Thinking isn’t enough these days

Hypothesis: I do not exist.

Evidence: Japanese people don’t respond to me on even the most basic, fundamental, spatial cognition-level.

These days it seems all the freakin’ time, I’m just walking down the street, down an aisle, across a room, through a train car, whatever, and people won’t even move one inch centimeter to give me enough room to pass by. Apparently I’ve become invisible. Or perhaps I’ve died, but I don’t realize it yet, like in The 6th Sense.

Seeing as I am no longer extant, I clearly don’t need a table or chair in order to eat my lunch. Observe me eating my ソースかつ丼 while standing in the corner by the vending machine like a good 優しい動物:

You see in the cafeteria, groups of two, or sometimes even single individuals, will happily claim an entire table (usually a 4-seater) for themselves. That means that the cafeteria, even when absolutely filled to the brim, is only actually running at half-capacity. If it were fat Americans pulling these shenanigans that would be one thing—Americans are stupid, and don’t know better—but these are slim, dare I say in some cases nubile, young Japanese college students. If that doesn’t spell 人種差別, I don’t know what does.

Utada can kiss my ass

The title of this post needs some qualification. I’m a fan of Utada Hikaru’s work. Not a huge fan, but I own Distance and Deep River. She’s good. Not great, but good.

But now she’s remade herself as “UTADA,” a simplification entirely aimed at reducing the mental strain of American consumers to whom “Hikaru” is just a bit too foreign. Her “debut” album is Exodus, of which Easy Breezy is the flagship single. If you haven’t heard this little ditty, consider yourself lucky. Even though it’s sung (almost) entirely in English, it’s utterly inescapable in Japan.

The most egregious use of it is in commercials for the Nintendo DS. First of all, Easy Breezy is a song about shitsuren, or lost love. What in the hell does that have to do with video games? Second, the clip of the song in the latest commercial ends on the line “And that means… you look stupid.” Is that the kind of message you want to send to potential customers?

The meat of my argument, however, is about the song itself. Take a look at the lyrics. “You’re easy breezy and I’m Japanesey.” Is that not the worst line you’ve ever heard? Who in their right mind could possibly think that the word “Japanesey” was a good choice? It’s downright embarrassing. And this is not due to her lack of English skills. She went to Columbia, for Jebus’s sake! To make it even more painfully obvious that this is a “Hi! I’m Japanese! Buy my album!”-style self-introduction, she uses the two Japanese words most Americans probably know, completely gratuitously, in the line “Konnichiwa sayonara it was nice of you to stop by.” She should be ashamed of herself.

For the reasons listed above, I officially put Eazy Breezy on my shitlist. If Utada Hikaru UTADA comes to her senses, she will escape being added to the list herself. Otherwise she’ll be no better than Britney Spears in my book.

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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！　

Japanese TV can kiss my ass

It’s been an absolutely mind-numbing day. I have stuff to process, and yet circumstances beyond my control have kept me cooped up indoors all day. What circumstances, you say? I’m glad you asked.

Japan is widely considered to be one of the safest places in the world. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you just that. Seriously. Go ask someone. Right now. I can wait.

See? I told you so. Anyway, I’ve figured out the reason Japan is so safe: Because everyone here is so busy running from hurricanes and picking up after earthquakes that they don’t have the time or energy left over to mug, kill, and/or rape you. Not that they wouldn’t jump at the chance otherwise.

Today’s main event was Typhoon No. 22, the strongest typhoon to hit Japan so far this year. Lets just stop and digest that for a second: This is the 22nd typhoon to hit Japan this year, and I believe most of them have occured during the summer. What other natural disaster strikes that many times in the span of a couple months?

So now we’ve got torrential rains and gale-force winds picking up heavy shit like cars and elephants, and hurling them at fragile shit like people and china stores. Whoop-de-freakin’-do. I’ve been stuck inside all day watching TV, and here’s some real news for you: Japanese TV is crap.

That was the sound of a million nerds’ jaws hitting the floor. Yes, I said it. Maybe I’m just not watching TV at the right time, or maybe we just don’t get the right channels, but there was maybe one show on all day that wasn’t abysmal dreck.

There are actually very few kinds of shows on Japanese TV. I will now list them to the best of my ability.

News

Especially when natural disaster strikes, which is always, almost every channel you turn to is news, and they all report on exactly the same thing in the exact same manner.

Infomercial

A lot of people might misclassify the majority of so-called comedy shows as “variety.” They are not actually variety shows. They are glorified infomercials where celebrities (advertisement!) walk around a certain town (advertisement!) and eat at local restaurants (advertisement!) and visit tourist traps (advertisement!) and then talk about how delicious and fun and wonderful everything was. Gouge my eyes out now, please.

Drama

There are crappy sentimental dramas, and there are crappy period dramas. I highly doubt that even Japanese people understand the period dramas, and the sentimental dramas are the TV equivalent of every romantic comedy ever made rolled into one, minus the comedy, and with an unhealthy dose of angst. The only amusement they provide is the tidal waves of swooning women who lust after the male lead of the latest sappy series. Some of them get so nuts that they go on tours to re-enact famous scenes from the drama, thus escaping the painful reality that they are old, ugly, and married to an old, ugly alcoholic. Pe Yonjun could have any woman in Japan. Who knows, maybe he already has.

