r_pendragon's journal

Recently, I've been quite saddened by the lack of wacky hijinks in my life.

In the glory days of my geekdom in high school, I used to do utterly stupid things to fulfill my wacky hijinks quotient. The best one was, after taking the ACT exams, my friend Michal and I sat in the median by a major intersection offering Mentos to passerby. Sadly, no one took us up on our proffered mints, but we did get plenty of honked horns and cheeky grins. And two whole rolls of The Freshmaker all to ourselves.

Close runner-up was the Chinese firedrill five of us had at a stop sign in the middle of suburbia. Anyone who knows what a Chinese firedrill also knows, of course, why this is a fundamentally idiotic thing to do at a stop sign. Quality foolishness, that was.

My collegiate career, too, was peppered with silliness, from the one successful and many failed attempts to break into the tunnels beneath campus, to writing derisive commentary about specific professors on the sidewalks in chalk in the middle of the night. Take that, French department.

When I was an exchange student in Japan two years ago, I did some pretty obnoxious things... two friends and I polled a whole bunch of the Japanese students re: their stereotypes of Americans. Best answers included: Most popular food in the U.S.- bread without beans inside. Most common personality type- tall.

But lately I've felt the need to grow up and be more professional, and away from a college campus I don't feel like I can get away with as much-- I always get some slack for being a foreigner, but I hate to push my limits.

However, I am pleased to announce that the wacky hijinks have returned.

I probably shouldn't be as gleeful about this as I am, but... I just learned today, due to a little detective work and the careful eavesdropping done by one of my Japanese co-workers, that our adorable little international preschool is funded by a branch of the Japanese mafia. (No, I really am not kidding. Men in suits stop by our office quite often.)

The irony here is rich, since the yakuza are notorious for hating foreigners, and surely they have kneecaps to break, instead of children to educate?

I think, in any case, that ferreting out this little tidbit was just the tip of the wacky iceberg...

Welcome back, hijinks. Stick around for the mafia madness, won't you?

This post was edited by r_pendragon on Jul 16, 2004.

I believe it was Gertrude Stein who said, "America is my country, but Paris is my hometown."

For me, America is my country, but Tokyo is my hometown. After my grumblingly long-winded rant from the other day, I'm ready to admit all the things I love about being here.

In no particular order, a nonsensical tribute to Tokyo, Japan. What I like, what I love, what makes make me laugh, smile, or roll my eyes...

-hidden, dilapidated Shinto shrines tucked in between steel and glass corporate financial towers

-Toppo, Pocky, and Pretz

-idiot scenarios about who might be stealing the street tiles from outside Shinjuku station

-teaching myself kanji by reading ads on the train

-the exhilaration of understanding a joke told in Japanese

-Yoyogi park, and all the craziness that goes on there, from the West Side Story play practices to the Thursday morning gym coach that makes his class piggy-back each other up a hill

-Friends with fabulous senses of humor

-Buying vacuum-packed squid-on-a-stick and sending it home to friends and family

-the foreigners who think that the National Diet is where Japanese people go to lose weight

-Technology. My cell phone also makes julienne fries

-The snort-soda-up-your-nose amusement of explaining to a co-worker why she should never, ever say "Please eat Mr. Weiner."

-The plastic grass that separates food in lunch boxes.

-Flavors like "plum mint."

-The fact that, in the largest city in the world, a woman can walk through the red light district without harassment or fear.

-The stray cats that live outside fish stores

-Izakaya (Japanese-style bars)

-The goth girls who wear glittery butterfly wings

-The Meiji shrine and its spectacular cypress torii gates

-The springy, woven texture of tatami mats

-The blend of traditional and modern (the classic example being the women who, when wearing kimono, tuck their cell phones into their obi.)

-Movies are cheapest on opening night

-Wearing yukata (summer kimono) to summer festivals

-The poser yakuza (mafia) boys, with their bad hair, worse suits, and horrible jewelry

-The look of terror on Japanese shopkeepers' faces when I enter their stores, followed by the grin of sheer relief when I ask them a question in Japanese

-some of the cutest children I've ever seen

-some of the naughtiest children I've ever met

-Learning new sounds in an onamontapoeic language (guru-guru is for spinning round and round; pachin is for clapping/high fives, etc)

-getting paid to make origami morning glories

-the way cultural exchange constantly creeps up

-the stark differences between Asakusa, Akihabara, Ginza, Shibuya, Shinjuku, Harajuku, Kasumi-ga-seki...

-Walking the same street every day and always seeing something new

-the smug knowledge that I'll get to play Tekken 5 in the arcade (and taunting Jason with this news...)

-The fact that the window displays at Marui Men usually include a rubber frog puppet

-leaving (because everyone needs a break sometimes)

-coming back to the signs at Narita Airport that say "Okaeri nasai"--"Welcome home"

This post was edited by r_pendragon on Jul 08, 2004.

