Uncertainty

AHHH WHAT IS HAPPENING?!

Currently my life is kind of in shambles. Okay, not really, but...

I know what I need to do, I just don't know when or how or even where exactly.

Goal: Get a worker's visa so I can, well, work. In Japan.

But how do I do this? Well, I need to leave the country (Japan); my intention is to go to Seoul. Unfortunately, to do so, I need to purchase a flight ticket. That's okay, they're not too expensive. But! I'm not yet ready to go! I need all the right papers, and I need a response from the Japanese Consulate in Seoul so I can know exactly what it is I need to do once I arrive in Seoul. I can't purchase the tickets until I have everything ready, and yet I need to get everything done as soon as possible so I can start working!

Even after I get back from Korea, I'll have to wait four days before I'll be allowed to work. Blame those goddamn swine.

And lest we forget, I'm currently staying at a hotel, paid for by my employers, until my new place is ready. Very generous of them! However, the flat is not supposed to be ready until "late" this week. Whatever that means! Tonight is the last night at the hotel (unless I extend my stay). I am slightly worried that maybe I will be without a place to stay!

Ahh, the wonders of uncertainty. Of not knowing what's going to happen with each coming day!

Granted, I do definitely have the job, once I get over these last few hurdles. Excite!

Side note: E3 is this week, eh? I haven't really been following all the leaks thus far. Seen a few pre-E3 videos, but that's about it. I don't think I could say I'm excited, exactly, but I'm definitely looking forward to it!

The birdman.

Strolling along the river with two buddies, we see an old man sitting on a bench, a bunch of pigeons gathering on the ground in front of him.

First thought: what is he doing?
Second thought: oh, cool, he's feeding birds!

We stroll past him, there being nothing particularly spectacular about an old man feeding a few pigeons.

From behind! PTOO! PTOO! I turn around; what the hell was that? The old man is still there. PTOO! What the...? Is he...? PTOO! The fuck? He's spitting bread at the birds! PTOO!

Ooookay.

PTOO! PTOO! PTOO!

193cm of Pillow

I sit down on the train, as I know I have about 15 minutes before I will arrive at my destination. Looking around me, I see children, I see adults, I see everything in between. I feel like I belong, for lack of a better word. If there are gaijin-stares, I don't really notice them.

Soon it is time to get off the train.

As I unfold from my seat on the train upon reaching, I am as a giant among the masses! Towering over my helpless victims, I consume all I see! They are nothing compared to me. Nothing!

I am not entirely sure what the average height of the Japanese male and/or female is, but I would say more often than not I am more than a head taller than the people around me. Because I am living in a country built for a race smaller than me, I have to be careful. Even the door to the showers in my building is almost half a head too short for me. I have to duck every time I enter or exit a train. When I climbed Mt. Takao, I banged my head pretty hard on a bar that was holding up a fence along the cliff side.

Ah, it's tough being tall.

Of course, naturally, Japan has its own giants, too. It is incredibly jarring to see someone as tall or taller than me. Almost ruins the immersion, like... Wait a minute, I'm not really in Japan! You got me! You're a kidder, you are! Then I remember I am a giant, too, and everything is right (or wrong) in the world again.

---

Oh, and speaking of trains -- today I sat down as usual on the way home. Then this guy sat next to me. A different kind of guy. I guess he was tired or something... Kept fucking falling asleep on me. Once some space opened up elsewhere, I moved seats. Then he moved to my seat, which was on the edge (and more comfortable).

That asshole!

There was a man!

On the train ride back from Hakone, a man sat next to me. I was half-asleep, and he thrust his umbrella in my face. In a state of delirium, I assumed he was offering me the umbrella to keep. After an awkward, "no thanks," I finally realized what he actually wanted was for me to hook the umbrella to the side of the seat (people often do this with their umbrellas).

I did so.

The man was kind of creepy-looking. I continued listening to my music and looking in other directions in an attempt to ignore. At first I presumed that perhaps I was just judging the book by its cover. Maybe he wasn't so bad. But as time went on...

Every time the train stopped and new people entered our car, I'd spy in my peripherals this creature patting the seat next to him, cheerily inviting the newcomers to join him. Very rarely did people take him up on this offer. The two times someone did sit down, he accosted them with his words of wisdom and they immediately stood back up and moved to another seat. The first woman actually moved to another car! I found this amusing, and also sad. For me.

Eventually we got off the train at the same stop. He smiled at me and nodded and we went our separate ways.

The next day -- today! -- I went to a Thai Festival.

(The Thai Festival was a wondrous cacophony of sounds and sights and smells... and Tastes. I am so glad I have taste buds! Pad Thai, dragon fruit, tapioca milk! I love it all!)

