13 posts tagged “japan”

Today was a shockingly perfect day.

We went to Jackson, Wyoming today.  The main reason we went was that I have to order my spelt flour from a store there.  I order it in 50-pound (which would be 23 kg, roughly) sacks and only buy it a couple of times per year.  We were completely out of flour, which is intolerable in a household that loves biscuits as much as ours does (I'm talking about American biscuits here, not cookie-type things).  On the drive over, my husband and I discussed the very deep American love of Girl Scout cookies.  You'd think you couldn't talk about that for 2 hours, but we're creative.  My son wondered about cloud shapes and types.  He is happiest when there are some cirrus clouds visible, and today there were. 

When we finally got to Jackson, we could not find the Visitor's Center.  It's actually quite easy to find, but we were disoriented by hunger.  We sought out the Cadillac Grill and went there.  The food was all good, verging on terrific.  I had a buffalo burger, because it's a very Wyoming thing to get, and it was huge and juicy, the way I like my bison to be.  But I have to tell you:  the burger was not the only juicy thing.  One of the waitstaff--and I'm guessing she was some sort of expediter or something, because she was dressed differently from the other waitstaff, who all wore black--was wearing extremely low-rise, extremely see-through white linen pants.  The issue for me, really, was that her skin was a lovely olive-ish, and, well, could quite clearly be seen through the pants.  And not just on the ass side.  It's bad enough to be faced with a giant, juicy burger and also poorly covered ass.  It's entirely a different thing to be forced to acknowledge the proficiency of whoever waxes her while you're trying to eat.  One wanted to stare because one really wanted to find some evidence of underpants; one wanted to believe that the illusion of ass was just an illusion.  But one could not stare.  And I am not crazy.  It transpired, in Japanese so that no one would hear us talking about it, that T noticed as well and that, in his estimation, one could hardly fail to notice the distinct lack of protection from draft.  Lady, this sort of thing, at a club or something, would totally not even register with me.  But at a restaurant during lunch shift, um.  Call me old-fashioned, but I just don't want to be forced to consider the status of your pubic hair while I eat.  And you're forcing me.

Anyway, after that and then retrieving our flour, we went up to Teton National Park. 

We went to a campground by the river and just played.  We skipped rocks.  We waded in the bone-numbing water.  We watched moose grazing nearby.  We happened upon a small snake who was, true to form, much more afraid of my son than my son was of him.  My son, having watched too much Bear Grylls, wanted to catch and eat the snake.  We persuaded him that the hot dogs that we brought along to grill were actually very snake-like.  We grilled and ate hot dogs with the chile relish I canned last summer that is sweet and hot and sour all at once.  We also ate a melon that delivered on its promise in a way so few melons do anymore; it was sweet and fragrant and the juice dripped down our arms, into the ground, so that whoever camps there next will surely have grizzly bears marauding.  All the time we were doing these things, we had approximately that view to enjoy. 

Then we drove back into Jackson, because--felicities!--Jackson had chosen this day to have its Japanese fire festival.  I didn't get all the details, but it seems that Jackson and Fujiyoshida are sister cities or something, and emissaries from Fujiyoshida come every year to help Jackson create a simulacrum of the fire festival Fujiyoshida has every August to celebrate Mt. Fuji.  Fujiyoshida is just at the base of Mt. Fuji.  I used to live in a town just at the base of Mt. Fuji, too, so I'm pretty familiar with the Fuji festivals, and I love them.  Mt. Fuji is a mountain that deserves to be celebrated all the time, every day, for all of its moods and tempers.  We kept promising our son all day that he would get to go "be Japanese" for a while, and the festival delivered*.  They had stalls serving real Japanese festival food.  We had really good okonomiyaki for the first time since we've been back in the states.  There was yakitori and yakisoba and chocolate-dipped bananas.  We also had udon.  The udon were not good, and I think they were American ones, but the dashi (broth) they were in was fabulous. 

We got to talk to Japanese people, who were delighted to see people who understood that this American system of cooking okonomiyaki in a small skillet on a small gas grill was inadequate and ridiculous (in Japan, they would have a big flat grill set up and have about 100 okonomiyaki going at one time).  If one could ignore some of the more obvious Americanisms, such as the labeling of the tea ceremony as "chado," then one could get really nostalgic for all those sweaty summer days spent fighting Japanese crowds for a plate of fried noodles. 

