Category Archives: Japan

Comments that Leave You Speechless

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When I was still in Niigata, a teacher explained to me how another teacher had explained to her that her  husband must be disappointed in her because she has small breasts.

How we got to that part of the discussion, I still don’t fully remember. I don’t even remember why we were out together. For some reason, I was in group date or group, um, thing, that involved the male teacher who’d made guest appearance in my date one time, one of my English teaching colleagues and another teacher who may have been a Japanese teacher.

We ended up at a coffee shop where I got to enjoy my expensive shot glass full of coffee and we talked about how expensive the cat poop coffee offered by the coffee shop was and if one of us would ever try it. Actually, now that I think about it, this might be the first time I remember ever hearing about cat poop coffee. (I seem to remember, though, that the coffee shop was famous for its broad selection of random coffee.)

Then, some time during the conversation the topic turned to the teacher’s breasts. (Remember, as you read the following, that we were sober.) Apparently one of the older teachers in the school had sized her up and declared that her husband must be really disappointed because she has small breast. She explained about how surprised she’d been and I asked if she’d hit him with a stun gun or just given him a good kick in the “naught bits”.

Now, the problem I had, was how to respond to something like that. “Actually, your breasts are perfect.” or “Yes, they are, but you are beautiful” didn’t actually seem that helpful (but seemed that creepy).

Mind you, she was barely five feet tall and petite so it’s more accurate to say everything about her was small. (She barely looked older than some of our junior high school girls.)

Instead I think I mumbled something about the other guy being a jerk and if it were the USA she could sue him. It didn’t help, though, when my English speaking colleague pointed out that the teacher who’d made the breast comments had a wife who had big breasts.

Once again, I was left wondering what to say.

 

 

 

Slip Slidin’ My Date Away With a Big Audience Watching

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Sometime during my first year in Japan, long before I’d started dating She Who Must Be Obeyed, and probably during a fit of culture shock, I got word that one of the women I worked with like me and had even chased away the guy telling me. Despite alcohol being involved, and the information being dubious, I asked her out and, to my surprise, she said yes.

The plan was to go to a nearby, reasonably civilized town and hang out. She, of course, would drive. Then, when the big day arrived, I clean shaven, ironed and armed with cash, waited to be picked up. You can imagine my surprise then, when there were two other people in the car, including another man, who was one of the pair who’d suggested I ask the woman out.

I was informed that plans had changed and, in a fit of shock, climbed into the car. My first issue was that I was apparently expected to date in front of an audience. My second issue was deciding if it was still a date.

I then lost control of the events, although the Japanese teachers involved gave me the semblance of control. Somehow, and I still don’t remember how, but a causual answer to a question along the lines of “Yeah, I like to do that” was probably involved, we ended up at a game center.

After that, we ended up at a bowling alley which isn’t that bad a place to end up, especially when they actually have bowling shoes in your size. What happened next was kind of, well, not at all good.

I lined up my first shot, used my typically four step approach planted my left foot, did a two step “ice step” as if I’d just stepped on to a sheet of black ice and ended up flat on my butt on the foul line. This would keep happening. I told everyone that the approach was too heavily waxed/oiled and my shoes were too new. They, however, looked at me with a sad “poor child” look as they weren’t having any trouble. I tried scuffing my shoes, but it didn’t work.

For the record, it’s very hard to impress someone when you’re flopping around on wood boards and swearing. (But maybe that’s must me.)

In the end I just stood at the line and rolled the ball without any approach to give me momentum and my score improved.

After that, we went to lunch somewhere and then home. We never went out again, either the woman I’d originally asked or the other teachers.

Shop Shopper Shoppest Doubt Doubter Doubtest

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I’m about to enter a camera hunting cycle. This isn’t necessarily good news. It also isn’t necessarily going to end in me buying a new camera.

Part of the reason that I hang on to stuff well past the replace-by date is that I don’t particularly like shopping. Specifically, I don’t like the way that a big a purchase tends to lead me into a temporary all-consuming obsession.

One of the things I’m good at as a shopper is not looking back. By that I mean that I’ve accepted that, when it comes to electronics, whatever I buy will be a lot cheaper in the future. I tell myself it’s cheaper than it was (more on that later), make the purchase and then never look back to see what the price became.

