They fill this niche wonderfully. In Japan, however, the story is a little different. As good as the Japanese are at copying things, they didn’t copy the squalid aspects of these chains. It’s just not the same without the squalid.

Enter kaiten zushi: You sit your ass down, and the finest Japan has to offer comes to you. It’s like dining at a Yakov Smirnov joke. In Japan, you either bend precariously in the wind, or you break. Hard. But in Soviet Russia kaiten zushi, you get to tell Japan what to do. That maguro failed to get the required signatures on its application form. Rejected! The toro didn’t get permission from its supervisor on time. Rejected! The aburi salmon, on the other hand, has just the right look of confusion and terror; I’ll take it.

Of course the cruel truth is that kaiten zushi really is the perfect metaphor for Japan because in reality you are entirely at the mercy of the chefs who decide what goes on the conveyor belt. You are silently and systematically led to believe that you understand the system, that you have things under control; what a foolish assumption. You are just another pawn in the machine, a cog in their game. Soon you’re so disoriented that you start mixing metaphors. Look what’s happened to you! You can’t even remember if that’s really supposed to be a simile!

A word of warning: I notice that I’ve been delving a bit too far into the “foreigner paranoia” thing. Japan is really not out to get me or any of the other foreigners. It just helps to think that way sometimes.

追伸：　焼酎万歳！