The Japan Trip, concluded

On Thursday, I headed off for another "busy" day of wandering around Collin's town. This time I explored the north side of town, and let me tell you, it was so much fucking better than the shitty south side. Really? Actually...it was the exact same as the south side. Which was fine, cuz the south side was nice and quiet and quaint. During my travels, I found some weird English signs, a massive soccer/track and field complex, and a lot of rice paddies. Exhausted from the sheer amount of mindblowing sights (sarcasm), I settled down in the park and read for several hours. Not the most exciting thing to do on a vacation, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. At lunchtime I met up with Collin again and we headed off to a nearby restaurant. The food was definitely tasty, but the highlight was watching the owner's 4 or 5 year old son running around, causing mischief and taking orders from customers. I know child labor is wrong and all, but its so gosh darn adorable. You just wanna squeeze those cheeks and tell him to get the hell back to work, as those noodles aint gonna cook themselves.

In the afternoon, I read some more and waited for Collin to get off work so we could capoeira it up in field next to his work. Not surprisingly, I got my ass kicked. I'd like to think that I've gotten better in my time training outside of the US, but sometimes I just don't know. At least I could say that I was the second best capoeirista (out of 2) in Ogaki. I'm probably gonna get that printed on a t-shirt.

In the evening, we heard rumors of a free neighborhood BBQ that had actually pulled some of Collin's foreign friends off the street and filled them with delicious food. Free BBQ? Naturally, we were there. They quickly went out of their way to grab us some drinks and delicious grilled food. We sat down and enjoyed our meal while Collin struck up some casual conversation with the folks around us. I didn't understand it, but I can take a guess. Naturally, the men were discussing getting their women inside, as it would only be a matter of time before the ladies realized how unattractive their husbands were in comparison with this foreign Odonis and would run away with him. Or perhaps, given my cross-over appeal with the fellas in Asia, they were just talking about how beautiful I was. The ladies were naturally discussing how inadequate their husbands were in comparison and how they wanted to run away with me at any second. Or so I assume. Eventually, the awkward silence was filled, as a young Japanese girl showed up and started chatting with us in English. Turns out she had spent some time during high school in the States and would now be attending some school in Baltimore. She was curious to find out what we knew about the area. We unfortunately had very little to offer about Baltimore except for its really shitty (thanks for the tip Maria). We then talked about college in the US, as I guess Japanese university is the same as in Korea: really easy and basically just a way to coast through 3 or 4 years to get a piece of paper. Naturally, she was worried about being able to cut it in the US. We explained that there are people who don't study super hard and still make it through just fine (cough, cough). Eventually, we called it a night and headed back home.

On Friday, I had some traveling to do. We had planned for me to somehow find my way to Lauren's town, hang out with her all day, then we would meet up with Collin in Nagoya for the evening. Now, again I was a bit worried, as this trip required several train switches and lots of directions about not taking the Extra Super Express train, but how the Extra Extra Super Express train or Super Express train were okay to ride. Yeah, the Japanese system is complex. First, I had to get from Ogaki to Gifu. That was easy, as there was only one track. I just had to make sure I didn't go the opposite direction of Gifu. Mission accomplished. Now, in Gifu, I had to leave the train station and walk 5 minutes down the street to the station for another train line. This wasn't too hard, as I had to do the same thing, but in reverse when I arrived a few days ago. Then I had to get on the right train heading towards Nagoya. Again, easy, as Gifu was the end of the line, so only one direction to go. Once in Nagoya, it got a little crazier, as I had to find the specific train heading to Lauren's little town. There were somewhere near 10 different tracks, with seemingly endless numbers of Express, Not Quite Express, Super Duper Express, and Really Fucking Express. Eventually, thanks to the English signboards, I was able to find my way to the correct track. Now, I just had to make sure to take the correct train, as Lauren's town was quite small and many faster trains didn't stop in here town. But sure enough, I managed. Everyone was really impressed apparently, as they knew people that had lived in Japan for over a year that wouldn't attempt that trip. Sad, really.

Anyways, Lauren met me at the train station and we took our loud, obnoxious selves to the nearest restaurant for some tasty, yet pricy eel. I told Lauren about all the insanity of Korea, while she told me about the weird shit she's gotten into (I especially enjoyed the stories about the Japanese guy she dated just because of his really cool mohawk hairdo.....ohhhhhh Lauren). After lunch, we headed into Lauren's school to make a scene. Upon arriving and setting all the female teachers' loins ablaze (well, maybe that didn't happen), I sat down and chatted with the vice-principal about the differences between the Japanese and Korean foreign teacher programs. He was a really cool guy that spoke very good English with such educated and sophisticated vocab, that I decided that all vice-principals or other men of such learning should sound like him. I know Korea doesn't wanna hear this, but the Japanese and Korean systems aren't really very much different. Japanese schools don't seem to know what to do with the teachers either and all the same issues of miscommunication, unreceptive students, etc exist. The only difference is that Japan keeps cutting more and more money from the JET program, while Korea keeps pumping more and more money into it.