However, in the initial stages of a big purchase, I make a list of basic requirements and then go research crazy. I check specs and reviews and compare prices. One time a review of a camera I wanted was so negative I actually researched the comment and the commenter and found out the problem being described was caused by people accidentally activating the point and shoot camera in their bags and breaking the lens extender mechanism when it couldn’t open fully. The commenter had commented on several different sites using roughly the same language.

During the process, I change my mind several times, have doubts on the specs I require, make a solid decision and start price hunting, change my mind again, have doubts about whether or not I should just keep what I have, and then after running that cycle a few times, make a decision. However, I have learned to impose a one or two month wait before making a large purchase which leads to more soul searching. It also, on occasion, has led to an item no longer being available which resets the process back to the start.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t always stop me from making questionable choices, but for the most part I’ve had good luck. My biggest mistake is, oddly, not going big. Because I’m going to keep the item for a long time, I should get the best I can get for the money I want to spend, but that one month wait usually causes me to scale back.  I also tend not to be a first adopter. I wait until whatever tech I want is a few months old and has dropped in price.

The other thing I’m good at is not being brand loyal. I tend to use HP/Compaq laptops because they have a button that lets me turn off the touch pad when I’m typing. If another brand has that feature, I’ll give it a look. I’ve generally stuck with Canon cameras, but that’s probably going to change.

Or maybe not. I may just stick with the gear I have. That’s part of the process, too.

Faster and Faster Makes Life Calmer

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Today a strange man was in my house playing with my stuff. Before he left, he gave me a bill.

After a slow descent into, well, slowness, I’ve finally upgraded my internet to a fiber-optic connection. In order to do this, an NTT technician had to visit the house and start tinkering with stuff to get the high speed goodness going.

Oddly, despite Japan’s blistering speeds, I may be the last fiber-optic holdout in my school. There are a lot of reasons for this. When broadband first became available it turned out our apartment was too far away from an NTT station and was, therefore, in some sort of ADSL dead zone. We stuck with dial-up.

Also, because of expensive landline phone prices (at the time) most Japanese learned to surf the internet through their phones which means they took to smartphones quickly. It also means that Japan has some of the fastest internet speeds in the world but has few people interested in it.

Finally, a version of ADSL became available for our apartment but there was still a huge drop off. Our 50 mbps broadband was only 8 mbps by the time it reached our building. (At the time, that was still faster than the USA.)

This was such a huge improvement that for several years I couldn’t think of a good reason to upgrade even though I knew it would be a good idea. This is also a symptom of my “use it till it’s embarrassingly old” attitude toward stuff.

Then, on Christmas 2013, things began to crumble. The internet shut off for a while and then was spotty for a week. I emailed and complained and called and complained and suddenly everything was working fine.

Last October, though, everything crumbled. The connection became spotty and when it recovered it was deathly slow. One test registered a .79 mbps down and .39 mbps up. (And that was average.) My provider sent a new modem that helped mostly by curing the spottiness but not improving the speed.

It was frustrating and even our oldest was complaining about how slow things were. (I responded to this by unplugging the wi-fi hub, thus curing her problem. Sort of.)

Finally, She Who Must Be Obeyed complained and I contacted my provider who told me to contact NTT and then to contact them again once things were set up. I called NTT and asked the guy who answered to speak slowly so I could understand him. He did, at first, but the basic technique of Japanese sales reps is to bury you in words said as fast as humanly possible and then get softer and softer as they list all the possible options. It’s almost as if they’re reading the fine print on a drug commercial:

(XYZhasbeenknowntocausefataleczemaifyourskinfallsoffceaseuseofXYZimmediatelyandcallyourdoctor
ifyouarestillabletouseyourfingersdonottauntXYZandrefrainfromusingbadlanguageinitspresence.) Sign here. Send money there.

By the time he got up to speed, I could barely hear and understand him. I told the man to call back when She Who Must Be Obeyed was available. She spoke but I could hear that hearing a Japanese voice made the guy talk faster.

All I managed to glean was that I couldn’t get the 1 gigabit per second connection I wanted and would have to settle for a paltry 100 mbps connection. Sigh.