At the Thai Festival, as me and two buddies were wandering around, we encountered a man. He seemed to have an odd fascination with me, but I kept walking as if I had not seen or heard him. I just figured it was another crazy dude.

Later!

As we go for a second trip around the grounds, we see a trio of cops escorting the previously mentioned man out of the park. He points at me excitedly and shouts something in an utterly incomprehensible slur, the kind even native Japanese speakers could not understand.

It is at this point I recognize the man. It is the same creature from the train the night before! I of course am further amused and thus have chosen to share it with the world.

I should have taken a picture. But I decided it was probably not a wise thing to do.

Voices in the Wind

At times, Japan is wonderful, and beautiful. At times, Japan is bizarre, and fascinating.

At times Japan is creepy.

On occasion a certain type of vehicle passes near my place of residence. Alas, I do not have a picture. I actually rarely see them as I am walking around the city! If I manage to snap a picture, I will post it. Atop these vehicles sit speakers. Voices erupt from the speakers as the vehicle travels the roads. I am pretty certain I know what this is for: politics.

However, the way the voices sound, as I am sitting or lying in my room, is somewhat... foreboding? Maybe it is because I read too many books and play too many games in such a setting, but the voices give off a sort of dystopian vibe. I wish I could record the way it sounds, but that is even more difficult than taking a picture. I am also certain that the reason it gives me this feeling is largely because I just don't understand a goddamn word they are saying.

Suffice it to say, it turns an otherwise normal and cheery day into an eerie one.

I have a problem.

And its name is Katsudon.

This is already the second time I have had tonkatsu in some form this week. Monday, katsudon. Tuesday, curry. TODAY, KATSUDON.

"What is katsudon?" you ask. Well, let me tell you, friend! Katsudon is nothing more than fried pork cutlet on rice, topped with a raw egg that cooks from the heat of the pork and rice below it.

I love this shit. Easily my favorite Japanese dish!

Henceforth, however, I will make a concerted effort to consume New and Interesting Foodstuffs.

Ahh, but it's so good. Can I do it?

I've got a flickr, too.

As time goes on, I will likely link to pictures on my flickr and talk about them if they're of particular interest to me at any given moment in time. The link is to the right for now and will always be somewhere on the front page!

I am in Japan. Shock!

I have been living here now for, what is it, two months? March 22, that's the day I arrived. It's been a ride so far.

The biggest shock was that there was no shock. I didn't, and still don't feel out of place. Perhaps that's because I came with ten other people from my school. I was able to ease into it one step at a time. We got on the plane in a group, we left the airport in a group, we rode the train in a group.

Ah, the trains. Had I come alone, I know for sure I would've been lost many times before figuring out the trains, having never ridden anything like it my entire life. These days, it's second nature.

After we all got settled in at the hostel and went through a few days of class and exploring Tokyo, I realized that, yes, it really wasn't so different. As time has gone on, I've noticed more and more of those little differences. Even so, nothing ever shocked me. Maybe I thought it was a little weird, but it just didn't jump out at me like I expected.

The culture shock just wasn't there, really.

Was I missing something? Why did I feel so at home? Me, who has always been a bit of a pansy about going out on my own and just doing shit. I'm not one of those poor saps who thinks to himself, "Maybe I was just meant to be Japanese!" but there's certainly something that feels like home here. I still don't know what it is.

I can barely speak the language (certainly nowhere near fluent). Reading the hundreds, possibly thousands of different kanji I see every day when I recognize, at most, 200 and recall the meaning of, at most, 100 is just an impossibility. The roads are cramped and confusing when they're not large and imposing. One of these days I'll have to take some pictures of the bigger intersections during the busy hours. There are so many people!

Despite all this, I have no problem walking up to some passerby and inquiring, "kore wa doko desu ka?" ("where is this?") while pointing at something on a map I scribbled in haste that morning. Everything I heard about Japanese people before coming here is true -- they're not a very social people out on the street. There's no friendly "hello!" to the stranger walking cheerily in the opposite direction. (Although to be honest, there's not much of that in America, either. More than here, but still not much.) However, also true is that they are nice. If you ask for help, many of them will go out of their way to actually physically lead you to the building, even if it's a few blocks in the opposite direction they were heading. I've never had someone deny helping me, because they were in a hurry or busy with something else. And even if they don't know, they'll often stop someone else and ask them about it.

Maybe it's just that the people are so welcoming, even of the "gaijin" (a shortened form of "gaikokujin," or foreigner) they reportedly hate so much.

The culture shock never hit me. But somehow, I expect it to hit much worse when I get back home to America. Back to a world where people are much more open and yet much less welcoming. Maybe I'm once again overestimating the whole ordeal. Only time will tell.