In short, we not only got good quality family time, we also got to enjoy the most grandiose natural scenery America has to offer and be Japanese on the same day.  I just hope next year when we go back for the festival again that all the waitstaff either have underpants or hide the fact that they don't.

Tomorrow:  The annual Duck Derby and rodeo.  Heh.  So much for Japan--we're back to the total Rural America thing again.

*Lately, the kid has been having a hard time getting motivated to actually speak Japanese.  He knows his papa understands English perfectly well, and he doesn't ever see anyone else use Japanese outside of our home.  Today he finally got to.  We need to take the poor kid to Japan to show him that we're not just freaks--there are other people who speak this language. 

What story from your wild-and-crazy youth would nobody believe about you today?

I think it's a safe bet that there are plenty of them.  Most people couldn't believe them even at the time, because I do not and have never dressed wild or crazy or anything.  I dress like a class-A square.  I have no piercings other than on my ears; I have no tattoos.  While I did have Doc Martens, I was never prone to wearing them with those horizontally striped stockings or anything.  There were few outside indications of my wildness, and I liked it that way.  Cops don't mess with you as much as if you dress like what you are.  Now that I am to all appearances a totally average 30-something mom, I seriously doubt anyone thinks I've done the things I've done. 

Ah, but I have.

I mentioned in my last post that I laid my "theory of Japan" down on my husband, and he agreed.  He agreed, laughing because he couldn't believe it, believe that I had seen this Japan. 

This post--man, I've been trying to come up with a way to write it.  To tell the whole story, I would really have to do it anonymously, I think, or in a "fictional" setting.  But, when my "novel" comes out (haha!), you'll all know that some of it, at least, is true.  I'm going to try to keep this out of the "too much information" realm, and actually it's not as bad as I'm making it sound right now, and my husband knew that...oh, fuck it.  On with the story.

I did see a Japan that was not the Japan most foreigners see, and that is why I came away with a much different idea of Japan.  For one thing, I went to Japan without any previous knowledge or interest in any aspect of Japanese culture (besides thinking Koizumi was terribly yummy).  One thing that immediately struck me about the expats in Japan is that a very large number of them went to Japan because of a previously held interest (or obsession, really) with some aspect of the culture, usually either anime and video games or Buddhism--much the same, really.  Most of the expat fellas are there also specifically looking for a Japanese woman, primarily in the stereotypical vein of Japanese women.  And those people see in Japan what they are primed to see by their interest.  The wannabe Buddhists will spend hours meditating over cinnamon trees and visit shrines in Shikoku.  Those looking for a stereotypical Japanese girlfriend will find one.  If they're looking for anime girls, they'll spend a lot of time in Harajuku and find them.  And so on.  They will find, in other words, exactly what they want to see and not much else.

Also, and my husband found this hilarious but true, most expats make few Japanese friends, and those that they do make are a specific type of Japanese person, the type I call the "gaijin hanger-on."  These are the Japanese who seek out expats, frequently by hanging out in Roppongi, and who have many gaijin friends.  These are not normal Japanese people.  I mean that they are literally not normal, not that they're somehow wrong.  Normal Japanese people rarely if ever befriend a foreigner and do not encounter foreigners in their daily lives and, most importantly, want to keep it that way.

It is notable that my husband was not one of these Japanese, but he is also not a normal Japanese person.  He hung out with Koreans, and he went to the high school that is reserved for those unruly students who will not submit to the tests, to the kiritsu, to the droning lectures.  He was, in other words, a pariah.  But he was not a gaijin hanger-on, as I was the only one he ever knew until he met me, and he met me in a very Japanese location.  Fuck Roppongi.  Roppongi is my worst nightmare, but that is totally off topic.

Anyway, back to my Japan.

One night I had gone to Kawasaki to see my boyfriend, and he abruptly broke up with me.  I couldn't get a train all the way home (I lived in Shizuoka-ken at the time, so it was far by train), and anyway I was due to meet friends in Tokyo the next day.  I couldn't afford a hotel (well, I didn't think I could--I didn't yet know about some of the cheaper hotels in Japan).  It was late December and cold.  I had no idea what I should do.  The first thing I did do was go and buy a notebook and Three Essential Pens so that I could keep a record of anything that I did end up doing...and, man, did I.  That notebook makes for some fabulous reading these days.  Anyway.