Then today’s bit of nervousness was the fear that we’d still have the big drop off. We have some, we’re getting about 79 or 80 mbps, or about 100 times more speed than we had last week.

Now I have to think of some interesting ways to use all that speed.

 

 

 

 

A Culture Day With Lots of Spice

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My first November in Nou-machi, I was drafted into cooking gumbo for an entire town.

This happened because every Thursday night I taught a community class made up of adults from various walks of life. I told them that I liked to cook and, at times, was pretty good at it. I’d even worked in a pizza restaurant for a while.

Because of this I was recruited into showing them how to make a version of Paul Prudhomme’s Gumbo Hazel. I do not remember why I chose gumbo, but I think it’s because Nou-machi is part fishing village and has excellent seafood which I thought would make excellent gumbo. Also gumbo is close enough to curry I thought they’d understand it and like it.

This led to shopping and evening cooking and everyone in the adult English class speaking Japanese instead of English. I somehow managed to pull it off, and the class was impressed enough by the gumbo that it got around to some people in the city office and I was invited to cook for the annual culture festival in early November.

That was more nerve wracking as I had to translate the recipe into Japanese and into larger portions so I could prepare the food. Once again it was a hit and I ran out of gumbo and gave away all copies of the recipe. Even old ladies were giving me a thumb’s up over the gumbo.

My only complaint was that I didn’t get a chance to try any of the other food being offered at the festival because I was too busy serving.

Over the course of the next few years I taught the adult class to make a better spaghetti sauce, peach cobbler, chili, pizza and chocolate chip cookies. Not all of the meals went perfectly, but they were all reasonably tasty. Most of the time it was fun, although I was annoyed that my adult English class always spoke Japanese and not English during the cooking lessons, even after She Who Would Eventually Be Obeyed joined the class.

During my time in Nou-machi, and for a couple years after, I heard from people that they were still making gumbo. If I leave no other mark on Japan, I taught them that much.

Now I need to teach them how to make Andouille sausage. (Once I learn how.)

The Spirit of the Law is Not the Rule

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All the talk of deflated balls and questionable tactics by the New England Patriots has me thinking about Japan and its attitude about rules in games and sports. Those attitudes can be very solid and yet kind of flexible.

In 1951, for example, Nobel Prize in Literature winner Yasunari Kawabata published The Master of Go which is a docu-drama about a famous match between a young Go player and a fading master. The match turns on a move that, while fully legal, is still kind of dirty.

This idea of fully legal yet kind of dirty also effects the sport of Sumo. In Sumo there’s a move called a henka. Basically what happens is at the initial charge, one of the wrestler’s jumps to the side and uses his opponent’s momentum against him. It is considered a desperation move and is very much bad form. Wrestlers are supposed to meet each other, in this case literally, head on. Wrestlers who do a henka are supposedly reprimanded and get a black mark in their permanent records. On the other hand, a win is a win and if it takes a henka to get a winning record then that’s a small black mark compared to being demoted because of a losing record.

Smaller wrestlers use the move a lot and it’s been argued that a henka only works if your opponent is charging out of control. In fact, I once saw a large sumo wrestler catch a smaller wrestler in mid-henka and slap him down with one arm. The smaller guy was notorious for doing the move which meant it had lost its element of surprise. I’ve also heard that on at least one occasion two wrestlers did a henka at the same time and end up facing each other from a different direction.

Perhaps the most notorious case of legal but kind of dirty involves Japanese baseball. In 1964 Sadaharu Oh set the Japan home run record of 55 home runs in a single season. After that, on three different occasions foreigners tied the record with enough games left to break the record. In each case they came up against teams coached by Sadaharu Oh himself and were intentionally walked from their first at bats. Randy Bass was so frustrated he started holding his bat backward. In 2001 I remember “Tuffy” Rhodes swinging at pitches a full meter outside the strike zone while the catcher grinned at it all. The next year Alex Cabrarera tied the record and although Oh claims he told his pitchers to throw strikes, not a single strike was thrown.

There was a some controversy about these but those of us who’ve been here too long knew that the record would never be broken as long as Oh was still managing. The record was finally broken in 2013, five years after Oh retired, by Curaçaon Wladimir Balentien who would end up with 60 home runs.

