Merry Christmas

I'm up way earlier than I should be. Gorram jetlag.

Merry Christmas eveybody! I hope your day is filled with family and friends, and best wishes for this year and the next.

Home for a rest.

I got back to Toronto last night. Spent about 28 hours airborne, and made a bad show of it the whole way.

To begin with, I missed my connecting flight in Tokyo. I had a total of three flights to catch: one domestic from Kansai Airport in Osaka to Haneda Airport in Tokyo; one from Narita to Detroit; and a final flight from Detroit to Toronto. Knowing it was Christmas and all I got to Kansai with time to spare, but the airport was basically empty and I ended up sitting in the terminal for two hours. From there to Haneda, and then a train ride across the entire goddamn city of Tokyo to get from one airport to the other. I think I'll elaborate on this point.

There are two airports in Tokyo. Haneda has existed in one form or another since the prewar era. Narita was opened in 1978 to much domestic protest. In order to build Narita the government had to confiscate a lot of farmer's land, and as a fairly vocal, grassroots, anti-Narita movement popped up. This was in a country that doesn't see a lot of protest movements. Anyway, the airport was built, and now handles most of Japan's international flights, while Haneda has become a domestic airport. While I can't pretend to speak for the farmers, I too have a problem with Narita airport - namely, it's on the other goddamn side of the city from Haneda. This means that if you, for example, fly in from Osaka, and are on your way to, say, Detroit, there is no way in hell you can make your connecting flight because it takes two hours to get from one airport to the other, not counting processing time at either end. Just for example.

Anyway, I paid the penalty fee to get on the next flight and arrived in Detroit some 15 hours later or so. Saw Pirates of the Caribbean II on the flight, it was quite good. Hung out in Detroit for a few hours, had trouble finding somewhere I could eat, but in the end got a veggie burger and it was delicious. I miss burgers.

The flight from Detroit to Toronto was pretty unevenful. I'd been in transit for a full day by that point and was so exhausted that I slept right through takeoff. When we landed we went straight to customs and I realized I'd left my passport in the seat pocket. By the time I got to speak with someone the plane had already been sent off to Minneapolis, but they're going to check when it lands and hopefully I won't have to go back to the Passport Office and the Japanese Embassy and so on.

It is nice to be home though. My family is nice people.

It's already Christmas in Japan. We've still got 12 hours to go in this time zone though.

A quickie

A phrase I wish I'd been able to translate faster in my head last night:

暖かくして？

And I am so not telling you what that means.

ルミナリエ

Luminaria was a bunch of fun last Sunday. It's a festival of lights in Kobe that happens around Christmas time but actually commemorates the Great Hanshin Earthquake Disaster, which we know as the 1995 Kobe Earthquake.

I went with Pat and Kimiko and Kenta, my homestay brother. You know how sometimes you meat someone who seems to know all your friends, but somehow you've just never met until recently? Weird thing about Kimiko - she was in my group at the Canadian conference seminar last last weekend, she flirts endlessly with Pat, and she's studying German with Erika. (my, uh, girlfriend)

The line was long, but moved quickly.

First shot of the grande promenade. Not that they call it that.

Beyond the main street there was a park with a courtyard encircled by a wall of lights.

Inside this dome a number of small, brass bells were suspended from red string. People would throw coins at them, and a clear tone meant good luck. I missed.

The commemorative flame, hidden at the very end of the park, away from the festivities and carnie stalls.

Nukes and Pi

You may remember this crazy Japanese guy I talked about back in October who set a record by reciting pie to 100 000 digits. The Japan Times recently ran a feature on him and his life. He's a pretty fascinating guy, mathematically and metaphysically.

Also, the 6-Party talks are set to resume this morning, albeit in a rather underwhelming way. Though the meeting looks good in theory, it doesn't sound like anybody is really expecting it to, how do you say, amount to anything.

"I anticipate it won't be easy to seek substantive measures to resolve the situation partly because the talks will be exploratory in nature," Chun [the South Korean delegate]told reporters after meeting the other envoys except for the North Koreans. (Reuters)

サラリメン

Went to a Christmas party last night hosted at a cafe called Spoon. It was put on by the German language classes at KGU (Kwansei Gakuin University), and was a ton of fun. Anke, the token German exchange student, was I think made into a celebrity for a day. She ate it up.

I was talking with Kenta this morning about an article he'd been reading over Saturday brunch. I can't find it in English, but the gist of it is that the government has passes a law that will extend the legal maximum of hours a company can have its employees work per year. This is bad news for a nation that is already facing a mounting suicide crises, and media-flurries over deaths from overwork.

Not to mention the fact that お父さん (otousan, father) isn't even coming home this weekend. Nishinomiya is in central Japan, in between the major port city of Kobe to the west and Osaka to the east, which is the second largest and second most important city in Japan. But he spends most of his time closer to 東京 (toukyou, Tokyo), and has an apartment there that he stays in during the week. Like most Japanese males, お父さん works hours that are crazy, and as Christmas approaches getting crazier. He's a nice guy, but I don't see him much.

Generalizations about an Oriental or Confucian work ethic aside, it goes without saying that the employment culture here is very different. I don't want to over-state the importance of life-time employment policies, because to be honest they only started to appear in the 1970s, apply to a minority of Japanese, and are already showing signs of decline. But in terms of personal identity, I think corporations play an integral role for Japanese (by which I suppose I mean Japanese men). Japanese businessmen spend a lot of time eating and drinking together, building team work, attending mandatory group picnics and the like.