The very next thing that happened, as I was standing there admiring the pens, was that two well-dressed and fairly sober Japanese salarymen approached me.  "Nomi ni ikimasu ka?" one asked--"would you go for a drink?"  They were of a typical size and build for middle-aged Japanese men, so I figured I could easily beat them up if necessary, and they seemed harmless enough.  So, I smiled and agreed. 

This is how I discovered that if you are youngish and pretty-ish and foreign and apparently without anything better to do, you need not ever buy your own drinks.  But it isn' t what you're thinking.  In America, if this had happened, you would assume I was essentially a prostitute, but there was never any sex expected in return.  What these men want from you, in return for all the beer you can drink (which is, ahem, quite a lot) and even dinner and taxi rides and karaoke is very simple and yet was almost incomprehensible to me:  They want to have a girl talk to them and listen to them and laugh at their jokes and just be companionable.  Sure, sometimes they do want sex, and let's face it, sometimes so did I, but it was never demanded of me.  It was never an unspoken assumption. 

I didn't know, at the time, what went on in hostess bars--that essentially hostess bars are set up exactly for this purpose, to provide men with a way to have companionable interaction with those of the opposite sex.  I also didn't yet know that the geisha existed for a similar purpose, although they were also artists, which the hostesses are mostly not.  Geisha, though, in addition to their arts (shamisen, traditional dance and song) were required to be excellent conversationalists. 

But how terribly sad, I always thought, that Japanese people have never figured out how to talk to members of the opposite sex, how sad that they do not go home to a friend.  The typical Japanese wife does not expect companionship from her husband, and he does not expect it from her.  I don't know if the wives ever get male companionship (it would seem not, although there are now "host bars" as I discovered one cold night in Kabukicho), but the men do, when they pay for it.

My husband, of course, knew all of this.  He knew that Japanese husbands and wives live like this, and I suppose that is why he had decided never to marry (obviously, he changed his mind when he met me).  He was startled to hear that I knew it and amused to hear how I came to know it, and I say 'amused' because he did also know that I was not a hooker but just someone who was fascinated by this new culture and also always looking for free beer.

So, that weekend when my boyfriend broke up with me in Kawasaki, was the weekend also when 2001 became 2002.  I spent part of it very respectably at a friend's house in Chiba, making osechi ryori with his mom and drinking umeshu and laughing riotously at my friend's 14-year-old brother, Kazu, getting slyly drunk off of stolen sips.  But New Year's Eve found me in Kabukicho (to find it, I had to call one of my Japanese friends, a man, who knew me well enough to just laugh when I asked him for directions instead of lecturing me on the many dangers and perditions to be found there--I'm a girl who can handle rather a lot of perdition without ever getting chafed).  I met Africans there, the only Africans I ever met in Japan, who were working as touts for the strip clubs.  I met hordes of Chinese guys, also working as touts.  I found myself in various bars, being bought drinks by various men of all nationalities, and then somehow I lost all of them and ended up back on the street and accosted by a roving gang of "hosts" from one of the host bars.  All of them scared me very much as they had bleached blonde, feathery hair and blue eyes (contacts) and thus looked like the ghost of Luke Skywalker more than anything else--except one, Nobu, whom I talked to for quite a long time.  He continued talking to me even after I had assured him that I didn't have enough money for a fine fellow like him, but he did regale me with ribald tales of rich, bored Japanese women.  He earnestly wished he could buy me a beer, but business had been slow.

See?  Even the hosts are lonely.

And that's why I didn't see the same Japan as most foreigners do, and that's why I don't think about Japan in the same way.  I spent a lot of time with lonely salarymen and hosts and wannabe yakuza and tattoo artists and a whole gang of construction workers in Numazu whose girlfriends would not have sex with them except in a scheduled monthly performance and sometimes not even then.  I spent a lot of time getting to know Japanese bar owners and allowed myself to be fed raw horsemeat and fish sperm (the fish sperm were? was? fed to me by a gay man, no less).  I hung out with lots and lots of Japanese soldiers, too, of course, once I was shacked up with my boyfriend.  To nearly all of these people, I was their sole foreign friend, and a completely unexpected one.  We never went to expat bars.  We never spoke English.  They were not, by and large, interested in learning English.  And to meet many of these people, I wandered around alone late at night and let myself be drawn into conversations with strangers, followed them to a drinking establishment, and toasted them vigorously (most of my friends actually toasted with "otsukaresama" instead of the typical "kampai") with shochu.  That's not necessarily recommended behavior or the behavior of a completely nondubious, morally upright young lady or whatever the fuck, and that's why most gaijin won't ever see it. 