All this tends to sour people on sports. Like the master of Go, we are so disheartened by legal but dirty moves, it hurts our enjoyment of the game. At least if it’s our team that loses to them.

Baby Sitting Boys and Pretending

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One of the quirks of the school where I work is that I have to teach students who are about to graduate. If they don’t come to class, though, it doesn’t matter.

At the school all third year high school classes are electives. This is fun for most of the students and almost all of the teachers. The only thing that’s not fun is when students are forced to take classes in subjects where they need to boost their GPA’s.

For example, if students want an automatic recommendation to the affiliated university (without having to take an entrance exam) they have to have a 51% or higher average in all their English classes. If they achieve that in two years (high school is 10th, 11th and 12th grades) they don’t have to take English their final year unless they want to. If they don’t achieve that, they have to take enough English classes to get their scores up.

As a result of this, they tend to gravitate toward easier English classes. As a result of THAT, I usually name my class “Super Mega Hard Impossible English” or “Abandon Hope All Ye Who English Here” (something like that).

Whatever the reason for taking English, by the end of December, they know if they are going to pass are not and teachers who are not passing them are sometimes “encouraged” to offer “second chances”. However, for reasons I still don’t understand, students still have to attend class at least one time in January. The classes have no marks and students are free to skip them, especially if they are taking an exam to enter a different university.

In the past I’ve shown movies but that was always frowned on. This time I gave a “Write a letter to your future self and remind him what your goals are now” writing assignment. Two guys did it. Two others talked most of the time and then wrote a few sentences. One guy didn’t show up until the second hour and wrote very little. Two students never showed up at all.

There’s nothing I can do though, so I just let the students who came to class play. What bothers me the most is why they’re actually coming to school when they don’t have to. That’s either dedication or madness.

 

Steak Glorious Steak and the Glories of Steak

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I’m from Kansas and grew up in Colorado. This means, by default, and perhaps by genetics, my favorite food is dead animal flesh.

My favorite form of dead animal flesh is beef, in all its various forms, from a freshly wounded steer. Cooking is barely required. In fact, when asked how I want my steak cooked I usually say something like “just stab it and bring it to me”. Quite frankly, if a good veterinarian can’t save the animal’s life, my steak is overcooked.

The problem I’ve had when I travel is that very few countries know how to cook steak. The Albanians didn’t; the English just boiled the flavor out of it and put it on sandwiches; the French drowned it in cream sauce; and the Germans, well, I don’t know, I slept through Germany.

The only people who do steak well, oddly, is the Japanese. I’ve even seen a woman from Western Kansas try Japanese beef and then struggle to try to figure out how to tell her father, a cattle rancher, that he’s no longer the best at his job.

The problem with Japan, though, is that for reasons too complicated to go into–short version: an absurd number of steps between rancher and consumer–domestic Japanese beef is more expensive than imported beef. Japan tries to defend its beef by periodically banning US beef and setting odd rules–for example, T-bone steaks are illegal because of fears of BSE. All those bans do, though, is open up the market for Australian beef.

(Note to Aussies: you’re beef is good but since I haven’t tried it in your country, it doesn’t count.  Officially, therefore, Australian steak sucks.)

This means that it’s very rare to find Japanese beef in a restaurant or in the grocery store for less than the price of a new car (more or less). Every now and then local stores run a special and it’s possible to acquire the lower end versions of high end beef at a cheaper prices. I once had Matsusaka Beef steak for only eight dollars or so. (It’s usually 100 dollars a pound.)

Even with a too good to be true price, it was still one of the best steaks I’ve ever eaten.

Tonight we took our oldest to Steak Gusto which, for a family-style chain restaurant has good steak (as long as you don’t go to the one closest to our house) and a very rare all-you-can-eat salad bar that, lately, has been a not-much-for-you-to-eat salad bar.

I cheated a bit, and got a hamburger steak topped with foie gras. (Note: a place like this serving foie gras is a bit like Taco Bell serving Cristal with a Locos Taco and you are allowed to question its authenticity. Faux Gras?) The reason it was cheating is I knew I’d eventually get samples from the steaks ordered by She Who Must Be Obeyed and the girls.

Sure enough, although the girls did an excellent job without much help from me, the steak I didn’t order arrived on my plate. It was all good.