Well, it has finally happened. I am at THAT point with Tokyo.

You know the point in a relationship, when all the things that you used to love about the other person, those things that attracted you to them in the first place, have become all the things that absolutely infuriate you? To the extent where you can't believe you ever thought those things were endearing?

Well, that's where I'm at with my city. Tokyo can go sleep on the couch, because I am fed up.

I know that a large chunk of my frustration comes from the fact that yesterday was a holiday, and the last place I wanted to be spending it was thousands of miles aways from home.

But also, this has been building for awhile now. I don't really even want to go home; I just want a break from Japan. The fact that August's trip to Shanghai has fallen through doesn't improve my morale much.

However, the breaking point came today at the ATM:

Our rent has to be paid via deposit at an ATM. This is ostensibly convenient because we don't have to deal with any human beings (ha, ha), but it's actually a pain. I'll run you through the jolly fun process (keep in mind that this is all in Japanese, mostly with a bundle of scary, multi-stroke Chinese characters tossed in to make it all the more illegible).

1. Choose "deposit." Though of course it isn't actually "deposit," it's "lots of Chinese characters of doom."

2. Enter your phone number. If you don't have the dashes in precisely the correct spot, you will be forced to begin again. Heathens who don't use dashes at all-- beware.

3. Enter your pin number.

4. Enter the amount of money you're about to deposit.

5. Type in your name. But first, choose the key that says "Roman letters," because your name isn't Japanese.

6. It asks you to confirm that you actually are Person X. Choose yes or no. (Ideally you would choose yes here, otherwise you're back at the phone number).

7. Choose whether you're depositing to a branch bank, a head bank, or a loan bank.

8. Enter the first character of your bank's name.

9. Page through all of the bank names that start with "Shi."

10. Choose your bank.

11. Define whether the account you will be depositing to is corporate, private, or standard.

12. Enter in the account number.

13. Will you be depositing bills, coins, or both? Choose both, because there's a 315 yen fee.

14. Would you like a receipt? Yes, I would-- I want some proof of the fact that I've shoved 70,315 yen into this plastic box.

15. Insert coins into slot. Press "Coins inserted" key.

16. Put bills into drawer. Press "Bills inserted" key.

Now, in theory, at this point, the machine should rifle through the bills, counting them, confirm that you've deposited the money, print out a receipt, flash a picture of an animated bowing woman, and send you on your honorably merry way.

However. Today, it chose to jam on the last 10,000 yen bill I put in, flashing a sign of doom that read something along the lines of, "Honorable dumbass customer, you've fucked up royally. We ask that you kindly use the phone to the right of the machine to call corporate headquarters and inform them of your mistake while everyone in line behind you stares and hides their smirk behind their hands. Thank you, as always, for banking with UFJ."

So, for a few seconds, my roommate and I just stood there staring at each other, saying "Fuck, fuck, oh, fuck" over and over again. However, the machine wasn't impressed by our English invective, so Cal ran to get one of our fluent Japanese-speaking co-workers, while I stood by, guarding the machine and trying to ignore all the people in line behind me, who were pretending not to stare, the thoughts of "stupid foreigners broke the ATM" clear on their faces.

So Aki talks to the corporate headquarters people, who ascertain that the counting mechanism is broken, apologize profusely, and promise to meet us at the ATM in 20 minutes with a repairman, who will, get this-- REMOVE MY MONEY FOR ME SO THAT I CAN HAVE THE PLEASURE OF GOING THROUGH THE DEPOSITING PROCESS ALL OVER AGAIN.

But this isn't the least of my concerns, actually; what I'm most concerned about is the fact that I just left 70,315 yen in a machine, have absolutely no proof of the fact I did so, and they're expecting me to just walk away.

In the end, everything worked out fine, except that they gave me the mangled bills and expected me to attempt to redeposit them. Fortunately, I had a lot of cash on me today, so I replaced the really crunched up money with flat ones that didn't clog the machine, and the rent is now paid.

I'm mostly over it now, as an individual experience. But it was a bit like the camel's proverbial straw...

I do love my Tokyo, and I think I'll wander back tomorrow and post a list of things I love about it. But for tonight, I'm going to slouch about my apartment and be toxic.

...do as the Japanese do?

I'm at a dilemma point; the old adage of "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" has been rattling around in my head quite a bit lately, because I'm at the crossroads of a similar problem.

What, exactly, is the limit of this maxim? My problem is this: I want to go home for Christmas. I don't believe this is an unreasonable request, being that the last time I left Japan was Christmas 2003. So, I won't have been home for a year. Which is a damn long time, in my opinion. My "I miss" list is many-itemed.

However, Japan being a non-Christian country, Christmas is a workday, and the evening of Christmas day is the biggest dating holiday of the year. (A guy I know missed spending Christmas with his Japanese girlfriend 5 years ago, and he is still getting grief for it.) Now, Christmas falls on a Saturday this year, so of course I get it off. And the 23rd is Tenno no tanjyobi, or the emperor's birthday, so it's a public holiday. The 24th, Christmas Eve, is my bone of contention. So far, it seems is will be a normal workday.