I suppose it's presumptuous to call it "my Japan," this Japan I've described, but I kind of feel that way, because no other foreigner seems to know what the hell I'm talking about.  There are plenty of Japanese people who don't even know what I'm talking about.  Hardly anyone who doesn't have to will sit in the freezing cold, in the middle of the night, sharing drinks from various flasks and bottles hidden in paper bags, huddled around a fire in the alleyway, talking to men who work in strip clubs.  What foreigner has been so stupid as to have missed the last train to Tokyo and be stranded in an unknown city and thrown herself on the mercy of the aforementioned band of construction workers, who gave me food and shelter and drink that cold night?

The thing is, of course, that this was the Japan I loved.  I loved these people, even the salarymen who just desperately wanted female companionship, though I felt sorry for them a bit too.  That was my Japan.

[Two things:  The boyfriend in Kawasaki was not T.  It was a different boyfriend.  Also, when I say "the kiritsu" I am referring to the entire ritual that takes place at the beginning and ending of (apparently) every goddamned class period in Japanese public schools.  The class leader shouts 'kiritsu' (stand up) and everyone stands.  This is followed by 'yasume' (at ease), 'ki o tsuke' (at attention), 'rei' (bow--during the bow, a greeting of some sort is usually monotonously groaned by the class in unison), and 'chakuseki' when everyone sits down.  Kiritsu means stand up, but it isn't how you would say "stand up" in a less formal (less fascist) setting.]

Today was pretty good, much better than the past few days.  Tonight, as I was scanning my hard drive yet again to get rid of the evil fuck known as Vundo, I found myself flipping through an old photo album from my first year in Japan.  It includes the photos from my serendipitous and entirely enjoyable mini-vacation to Taipei. 

When I first went to Japan, see, my life was in shambles.  I owed money to everyone in the world with the fortunate exception of the mafia.  I had not finished my MA because I totally wussed out on my thesis (does anyone--but anyone--care about the morphosyntax of Snchitsu'umshtsn aka Coeur d'Alene Salish?  No?  Good, because it's a dead language anyway, and I didn't finish my thesis, OK?).  Just--it was all a mess.  I had been working for minimum wage as a cook/dishwasher at a Vietnamese restaurant and had been, well, living in my car.  Things weren't good.

So, I got a job in Japan and went there, very spontaneously, on a 3-month tourist visa.  Let's skip over some of the trivial details here and get to the meat of the matter:  My three months was up, I still didn't have my working visa, and thus...well, I had to leave Japan, but only for a weekend.  I had to be back to work on Monday, and anyway a weekend was enough to get me a new tourist visa to hold me over until my work visa came through.

I didn't have a lot of money.  I went to a travel agent and told her, in pidgin basically, that I had to leave Japan.  Naturally, she thought the destination was important.  I said, "Listen, just get me the cheapest plane ticket out of here, as long as I can be back on Monday."  Japanese people apparently don't travel this way, and she was very flustered by it all, but as it turned out, the tickets to Taipei that weekend were cheap and available.  So, Taipei it was.

And, oh how fortunate.  I went to Taipei on Saturday.  I had no guidebook, no phrasebook, no hotel reservation, no knowledge of Taiwan at all.  I did have my charming smile, my wits, and an unceasing curiosity.  Oh, I did also--and this came in handy a few times--have my Japanese-English dictionary.

I took a bus from the airport to the city.  On the bus, I started chatting with two gentlemen, one foreign and one Taiwanese, who were business partners or something.  They took a liking to me, got on the mobile, found me a hotel room, and took me there by taxi.  The foreign one--American, I think--asked me to go out with him, which led to hushed conversation between the two of them; as it happened, the Taiwanese had, erm, engaged an escort for his American friend, so the date was off.  

Before they left to meet their escorts, they did let me know where the fun things to do and see were and let me know that this weekend was the Lantern Festival to celebrate the Chinese new year.  Awesome!  I set out on foot to find the party.  I was careful to take a business card with me so that I could get back to the hotel.