With the discussion finished, we headed upstairs to help out with English camp. The Japanese kids? Not too much different from the Korean kids. Got a lot of squeals and gasps and amazement when I walked in. Naturally everyone was shocked at how tall I was. Everybody was super shy, even those these kids were high schoolers. The girls were losing themselves and fainting all over the place (well, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit there). They did however, from what I'm told, spend the entire hour talking about how handsome I was. The ladies were so shy that I couldn't even get them to respond if I talked to them. We had to talk through a mediator. Funny. We helped the classes prep for their English plays at the upcoming school festival and then headed out. I guess the whole school assumed that I was Lauren's boyfriend, as Japan like Korea doesn't do the whole male and female friend thing, and judging by everyone's reaction to me, I'd say they think she did pretty well for herself. What can I say? I'm just that wonderful.

We quickly we back to Lauren's apt so I could see her apartment and gauge her digs with mine. Her apartment wasn't too bad, definitely bigger than my old one in Korea, and only a 5 minutes walk from her school, but damn was it messy. She had apparently been obtaining more and more stuff over her year in Japan and now simply had no place to put everything.

From there, we moved to Nagoya to meet up with some other people, grab dinner and some drinks. While waiting for everyone else to show up, we burned time by paging through the bookstore. Now, I thought I would pick up a Murakami, as this is his home turf, but turns out his books in translation were the most expensive books I could find. I can get two Rushdies for the price of one Murakami? Not a hard choice. Smooth move Japan. Anyways, we soon moved to the restaurant, where I had to deal with some lame people before we could head on. Much like many of my social encounters with Koreans (yes, the similarities again...sorry Korea, but you and Japan aren't that different), the Japanese acquaintances just talked amongst themselves and never made any attempt to join the rest of the table's conversation. Now, I know they didn't speak much English, but they didn't even bother to really engage the other English speakers would could speak a decent bit of Japanese. Plus, they took forever eating their food, so Collin ended up waiting for us for like an hour in the rain elsewhere in Nagoya. We eventually got to leave and found Collin, but we were denied entrance to the Irish pub we were trying to go to, as it was "at capacity", so we just ended up drinking outside a Mini Mart, a la Jay and Silent Bob. Some time later, we did manage to get into the pub, but we had to leave shortly in order to catch our trains back home....lame. Course, I spent most of the time at the pub talking to Maria on Lauren's cell phone. I imagine that was a pretty pricy phone call......ooops.

On Saturday, my last full day in Japan, we did next to nothing. Collin and I got up, showered, and walked the two minutes to the mall in time for a late lunch. While I ate some disgusting looking, but delicious, but artery clogging meal, we walked a Pokemon card game tourney. Now, I know Pokemon is still big over in Japan, hell its its own industry, but I was still surprised. What was even more surprising? Watching grown men roll up with their briefcases full of numerous Pokemon decks and counters and whatever else a Pokefreak needs. Now, some of the men were clearly the fathers of the children competitors, but not all of them could have been. Creepy. And besides, father or not, it still looks really weird to have a 7 year old, feet unable to touch the ground in his chair and crying to mommy when he loses, facing off against a 40 year old man. Wandering around the Japanese mall afforded us various other unique pleasures. Like a sparkling arcade with House of the Dead 4. Looked gorgeous and nothing, I mean nothing, beats shooting zombies. Cept maybe shooting Nazis. Hard to say. Their toy/hobby store also featured rows upon rows of just Pokemon or Gundam toys. Naturally everyone in the world has to like one or the other. That's just how it is. We stopped to take pics in front of the store "CramCream" cuz that name is just too good to pass up. I also stopped by the music store to see which Korean artist was trying to crack the Japanese market this week. The highlight was the people obviously. At one point I noticed some girls a distance away with long blonde hair, fake tans, cowboy hats, daisy duke jean short-shorts, and cowboy boots. Naturally, I said to Collin, "What the hell are dumb blondes from Texas doing in Japan?" On closer inspection, we realized that they were Japanese women. WHAT THE FUCK??????? I guess that's a fashion thing for girls there. Hell, there were lots of people with blonde hair. Sorry Asians, but you look really weird in blonde hair. Nothing against ya, but since you have this cultural beauty thing about white skin being beautiful and trying to avoid sunlight as much as possible, when you have bleach blonde hair to go along with your pale ass skin, you look a dead person or a ghost. Either way its terrifying. Work on it.

From the mall, we headed out to Collin's town's wonderful Indian restaurant, Masala Master. Man was that place delicious. The naan? Enormous. Jesus, if you could find foreign food restaurants like that anywhere outside of Korea's biggest metropolitan cities, perhaps the country wouldn't suck so much in Korea. Think about it Korea. We ended the night going back to the mall for some solid arcading action. We tried our hands at Tekken 6, but got wasted by some guy whose arcade id card that keeps track of all his matches said that he had lost 300 some Tekken matches. How many he won? 500. Wow, that's a lot of Tekken. Suffice it to say, we lost...badly.

So ends the Japanese vacation. Sunday saw me getting up and immediately heading for the airport. Not too exciting I know, but the trip was really cheap and I got to relax and enjoy myself, which is more than I could say if I were stuck back in Korea in my apartment. Hopefully I can return the favor for Collin, as he's heading to Korea for a few days this weekend. I'm excited.