Getting involved!

Living in rural Japan as a JET, one needs to be proactive to be sociable. It’s rare to have a colleague of a similar age, and if there is, they will probably so concerned with trying to act professional that they will practically ignore you. So, the work environment is far from a safe bet to make friends. Of course, I have lamented about the (increasing) lack of bars in the area. Neighbours not only ignore, but they seem to actively evade any interaction. The “answer” is always touted to be co-curricular. “Join a club! Start a language exchange! Get active in the community!”, they will say with exclamation marks.

I am lucky. I have been blessed with good basketball coaches all my life, and Tonami city is known for being a basketball city. I quickly joined the city basketball team in the hope to not only play basketball, but to be social and interact with the local inhabitants of this strange land.

It never really worked out. I’ve been drinking with them 5 times; Two times after losing an important tournament, one time after winning one and one wedding after-party. I don’t want to speculate why this is. They are generally cool guys, under 30 and live nearby. It just never worked out that way.

The wedding party was only one month after I joined the team, and it was a lot of fun. I was hoping then, that this Saturday night- my Captain’s wedding party- would be even better. I’d joined a club, and this night I was hoping to “start a language exchange!” and “get active in the community!”…

I wasn’t going to take it to the level of “Wedding crashers”, but surely these parties are a great way to meet people. Friends of the bride, friends of the groom, and everyone is friends with the booze. The party was in the distant Toyama city, so half our team was car-pooling there. I waited at the convenience store. I waited long enough to ask the theoretical question of, “how long do you have to wait before you can call someone who is supposed to pick you up but hasn’t yet, and hasn’t tried to make contact?”. Luckily, I didn’t have to answer, getting picked up 25 minutes after the agreed time.

The car was an American car. The steering wheel was on the wrong side. The driver was so bad, the car was often on the wrong side too. We nearly merged into a few other cars (ironically, this would create a car with steering wheels on both sides- i.e. a Driving instructor’s car), and almost reversed into another.

The “fee” for the wedding party was 8000 yen. This is huuuge! Its about one day’s pay for me, and I would earn more than most of my team-mates. But it was for my captain. Besides, only minutes earlier, I thought I was going to die. I needed a drink.

The cheers took a lot longer than I’d hoped. Once it did, I practically breathed beer. There was probably over 80 people present, including the MC, who organised the games. First was a bingo game. It’s amazing how the same game that my elementary students love so much, is also so popular with Japanese adults. I guess it helped that thee prizes included a colour T.V. (do they even ever make black and white ones anymore?), a sweet foldable bicycle, an ipod, digital camera and a trip to Disneyland.

There was good quality food on hand too.

There were some speeches, which were probably not made any more boring that I could hardly understand them.

Then a banner was unfurled. It read: “富山県第1回ローション相撲大会” which means: "lotion sumo tournament". If this was on American television, this could actually be quite awesome. But what girl in Japan would do it? No, instead, 8 guys stripped down and changed into a pair of army-patterned, loose-fitting boxer shorts… in front of everybody. There was still no mingling, as everybody was glued onto the action on the main stage.

The guys were flashing balls, and pulling each other’s boxers down as the MC poured lotion onto the tarped floor. This was not a good start. It was a knockout tournament. There was a lot more flashing. The final round was decided when my vice captain completely removed the loose-fitting boxers of his opponent. Then, in a victory celebration, he removed his own and swung them above his head. Classy. I really needed another drink.

“I’m sorry, the tab has finished”, said the too-cute-to-get-angry-at bar tenderess. What? Surely, for 8000 yen there tab cannot be finished. I wanted to climb over the bar, not only for more beer and to get closer to the bar tenderess, but to avoid the embarrassment that was happening at this party.

Luckily, Japanese parties usually have after parties. I was hoping there that the guys would be more clothed, and the girls would be more close... by.

I watched in dismay as the guys carried the newly weds to next bar in a portable-shrine-like thing, and all the girls disappeared into a different bar. I couldn’t afford to ditch my ride home. I looked around me at the after party. There were 30 people, and only one of them was of the opposite sex (for example: female). She also happened to be the bride. I mailed a friend saying; “it is going to take a Herculean effort to pull tonight, but dammit, I’ll try”.

I used some of my A-game card tricks to get her attention. I asked her if she had a boyfriend. She said no. I’m so smooth.

Then, the boys started doing “feats of drinking”. They were chanting things as one guy tried to drink up a whole jug of beer. Naturally, their drinking prowess was far from impressive. The jug seemed to go around 8 people before it became empty. It was pathetic. In New Zealand I’m considered, frankly, a “lightweight” at drinking. A new jug started going around. 2 guys had their best try at it, and it was still well over half full. By this stage, I was fed up with the night. Out of spite, I made them give me the jug. I wanted to de-emasculate them. This has to be a low-point in my life. I calmly skulled the whole jug, as my team mates chanted “nyuuji” (New Zealand). The next person to try was encouraged by chants of “Nippon” (Japan).

It was an embarrassment, and I’m glad that that beer made me forget most of the rest of the night. But what I want everyone to remember is: Joining a club! Is not then fail-proof way to get involved!

Tonami:
The convenience of the inaka combined with the intimacy of a big city.

I complain often about having been placed in the middle of nowhere. Almost bi-weekly, friends and me lament about this place. The either unbearably hot/ stupidly snowy/ persistently rainy weather, the depressing city layout with no shops worth going to, the lack of people between ages 18 and 35, the huge distances to get to Kansai or Tokyo… the list goes on. Many people then point out that living in the countryside (the inaka) in Japan is a unique experience. The people are friendlier, not so concerned about time, a sense of community.