 

Not As Complicated Baby

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Since yesterday I talked about the arrival of our oldest, it’s only fair I talk about the arrival of our youngest.

When our youngest was born there were fewer complications and a lot less snow. This is partly because she had the good foresight to be born in the summer which made it easier for me but brought a few other problems.

First, I was working until the middle of the month which meant while She Who Must Be Obeyed was hoping it would be over soon, I was hoping she’d put it off until after exams, pass-backs and final marks. I was, of course, hoping for a healthy and happy child and that She Who Must Be Obeyed would have an easy delivery. However, I didn’t want the paperwork and endless series of phone calls and attempts at Dad-Shaming leaving work before the end of term would have triggered.

Luckily, our youngest was late. (She’s a girl, remember.)

(Before people start throwing things I feel it only fair to point out our oldest arrived on the exact day the doctor predicted which means she’s been on time once in her life.)

I was able to stay at our in-laws until the serious contractions started but this meant a late night drive to the hospital on a road with a reputation for having a lot of accidents. The highlights of the trip, Mother of She Who Must Be Obeyed reaching around Father of She Who Must Be Obeyed and shoving hard candy in his mouth scaring the crap out of both him and me. The logic of this act involved the fact that if he’s choking he’s not falling asleep at the wheel (or something like that). The other highlight involved tollbooth attendant carefully quizzing Father of She Who Must Be Obeyed to see if he was fit to drive.

The hospital was the same as where our oldest was born which meant I could stay with She Who Must Be Obeyed for most of the night–the preliminaries lasted seven hours or so–but could not go in the delivery room. (One of this hospital’s rules.) I waited outside the delivery room, though, and was able to rush in once our youngest was born.

The final complication involved the hospital’s refusal to turn on the air conditioning at any time during our stay. It’s not an exaggeration to say our youngest was born in a sauna.

Our youngest screaming "turn on the damned air conditioning!"

At 25 minutes old our youngest screams “turn on the damned air conditioning!”

 

 

Adventures in Baby Waiting

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Just over 14 years ago our oldest arrived and, like all things involving me, there were a few complications.

(Note: Officially our oldest has been told we found her on her grandmother’s doorstep in Nou-Machi. Our youngest has been told she was found under a bridge. Please maintain this official story despite any contradictory information provided in this post.)

The first complication involved She Who Must Be Obeyed moving back to her parent’s house until the delivery. This gave her experienced and competent people nearby but put me on the other side of Japan. My job was basically to keep doing my job and be ready to travel at a moment’s notice. Sort of.

The second complication involved language. When I finally got the call that things were happening, the call was kind of vague. I was told, by She Who Must Be Obeyed, that she  was going to the hospital but that there was no hurry because the contractions were several days apart (or something like that) and I should just wait. Unfortunately, I’d been in Japan long enough to question what I was being told and spent a good part of the next couple hours checking various Japanese/English dictionaries and an NSA code book to see if I’d missed something in the message.

When I finally got the call to move, I encountered the third complication: a crap load of snow (that’s a technical term) that slowed down the train. Somehow I finally arrived at the hospital, although it involved moving through a maze of snow piles.

Once in the hospital, I got to see She Who Must Be Obeyed a few moments and enjoy her loving “damn you for doing this to me” looks and then took up my position in the waiting room outside to get properly nervous. (Long story about why I wasn’t in the delivery room.) Less than an hour later, as I was selecting a proper location to begin pacing, I was informed our oldest had arrived.

I rushed in for the first pictures and was shocked to see that, at her most slimy, deformed and “uncooked”, she actually looked like me. (Fortunately she ended up looking more like She Who Must Be Obeyed.)

Now not only do I have a teenaged daughter, but at age 14, she’s already had a year of practice. She’s taller than She Who Must Be Obeyed and better at math than I was. (I’m better at taking stuff and hiding than she is, though, especially when it’s her stuff and I’ve told her to turn it off and study.)

She’s perfected the eye roll and I challenge anyone with a teenage daughter to an eye-roll contest. (Email pictures of your teen daughter giving her best eye-roll and we’ll see who’s best.)

Despite this we decided to have another one; but that’s another story.

When she was at her most incomplete, she actually kind of looked like me.

Only 20 minutes old and already practicing her skeptical look.