Anime

This actually makes up only a tiny percentage of the shows on any given day (which is good, because 99% of anime sucks balls). Sorry geeks, don’t come to Japan expecting free anime whenever you want. You’d best stay in your parents’ basement frantically downloading EPs off of BitTorrent while listening to Morning Musume and desperately trying to convince yourselves that you’ve learned Japanese by watching cartoons. Ne?

Comedy

There are a couple variety/comedy shows that don’t whore themselves out to the God of Capitalism, but they usually end up degenerating into “Chat time with so-and-so B actor” or “So-and-so B actor and friends bake another B actor a cake.” There’s also “So-and-so B actor grows tomatoes.” Seriously. And, for absolutely no reason that I can comprehend with my meek gaijin brain, there are magic shows almost every day. Why? It’s magic!

Sports

The most inane sports are shown as if they’re the most fascinating thing since Genghis Khan: Baseball (yes, baseball is inane), horse racing, tennis, golf, and reruns of the freakin’ Olympics. The Olympics ended! Get over it!

Blocked

Certain channels are scrambled during the shows, but not during the commercials. Fuck you.

Of all of Japanese broadcast television, news makes up about 50% of the shows, followed by infomercials (49%) and all the rest (0%; percentages might not add up to 100 because I don’t give a damn). Why, why, why, why, why didn’t I bring my DVDs from America?

Pizza Hut can kiss my ass, right after U-Haul’s done

I went in on some pizza with a bunch of guys from my dorm, and now Pizza Hut Japan is on my shitlist right beneath Keio and U-Haul.

• I was able to order online. That’s good.
• They have interesting toppings, like one with different toppings in each quadrant. For example, the “Delicious 4″ consists of the following independent Flavor Sectors™: Basil Italiano, Super Supreme, Idaho Special, and Meat Paradise. The limited availability special we got also came with potato wedges, corn salad, and ice cream. That’s good.
• They took 2 hours just to get out the freakin’ door. That’s bad.
• The special I mentioned above cost ¥3,550 for the “Large” size. That’s about US$32. That’s bad.
• The “Large” size is a little bit bigger than an American “Medium.” That’s bad.
• The pizza itself was good, once it got here. That’s good.
• They forgot our corn salad. That’s bad.
• They were out of the muskmelon ice cream. That’s bad.
• The delivery guy just stood there, stupified, when he saw that I wasn’t Japanese. He might have just been braindead. That’s bad.

All in all, I’m extremely unimpressed. Especially after going to a Japanese McDonalds, which is like heaven compared to American McDonalds, this was quite a disappointment. We’ll be giving Domino’s a shot next time. They really need to bring back the Noid.

On an unrelated topic, I just put out Firefoxy, a drag-and-drop tool for applying Kevin Gerich’s fancy Firefox widgets. If you like Firefox but don’t like its ugly widgets, this is the easiest way to fix them.

Breaking news

“The Keio University administration is an orgy of disinformation and ignorance.“

Lowered Expectations

So it turns out that even though I requested a co-ed dorm with both Japanese students and exchange students, my dorm has neither Japanese people nor women. It’s a 100% sausage fest. What fun.

The good news is that there’s always something interesting to see in Tokyo. Check out this movie I made of the musical acts that were performing near Yoyogi Park over the weekend.

U-Haul can fucking bite me

I’ve had a crazy week. It all started the Friday before last, when I had a final and a paper due, and then I had to pack in preparation for moving. Then on Saturday I got a call from U-Haul, saying that they didn’t have a truck for me, even though I had reserved one for Sunday about 6 weeks in advance. Sunday morning we still had no truck. My girlfriend and I had to go to Chicago to get our visas that day, so we called around trying to get a truck from someone else. No dice. We left, leaving my parents to wrestle with U-Haul.

U-Haul finally got them a truck, but it was in a town 30 miles away, and it was already 5PM! And to top it off, when we went down to the local U-Haul station, they were giving people trucks! People with no reservations at all! In a nutshell, U-Haul’s online system is completely and utterly mismanaged. Never ever make a reservation online with U-Haul if you’re on a tight schedule because you have no guarantee of getting anything.

We spent 3 days in Chicago, which was pretty fun. The visa stuff only took a couple minutes each day, so we had plenty of time for sightseeing. I’ll post some pictures later.

Immediately after we got our last visa, we came back to Minneapolis so my girlfriend could collect her things before heading off to China the next day. When you’re leaving for a year in less than 24 hours, everything is a blur. And to make things even more fun, I had to come back to Madison immediately afterwards to clean up the apartment and take care of my fish.

After a 7 hour bus ride (I hate Greyhound, too) I made it in at 10PM, did four hours of cleaning, and then slept on my crappy couch. Yesterday was spent almost entirely cleaning. The Mr. Clean Magic Eraser saved my life. Thank you, Mr. Clean. I want to rub his bald head for luck.

Now that I’ve turned in the keys to the apartment, I’m homeless. I’m sure I smell the part, too.

In a nutshell, I’ve had a rough week. Luckily, I’ll just be twiddling my thumbs back in Minneapolis soon, waiting for my flight to Japan.

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