Moss Movement

Every morning as I make my way down the streets to school, I get the eerie feeling that I am being watched, that my position has been compromised. The underworld is alive and well, ready for the signal to take back what is rightfully theirs.

Some call Kanazawa "The Green City", and I would have to agree. Plant life spills out of garden walls and squeezes up through pavement. Staircases become display cases for caged greenery. Moss, grass, and flowering vines erupt out of sidewalk cracks and alstroemeria grows in gaijin traps. Living admist all of this unstoppable life, one can't help but feel that this entire city is perched precariously atop an ancient society, ruled by bonsai trees domesticated so long ago they can no longer remember the feeling of wild and rampant growth. The lotus plants are pacifists, and the rice conformists. But the moss has other plans.

The morning glories climb windows with their strangling tendrils. The moss, slowly, imperceptibly rearranges sidewalks and slinks up walls. And when the signal comes, Kanazawa will be the first to fall. Until then, the rice waits patiently...

This is my friend Katy. She lives in Wajima, about 2 hours away by bus, 1.5 by the tiny blue box that she calls a car. I just went to visit her for Wajima's main festival, and it was amazing. Though pretty remote, I think the scenery and tranquility might be worth it. Also, she lives a 5 minute walk from a public foot onsen (onsens are hot springs). I only truly appreciated it after running barefoot across a bridge carrying a gigantic and REALLY HEAVY lantern float thing.

Also, I would highly recommend my friend Adam's blog. He was placed in the "geographical center of nowhere", as he said, and reading his blog never fails to leave me in giggles. I posted the link on the right side under the heading, "Friends' Blogs". Check it out, and be glad that I am not dealing with face-sized spiders... yeesh.

Psychopaths and Playboys

At long last, I have joined that not-so-elite club of awkward white guys who arrive in Japan and shortly find themselves a female companion who, as we say in the States, is way out of their league. Yes, that's right folks, I have a Japanese girl friend.

It all happened so fast. One day we were just being introduced at the beach, and before I knew it we had exchanged phone numbers. She said she would get in touch.

I waited. A week went by, then two. I thought, "I guess she's just not that into me." I indulged in some self-pity. "Why does this keep happening to me?", I thought. "I meet these girls. They seem to like me. We exchange info, and then nothing... What am I doing wrong?"

I gave up hope.

Then, Tuesday night as I unlocked my bike outside the station I heard a familiar squeal, "Maggiiiiiie!" It was Miki! As she teetered toward me on impossible high heels, I allowed myself to hope again, just a little. She wrapped her arms around me and squealed all in one breath, "How-are-you?!-I-couldn't-find-you-on-Facebook.-What-are-you-doing-here?-Are-you-free-tomorrow?!" Relief flooded through me; she was into me! She had looked for me on Facebook, and now here she was, in the flesh, well, as much flesh as a Japanese girl friend could be expected to be in. She was asking about coffee tomorrow, saying she would sms me, and then, before I knew it, we were in each others arms, and then she was gone. I wondered, "Will this time be different? Will she sms me tomorrow?"

3:30 Wednesday afternoon - sms from Miki asking to meet up. She's into me! Yes, I want to meet up! Yes, I think it's fabulous that your English is from "Sex and the City" and that you love Zara and think your head is big and that I have nice skin. Yes, I want a friend!

I think all of this in .25 seconds. I reply, "Hey Miki, yeah, I'd love to. Do you want to get coffee downtown?" She does.

We meet. We chat. She teaches me all the Japanese that my coworkers never will. For instance, I can now have the following conversation:

A - Oh, he's cute.
B - His exgirlfriend is a psychopath.
A - Oh really? Nevermind.

And when you consider that she also taught me how to say "exboyfriend", "playboy", "playgirl", "annoying", "shut up", and "I don't care", the iterations are endless.

After confirming that I would be here for at least 2 years, Miki said she would introduce me to her friends, starting with Toru. Toru is a tall bashful guy who djs house music on nights and weekends and whose day job is to sell Armani. He doesn't speak English. But he does look like a Japanese Adrian Brody. I think this "introduction" was an attempted set up, and although I'm not sure how I feel about that, I could do a whole lot worse than a tall Armani-clad house dj. Also, Miki assured me that he is not a "yarichi" (playboy), and his "moto-kano" (ex-gf) is not a "saite" (psychopath).

When he mentioned that maybe we could come to a club he is working at on Saturday Miki taught me how to say, "We'll see."

Beware the gaijin traps and Cicadas of Death

Today's video comes to you from a tree outside my apartment. The main character is only one example of the many Cicadas of Death. They used to be innocuous enough, hiding up in the trees, making a consistent buzzing noise that lulled me to sleep every night. Then.... they started to get cheeky.