Anyway, I could blather on for some time about this, but the most concise way I can think of expressing this is to look at the language. A Japanese professor in a TV show we were watching in class on Friday pointed out that in English you say "get a job", but the equivalent phrase in Japanese is quite different. The phrase is 会社に入る　(kaisha ni hairu), and it literally means "enter a company". The verb is the same one you use when you are, for instance, entering a house, or a bath for that matter.

Anyway, that's all for today. I'm going to see ルミナリエ (ruminarie, Luminaria) tomorrow night, it's a spectacle of Christmas lights in Kobe. I'll post pictures, of course.

PS: Some worrying news from Tokyo as the resident conservative government pushes Japan's political climate back towards the pre-war Imperial Rescript on Education in the eleventh hour of the current session of parliament, and at the same time upgrades the Special Defense Forces to a ministry-level body. Some more reasons not to elect a party headed by the grandson of a warcriminal.

Exciting News!

I kissed a girl last night. I also got a lot of my Christmas shopping done. All in all, it was a very productive Wednesday.

Flirting in Japanese is weird though. For one thing, the words all mean different things. We spent maybe ten minutes working out the differences between the English phrases “I like you” and “I love you” and the Japanese 好きです (sukidesu) and 愛してる (aishiteru). I normally hear them translated as “like” and “love” respectively, but as it turns out they're more like “fond of” and that annoying middle-school-ism “like like”. There's tons of stuff like that though – words where the implications are different in the two languages.

She's very nice. I will bring pictures home at Christmas. I still don't know how to say “love” in Japanese, but I suppose I have some time to find out.

Hot dogs for breakfast.

I had hotdogs for breakfast this morning. I was slightly surprised, but apparently it's not that unusual in Japan. The problem I have is that I can never tell when my お母さん (okaasan, mother) is making Western-style food because they eat that in Japan these days, or if she's trying out new things to suit my Western palate. (Japanese people, my お母さん excepted, are usually surprised to hear that a foreigner can eat Japanese food. "But Japanese food is raw fish. Foreigners don't like raw fish.") Whatever the reason, imitation-Western food is never quite right. Hot dogs for breakfast, for example.

More updates later today, when I don't have a presentation to prepare for. I have exciting news!

Apologies and a Party

I've been bad. I've been away too long, I've maybe been with other blogs. I promise to be here more often from now on. I can make it better. I can become a better blogger. I will try my hardest and never let you down again.

Pictures, and lots of them. From the Christmas Party.

Rob (Mount Allison), Rob's host mother, and Barbara (from New York) before the doors open.
Miwako (my nihongo partner), my host mother, and Barbara again.
Me and Yoyo (U of T, and actually a Honger but terribly cute in a kimono)
Wei Wei (Chinese, but goes to schoo in Australia) sang some J-Pop song that I didn't know. Michelle (not pictured, also Chinese, but goes to UBC) accompanied on the piano.
John (from Taiwan) played Sakura, a traditional Japanese song, on his guitar. It was amazing.

A blurry me and Kinu (she's Japanese, and her name means silk, which is awesome). She gave me a Doraemon cell-phone-dangley today.

There was maybe 5 minutes of dance-party-ness near the end of the night. The entertainment is laid on pretty thick in Japan, but any given event never lasts very long. It's like twitch-gaming. This is... who I wonder?

This is Stephan (of Sweden, or maybe Norway) and Stephan's girlfriend (a Japanese) doing their sexy snakey dance.

From right to left, we have Marie (from a college in France associated with Lyon Deux), my host brother Kenta, my host mother again, and Marie's host mother, who invited me over for dinner.

Eric (from Queen's) and I sang a couple songs of our own. It was a bunch of fun. You'd be surprised at the number of people who know the words to If I Had a Million Dollars.

Gaijin Desu Kara

I sang a song with Eric, he's from Queens, at the Christmas party on Friday night. (more on the party later, because the long post I wrote out seconds ago was lost through the perturbations of the internet and I don't feel up to rehashing it)

Actually, we sang two songs together, and one he just sang on his own. It was a ton of fun, have I mentioned how much I like singing?

The last song, the one Eric did on his own, he also wrote. He's a talented man, not mentioning the fact that he speaks like four (4) languages. Here's the lyrics to the one he wrote, because they're hilarious.

Though, if you've never been to Japan on exchange it might be somewhat less so.

Gaijin Desu Kara

I am just a gaijin
Okaasan will blow a fuse
If once more I forget
To remove my shoes.

Yet another gaijin smash
We walk when we eat
And every weekend one of us
Collapses in the street

Big Papa's katsu curry
For me is haute cuisine
But oh how much I miss
Canadian poutine

Yet another gaijin smash
At dinner I blew my nose.
Before I eat, please tell me
What the hell are those?

Je ne suis qu'un Gaijin
Qu'est-ce que je peux dire?
Il faut que tu comprennes
Kani je peux pas lire.

Wil ick nur ein gaijin bin
Ich cerstandte gar nichts,
Als du mich gesagt hatte
“Achtung” Auf japanisch.

Gaijin-desu kara
Nandemo dekimasu.
Aruite-kinagara
Itsumo tabemasu