And I walked my ass off, let me tell you.  I went to a street market and had all this amazing food.  I bought myself a wee teapot that I still have in an unbroken state.  I saw men wrangling snakes.  I ate a durian fritter sold to me by a very friendly man.  I bought beer (don't remember what kind) and KinderEggs at a convenience store and got drunk, there on the street.  One of the KinderEgg toys was a sort of crabman, which eventually led to the saying:  "For all I know, I rode the crabman home." 

The next day I woke late and left the hotel.  I had in mind to see the National Palace Museum, and I had a sort of tourist map.  I again set out walking. 

Now, you know that some silly white girl from Montana can't just walk across Taipei and happen across the National Palace Museum.  But what I did happen on were two fetching young men playing ball in a parking lot.  They recognized the "damsel in distress" look on my face and rushed over to help, offering their services to me in rapid and intense Chinese, a language of which I speak exactly one word:  xie xie (and my Chinese friends say I pronounce even that horribly).  They spoke even less English, and so I showed them the map.  When they realized my destination and how bloody far away from it I was, they offered to take me in their car, a car so small I thought a thousand clowns would leap out of it.  I got in the backseat, such as it was, for a perilous journey during which we communicated via...yes, the Japanese-English dictionary.  Kanji are a wonderful thing.  If I wanted to say something, I pointed to the appropriate Japanese word, and by recognizing the kanji they could more or less get my point.  They were very chipper and excited to have a new American friend.  They dropped me off at the museum, we ceremoniously exchanged business cards, and they left. 

I never actually entered the museum.  Oh, sure, I strolled the grounds and took lots of pictures, for it is impressive, but I was too cheap to pay to go inside--that money was much better spent on street food and beer.  On the way out, I saw a model posing on the steps, bottle of whiskey in her hands, camera crew and stylists swirling about. 

I stumbled my way back through the mean streets of Taipei, stopping occasionally to take pictures, sniff durian, and buy smoked goose flavor potato chips.

I finally got back to my hotel and almost immediately set out again to find the famed Lantern Festival.  I'm not going to bore you with a whole lot of details about it.  Suffice it to say there were lanterns--lots and lots of lanterns.  Then a light show.  It was the year of the horse that year.  The floats in the parade, though, were all kinds of things--my favorite was two dragons playing go.

The next day I was scheduled to leave on an early flight.  I overslept from being out too late at the festival.  The desk people gave me a wakeup call, even though I had not requested one, and told me to get my butt on the bus, or I would miss my flight.  I barely made my flight, barely made the shinkansen out of Tokyo, barely made it to work on time.  But I did.  Because I had serendipity on my side.

What is the most creative gift you have ever given or received? 
Submitted by Nacwolin.

I think the most creative gift I ever received was from one of my boyfriends.  He was friends with Kurt Cobain, and he decided to give me something of Kurt's, since I was/am a big Nirvana fan.  He got Kurt's autograph for me, of course, and...a pair of Kurt's underwear.  Seriously.  They were pretty ratty.  They were actually long underwear, cut off.  And had bleach stains, so I'm thinking maybe Kurt didn't know the proper use and application methods of Bleach.  Didn't I make a funny pun there?  Hilarious.  They did have bleach stains, though.

Anyway.  That might have been less on the creative side and more on the gross side.

My friend Itchy Dawg from time to time makes books of his poetry for me.  That's more creative than bleach-stained, rocker underpants.  And more hygienic.  Thanks, Itchy!  I love them!

As far as gifts given... I don't know.  I really, really love to give gifts, and I try to be thoughtful and creative with them.  Let's see.  One year when I was in high school, I made a bone board (a device used to measure bones) for my mom for her birthday--made it in shop class.  She's a forensic anthropologist by training, and so she actually had cause to measure bones.

I once sent an entire box filled with strange Asian candies to my friend sgazzetti knowing how much he loves a good durian taffy.

I sent each member of the Very Special Forces, a band I loved LOVED, a jar of homemade orange marmalade.  They were quite appreciative.  Oh, Tim and Evan--I still love you!!!

I actually give a lot of homemade gifts, particularly homemade food, which I suppose is creative.  At least, the jams and whatnot are creative, since I make the recipes up as I go along quite often.  One year, my good friend Itchy had given up sugar, so I had to bake his zucchini bread present entirely with molasses.  It was black as night.  Creative!

I don't know.  I think I've given more creative gifts than these...but I don't remember.  Why ruminate about gifts past?  There are so many more gifts to give in the future.  I seriously love to give gifts.  Thinking about the orgy of giving around Xmastime just makes me giddy and lightheaded.  Most people this year can expect an array of jams and pickles, homemade, from our garden.  Who doesn't like jam, I ask you? 