First, one landed in my hair. I thought it was just a fly by, until I went to fluff my hair.

The next one got fresh and landed on the back of my neck. I was at the beach and, not wanting to brush it accidentally into my shirt, I politely asked Caroline to remove it. She was busy conversing. "Caroline. Caroline! CAROLINE! I am having AN EMERGENCY!" She took one look and began beating me with her cardigan only to scare the bug into her cleavage, a state of affairs that left her none to pleased.

The third was stealthy. I went into the post office to use the ATM. I set down my backpack. The cicada took flight, panicked postal workers descended, and we successfully scared the bug in the appropriate direction, outside. The postal employees and I are now the best of friends, and they often make buzzing and flying motions when I come in.

Perhaps my most terrifying encounter with a cicada was just as I reached my apartment building. I stepped on something that did not feel like ground. It began to make a BONE-CHILLING noise. I started. It flew erratically in my direction. I took off up my apartment stairs in a flat out SPRINT. I slammed the door behind me and proceeded to lock all three locks. I flinch at shadows and small birds now.

For those of you who have yet to urbandictionary the term "gaijin", it basically refers to foreigners in Japan. In the past it was used as a slur of sorts, but now is most commonly used by gaijin themselves. For example, I just got my Gaijin Card today from City Hall, which is actually some complicated Japanese version of Legal Alien Registration Card, but Gaijin Card is perfectly descriptive and just sounds snappier. It also allows for the creation of such delightful terms as "gaijin trap" and "stealth gaijin". The former being mini-canals along the side of most roads that can be anywhere from 1 ft wide by 2 ft deep to several feet wide by fathomless depths of lost gaijin. A couple of years ago, a new JET, just off the plane from Tokyo, accidentally stepped into one. She was never seen again. Well, not for the several weeks that she had to spend at home recovering from her broken ankle anyway.

But gaijin traps and sidewalks that make Warsaw's look smooth aside, I have been successfully biking around Kanazawa for the past two weeks... in skirts no less. Granted, that incident of nearly running over a small child put me on edge, but that was the first day. Since then I have improved immeasurably, to the point that I can now bike in all of my skirted glory (oh the humidity) to the 100-yen shop and then to the grocery store, precariously piling my purchases a good foot higher than my Mary Poppins style front basket ought to allow, before biking picturesquely home along my mini-river.

Good thing no one can hear my internal monologue: "Oh God, just don't fall over.... aaah, slight incline!.... BUMP!.... Look out! Gaijin on a bike!... Oof!"

I had lunch with Fairy Godmother today. Homemade okonomiyaki, a delicious savory pancake thing with pork and cabbage and Fairy Godmother's secret ingredient, "I always tell my children, 'and a little love'." She sent me home with the ingredients so I can make it at home and a bunch of fresh alstroemeria. I just mentioned that I thought it was beautiful, and away she went with the scissors. Everyone ought to have a Murakami-sensei.










#1 - Alstroemeria, it grows everywhere here.
#2 - Little dancers at a harvest festival
#3 - Fabulous example of Japanese fashion in front of Japanese National Party vans.

Avoiding jellyfish and belting out Beyonce

Terribly sorry about the wait, more orienting, much socializing, and one karaoke filled evening. Though it is undeniably true that I can't carry a tune to save my life, one of my best moments in Kanazawa has got to be singing Beyonce's "Irreplaceable" with Luke, the 31 year old Australian who used to work for the Australian Department of Defence in Iraq. He was drunk, but I need no such assistance to make a fool of myself when there is pop music to be sung, and with 30 JETs all in a room with microphones, I was not the only one. The 3 of us who were left at 3:10 a.m. ended it on a good note with Taylor Swift's "Love Story". Who knew that my rather embarassing devotion to trashy Top 40 hits could actually shift the balance of cool in my favor? What a fantastic country.

As for the jellyfish, Kanazawa is delightfully located only a 17 minute train ride from a beach town called Uchinada where jet skis, bikinis, and techno djs abound... alas, the season for swimming will reach a swift end at the first jellyfish sighting. Thus far, no encounters with a "floating kleenex with motor skills", but we swim with caution. At night, after watching the sun set into the Sea of Japan, you can watch the squid boats come out. They appear as stars on the horizon, though the reality is somewhat less poetic. Each boat is equipped with a gigantic spotlight which they shine into the depths of the ocean. Masses of squid follow the beam up to the surface, in search of who knows what, perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel? Or maybe they just like shiny things. At any rate, the bubbling masses of squid are then netted out of the water to be skewed or filleted and eaten with rice... mmmm, delicious.