But this isn’t true either. In fact, there are several smaller towns around Tonami. People from those towns come to Tonami for fun. What this means is, Tonami is neither a “city”, nor is it inaka. There is no sense of community. Just a few days ago, I was walking down main-street, and there were leftover festival decorations. They had a festival without us! Nobody told us. This is not the 1st time. It is the 4th time. Plus a small festival for all the people in the city block I live in.

I haven’t even met my neighbours. Actually, I lie. When I arrived, we met one. He was trying to sell his girlfriend’s car at the same time I needed a car. He said if I bought it, he would shout me to a ramen restaurant. I never ate noodles with him. I live in an apartment building, and I suspect most people are young-ish people with very a very busy job (or two). It certainly isn’t the inaka we are told about Japan where you frequently get given vegetables to take home. (This only happened once when I went on what I thought was kind-of a date, but she brought a chaperone friend along, and we just drove around for a day. At the end of the day, she took me home to meet her mother. Well, maybe I didn’t have a chance with this girl, but I certainly had my chance with the mother. She loved me. I know this because she said, “I love you”… many times. Anyways, she gave me a selection of vegetables including onions, sweet potatoes and potatoes to take home. Jeez that was awkward. I was less sad after that that I wasn’t living in the inaka, if that was the price for vegetables).

So apart from that, I never really felt the sense of small-community that I was expecting when I arrived… until this weekend. A good friend of a bunch of us ALTs came up for the weekend. I live in the “big city” of Tonami, and frankly, I have probably the nicest apartment to host someone, so she stayed at my place. Yes, “she”… (Japanese people will express shock that people of completely different genders- for example male vs. female -can be friends. The experience of going through my photo album from home inevitably involves the Japanese person asking, “is she your girlfriend” about every girl who makes an appearance.) My favourite elementary school happened to have their school festival on the Sunday. I wanted to go along. My students there are 11 or 12, and such cheeky little shites. I love them.

My friend said she wanted to come along. I realised that this would flare up rumours enough to engulf California that I have a girlfriend. But she really wanted to go, and I’m not going to let the threat of a harmless rumour dictate my weekends. Besides, what am I going to say, no?

All my students there went crazy when they saw me with a girl, but we did point out we weren’t a couple. Not that us telling them that we aren’t a couple would make them think something as preposterous that we aren’t a couple. She was great with my students too. It was really quite funny. One student, I’m sure she has a big crush on me. She seemed really down that I was “off the market…” so cute.
I also ran into my ex-vice principal. He is working at another ALTs school now, so I had a very nice talk with him. He’s such a cool guy. I miss having him at my school. I also saw a lot of other people I know: basketball teammates, people from city hall, students from other schools and their parents. It was a fun morning.

Well, the next day, I got a message from that ALT who has my ex-VP.
“I hear you have a girlfriend!” he wrote.

So, it turns out, my cool ex-vice Principal was gossiping about me to another teacher who I haven’t even met, when my friend walked in.

So, I might not be getting vegetables on a regular basis, but at least I have the privilege to be the topic of vocal tabloids across the city. It’s time for another one of those bi-weekly lamentations.

Black Tuesday

The wall street crash of 1929 was a devastating event, which was a cause (or effect) of the great depression. It consists of Black Thursday ( October 24, 1929), the initial crash and Black Tuesday (October 29, 1929), the crash that caused general panic five days later. (thanks Wikipedia).

For anyone who is unlucky enough to know me, this might seem a strange thing for me to be writing about. I hate money. I hate earning it, I hate owing it, I hate spending it, I hate having it. The very thought of money sickens me. I realise that money does make life much simpler. It saves us from having to pay for everything in cattle, produce or daughters.

But then, those were much simpler times. I sometimes wish I were a part of that. You know, I would get paid in cows, and swap it for some vegetables, an apartment, clothes, toilet paper, some drinks at the pub. What a great system.

I wont lie, one of the perks of my job now is the pay. However, the pay has not changed since the Japanese economic bubble. Back in those days, a teaching job in Japan paid better than a New Zealand parliamentarian. The continious slide of the yen makes teaching English here a good option after university, but not a career. Still, I was confident that I could pay off my student loan in a couple of years. Earlier this year, I became a millionaire. That was a great day. That 6th digit made me so proud. It was time to start thinking about sending money back to New Zealand. Especially when the Yen became especially strong against the NZ dollar, at 75 yen to the dollar.

Naturally, I also hate banks. Money lending was a sin in the good old days, and I still think there is some merit in that. Bankers are just glorified office workers trained to empty their cash register to anyone who gives them a little threat while stealing from everyone else. Banks just make everything so unnessecarily difficult. And expensive. One overseas money transfer from Japan is about half a day's pay. So I decided that I would give my mother a dirty pile of cash when she came to Japan. She would then convert it in New Zealand and skip at least one bank.

(oh, so my mother came to Japan. That was great. Hi mother!)

This was my own Black Tuesday. between August and October the rate "recovered", and became even more grim. I lost over half a month's pay in that time. SELL SELL SELL! It was a black day indeed, as the possibility of not being able to repay my loan in this time became a possibility. I mean, everyone hates losing stuff. But you hate it much more when people steal stuff from you. Where did my money go? I'll tell you: Banks and already-rich-people.

I know a lot of you more "economically-minded people" will riddle my argument with holes, but I challenge you: why is it that I could probably bitch-slap you to death with the backs of my hands?

So basically, forget the yen, forget the dollar. Pay me in cattle and your daughters, and I will be much happier.