For my family, the 24th is the most important part of Christmas– we go to church, open gifts, my mother makes ham and my brothers try to unearth the Risk board from the games closet before Mom can subject us to Scrabble, or worse yet, singing Christmas songs. *eyeroll*

And maybe it's silly of me, but I don't want to miss all this.

My Japanese co-workers all seem to think I should just buck up– after all, if I leave Tokyo on Christmas day, I can still be in Minneapolis by the afternoon of Christmas day, thanks to that handy-dandy international dateline. Some of them seem surprised that I want to go home at all (?!), and clearly don't think it should matter whether I'm home from the 22nd to the 3rd or from the 27th to the 8th.

I try really, really hard to adapt myself to Japanese custom and lifestyle. I've worked Easter and Thanksgiving, I have eaten a multitude of things I consider to be inedible (though I put my foot down re: raw horse on a stick), I don't eat in public, I keep my cell phone on vibrate instead of ring, I do my best to not disturb the wa.

But is it really so f*cking unreasonsable to want to be home on Christmas Eve?

[/ranting and whining]

This post was edited by r_pendragon on Jun 30, 2004.

This is probably a rather bizarre topic to post on, but so go the inner workings of my head.

Is punctuation related to age? Because I've noticed, in the past few years, that I have gradually phased the exclamation point out of my writing. I probably still speak in exclamation points; there are still plenty of things in life to squee over. (I realize I've written this as if I'm in my eighties-- I'll be 22 at the end of August).

When I was in high school/early university, I exclaimed all over the internet with voracity. I think a lot of this had to do with the fact that I wanted to seem nice, and I'm blunt and sarcastic enough that a lot of things I type might be taken poorly if not softened by the friendliest of the punctuation marks.

I have a friend who, although an incredibly amusing person, and loyal to the death if she likes you, is probably the most deliberately cutting person I know. Her missives to her friends are always littered with exclamation points, because she's afraid we'll take her words the wrong way, otherwise-- I've never met someone with quite such a lethal wit.

What I wonder is, why does the exclamation point make you seem nicer, more approachable? What is it about "giddy" or "cute" that softens things?

For example:

Thanks for sending me that e-mail; I really appreciated it.

-or-

Thanks for sending me that e-mail! I really appreciated it!

Now, I realize it's possible to wield the exclamation as a weapon of sarcasm, too: "Did you really think that color looked good on you?! Wow, I've never seen such a stunning shade of puce!"

In any case, I've clearly come to a parting of the exclamatory ways; exclamation and I hardly ever meet on the same page of text. I think it's the desire to not seem "girly," since the stereotype of the internet fangirl includes "OMG!!! He is soooooo sexyyyyy!!!!"

But I suppose I could also just be 21 going on 74. Pretty soon I'll be telling those dratted kids to get off my non-existent lawn... *eyeroll*

This post was edited by r_pendragon on Jun 28, 2004.

"No judgment!" is a quote from one of my favorite TV shows, HBO's "Sex & the City." Without completely going into a plot synopsis of the episode, it basically deals with how people judge others on surface information, but then tack a hasty "No judgment!" onto their judging, as if that absolves them in some way.

What bothers me even more than people who go around judging others (though god knows I'm painfully guilty of this, too), is people who judge themselves, as if it's some kind of defense mechanism. As in, "well, you're going to judge me anyway, so I might as well beat you to the punch."

The inspiration for this rant comes from a friend and co-worker of mine. Our office is located on the 6th floor of a building; the 5th floor is some sort of advertising firm, and the 1st-4th floors are a grocery store. Rather an odd mix, but pretty typical for Tokyo, where of course space is tight.

In any case, this friend of mine has a more-than-obvious crush on one of the guys who stocks the fruit section down in the grocery store. And, due to recent events and some very poorly-delivered lies on my friend's part, I'm almost positive that she's dating him.

However, she won't own up to it. We've had some conversations lately about hopes for the future, etc., and I get the definite implication from her that she has higher aims than a boyfriend who works in a grocery store.

Now, it's of course well within her rights to have a relationship with him and not tell me about it; I certainly don't want to be nosy. But I have this gut feeling that the only reason she hasn't told me (or anyone else at work, for that matter) about it is because she's embarrassed– she has self-judged.

It just makes me sad-- I've talked to him a little (language barrier...), and he's nice, a little bit on the shy side, but sweet. And who cares where he works? I honestly don't have any judgement to pass. I wish my friend wouldn't do this to herself.

I'd like to tell her, "No. Seriously. From me, no judgment."

There are so many people in the world who enjoy judging others. Why help them along?

This post was edited by r_pendragon on Jun 27, 2004.