#1 Sparkly lights at the beach... maybe the squid are on to something...

#2 Dance party, though it didn't really get started until we hit the floor

#3 See! I don't spend all of my time watching my rice grow (it's doing nicely, in case you were wondering), this is me, Miki, and Melanie.

(Click on the photos to make them bigger, significantly bigger.)

Amber Waves of Grain

If there were only one thing I could share with you about my life here, I would share the wind as it flows across the rice paddy at night. I would share the way the stalks, growing heavier and more golden with each day that passes, bend and ripple at the lightest touch of a breeze. I would share the low rustle and the fresh soft smell that reaches through my living room window.

As I walked home the other night, I passed a rice paddy just as the breeze picked up. For an instant I thought, "it smells like home."

Though I come from the Heartland and have always lived in vast, flat countries crisscrossed by fields, it is only now, halfway round the globe in a land of mountains and earthquakes, that I truly appreciate the beauty in amber waves of grain.

Super-san and my fairy godmother

I could quite possibly write an entire blog just about Super-san (a.k.a. Mr. Ikeda, my official Board of Education supervisor), but I just don't think it would do him justice. Remember the scary, mean, unhelpful, non-English speaking supervisor that my imagination was absolutely certain would be waiting on the other side of the baggage claim doors? Mr. Ikeda is about as far from that as possible, except for the amusing circumnavigation he has to do to get a point across in English.

After I got over the terror of the first 30 seconds of meeting my new boss, I realized, this man is ridiculous. A little under 6'0” and fragile looking, he bobs around, making a dive for this or that bit of paperwork, swaying a bit before dashing off to get something, and twirling my pen so fast it flew out of his fingers. He has the attention span of a 5 year old, but luckily he over compensates with patience, as demonstrated by the fact that he is in charge of getting every Kanazawa ALT a cell phone, a process that is 1.5 hours/gaijin. Yikes! As we were attempting to navigate that particular obstacle course, I struck out twice trying to set up autmatic payments, even the Japanese bank book didn't work. When we finally managed to get my debit card (yay Paynesville Credit Union!) set up with the phone account he started to hum the basketball warm up theme playing on the loudspeakers (Seriously, Japanese background music is out of this world. I was buying cabbage the other day to gangsta rap.) and put both hands up for a high ten. Fabulous.

Also fabulous is Murakami-sensei, my supervising teacher whose desk is next to mine. I thought that she was about 4'11"... then I realized that she wears 2" heels every day, which makes it even more adorable when she can't remember a word in English and just repeats it emphatically in Japanese. She stands there looking up at me as if she is saying "Voila!", firmly believing that one of these days she will magically endow me with the ability to speak Japanese, right there in the grocery store between the "noodle sauce" and dried fish shavings. I wouldn't put it past her. If only you could have seen the wonder in her eyes when, after dragging me through every aisle of the supermarket identifying such things as dried red pepper, sesame oil, and dashi stock trying to understand what I meant by "vinegar", we finally arrived at something suspiciously familiar. I pointed. "Vinegar?", I asked. "...inhale..." She spread her arms wide to capture the moment, "VINEGAR!"

I felt like I had just won the Tour de France.

This photo only catches a tenth of her adorableness, but you can see why she is basically my go to for, well, everything. After taking me grocery shopping my first afternoon and witnessing the poverty of a recently arrived JET (noodles, unidentified sauce later identified by Murakami-sensei as "noodle sauce", instant coffee, and orange juice to ward off scurvy) she worked her fairy godmother magic and showed up the next morning with tomatoes from her grandmother's garden and a frying pan. Halleluiah. Since then, she has showed up at work with more tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, potatoes, and onions, all from the garden. I owe her a SERIOUS thank you note.

Moment of Truth

So, this is it. I am here. I am living in Japan. I have a washing machine, a bicycle, and pot with two plants that I named Hikari (it means "light"). Slowly but surely, I am settling in. And so far, not a single panic attack. No sobbing in the middle of my living room floor as I unpack a mix cd a friend made me (our keynote speaker at orientation), no collapsing into a weepy mess in the middle of a supermarket (his friend), not even any magic fixing words when I wacked my head on the bathroom doorway...again. Perhaps my moment will come in the more depressing Stage 2 of culture shock when I realize that I never fully appreciated being able to bake more than 4 cookies at once and that wacking my head on the doorway is no longer just an amusing anecdote to make friends with Japanese coworkers. ("ooooh, hahahaha, silly giant gaijin") But for now, things are pretty darn genki, better than genki actually.

Contrary to the "Every situation is different, but my supervisor hated me/I had to live in a cave with only face-sized spiders for friends/my students were demon spawn plotting to take over the world..." sorts of stories from Tokyo orientation (and the horrifying pathway my own vivid imagination went down), my supervisor is a 5'11", 97 lb. Japanese super hero. My apartment is lovely (check out the video, but now imagine a dining table, a washing machine, and a very small plant). And the students seem like pretty standard issue middle school crazy. My presence never fails to elicit one of the following reactions:

- terror, wide-eyed, deer in the headlights, terror
- uncontrolable fits of giggles
- rib bruising nudges ("You talk to her." "Shut up! You talk to her!")
- flat out denial ("...if I don't look at her, maybe she will disappear...")

But I came prepared. Slowly but surely, I will win them over. I will seduce them with my stickers and tendency to make a complete fool of myself. Because everyone knows, the fastest ways to a middle schooler heart are persistance, prizes, and making yourself look more ridiculous than they feel. I am ready to deliver on all accounts.

Apartment Tour!



p.s. We really do live in the age of technology. A quick "apartment tour japan" search on youtube will get you inside the apartments of approximately 90% of JET participants. The first video for "apartment tour kanazawa" is a guy I work with. I now covet his balconies, but not the crazy office workers that look in his bedroom window.

Moment of Panic: Take 2

1852 miles to Tokyo

3700 ft

nearing the Sea of Okhotsk

We just crossed the int'l date line, and I just had my second encounter with the WTF-are-you-doing-with-your-life truck. Perhaps my spirit guide will show up and send me back to high school like in "17 Again" (disturbingly enjoyable in-flight film starring Zac Efron, of High School Musical fame). Maybe not.

The problem now is that I had this convenient theory during my college years that school just wasn't my thing, that I would be much more effective at real life. Then, sitting in 39A, a terrifying question presented itself: what if I'm not? That is to say, what if I'm flying past the Gulf of Shelekhova with all of this bright, shiny certainty only to find out that I'm not terribly effective at real life either, and that the only thing that I am really good at is getting into ridiculous situations in foreign countries? Not that that would be the most terrible skill, just not as marketable...

Actually, who am I kidding? This is the 21st century, and I am writing this just by touching my finger to the flat surface of a shiny object that not only corrects my spelling but can check the weather in 3 countries simultaneously all because some guy named Steve Jobs hates buttons. Worst case scenario: declare bankrupty and write a soon-to-be-famous blog about being bankrupt in Japan. Maybe if I write it all on my iPod Touch then Steve Jobs will become my corporate backer...

Alright, second moment of panic passed... Hey! I think I can see Sarah Palin's backyard from here.

Moment of Panic: Take 1

I think it best to start from the beginning, which is probably the moment that I looked out the plane window, saw the Midwest (actually, I think we were probably somewhere over Alberta) slipping away beneath me, and panicked...

3:41 pm, 25 July 2009

I just had my first moment of panic. I know, only 3 hours in to a 13 hour flight. I haven't even seen an ocean yet. Lame. But it came out of nowhere. I glanced out the window at shades of green and yellow forming geometric patterns that an alien race is probably overanalyzing from space. It was spacious, peaceful, familiar...

Then I glanced at the in-flight info screen. #*%$! It was covered in what I can only assume to be Japanese. That's when it happened. A semi truck with a big WTF on the grill slammed into my face.

What am I doing?! I am leaving this all behind. I am going to have a real job with real coworkers that I really can't speak to, and I am going to be responsible for doing things, real things. Like planning lessons and running clubs and who knows what else! I certainly won't know because I can't speak Japanese and apparently no one will tell you what their expectations are because you are a big dumb scary foreigner. (!!!) Thanks Chicago orientation for making me feel so much better.

Maybe for some people is it the, "Oh my God, I'm living in a foreign country alone!" thing. It's not really the alone thing for me. Actually, it is not at all the alone thing. It's mostly the Japan thing. I'm going to make a couple of sweeping generalizations here and say that in Poland, people are reticent and cynical in a way that is somehow extraordinarily comforting. In Argentina, at least in Buenos Aires, everything is a disaster, a quilombo. But then, you have expected that and worn your shiny fuschia heels just out of spite. In Japan... Well, the Japanese... I have no idea! I don't even know any Japanese people! Okay, I have probably met at least 5 Japanese people; let's go crazy, and say that in my entire life I have met 10 Japanese people. So? I've got nothing. I have no idea what I am getting myself into, which would be okay if I was just moving to Japan for kicks and giggles, but actually having responsibilities? :S

30 seconds later... I've escaped the WTF truck with only a faint imprint left on my forehead. It's going to be okay.