Hee. One year for Mother's Day, I sent my mom a bagful of unopened Pez toys from a machine in Japan.  They had Ultraman Pez and Thomas the Train Pez toys in them, and you couldn't see what was inside each egg.  But I just wrapped them up, just the way they came out of the machine, so that she could have the thrill of opening each one.  Thrill, or pain?  You be the judge.

Man.  Ultraman is too cool.  I can't resist.  Thanks again, YouTube.

You know what's funny about this?  You hear the people talking and laughing about it as it's playing?  Yeah, I watched that show.  That is where I found out about this.  It was a quiz show kind of thing, and they asked these celebrities (ahem, tarento) if they knew that Ultraman had a rap video, and then they played this.  My husband and I were laughing so hard, and, as you can hear, so were the celebrities.  It's hard not to.  Dig that funky Ultraman dance.

And so, with the onset of April, we are approaching the time of low fidelity for me, the time when in some protracted way, my heart is not with my husband alone but torn between two men.  This time does not last past April 15.  By that time, the decision has been made one way or another, and the would-be usurper's birthday has passed, and I go on with my life--yes, happily, even.

April 15 is Akifumi's birthday.  Every year I have to decide if I'm going to send him a birthday card or not.  This shouldn't be a major decision, but it is.  It is because I have to understand that most likely sending a card will hurt him more than not sending one will.  I do not wish to hurt him, and yet I want to send a card and maybe even a present.

Because Akifumi loves me.  Or he did.  And he said it was forever.  And I love him.  Present tense.  And I will forever.

This isn't good.  I am married to someone other than Akifumi.  The thing is that it was a split second decision on Fate's part to make it happen that way and not the other--the other destiny in which I am happily married to Akifumi and probably living in Kumamoto and eating tonkotsu ramen every freakin day.

Majide.

Roughly what happened is this--although I am not altogether clear on some of the chronology because things happened incognito at times and at an intermittently frenzied pace:  Akifumi was my student one bright summer in the Montana.  I was teaching these intensive summer ESL programs for Japanese university students.  They came over for a few weeks, and we allegedly taught them English for long, exhausting hours each day and also took them on "cultural" activities (horseback riding, river rafting, etc.).  He was perhaps 19.  I was married (my first husband), albeit unhappily, and perhaps 26.  For some reason, probably because he had outlandish hair, I remembered his name more quickly than I did most of the other students; the other students would therefore ooh and aah (rather mature of them) when I said his name.  It became a running joke that he was my boy, even among the other instructors.  We were almost, but not quite, treated as a little couple.  We spent a great deal of time together, along with his best friends (there were 3 others--whose names are escaping me except for one named Yusuke, and I only remember that because we called him Yusukebe, and "sukebe" means, hmm, like a lech or a pervert).  We developed a close bond, a genuine affection.  Although I was already initiating the process of leaving my husband, I had not yet, and this limited my vision of what my relationship with Akifumi was.

And then there was the last night before they left.  We had a party for them which involved unfortunate amounts of Budweiser.  It was a very fun party.  At the party, all my students--no, actually, only the boys--signed a soccer ball for me.  They had played soccer with it the whole four weeks they had been in my charge, and so they thought it a good memento.  While most of them wrote something along the lines of "I (heart) U," Akifumi wrote in Japanese, in hiragana to be exact.  I couldn't read it at the time.  I had my friend--not a student, but he had played soccer with my students and thus was at the party--Ryusuke translate.  Akifumi had written (and I'm sorry I can't reproduce the hiragana on this computer) "ai shiteru yo" which sort of translates to "I love you."  I blew it off when Ryusuke told me because that's what all of them wrote.  But Ryusuke said, "No, he means it."  I asked him how he knew, and he said first of all he just knew from how Akifumi acts but also he wrote it in Japanese, and "we don't usually say that casually in Japan.  If you say 'ai' you mean love, not how Americans talk." 

Later I kissed Akifumi.  Mouths closed.  Not quite on the lips.  Or he kissed me.  I'm not sure.  We both thought it would never happen again.

The next morning he went back to Kumamoto, to his girlfriend and family and his blessed tonkotsu ramen.

A couple weeks later, I got my own apartment and started divorcing my husband.  He started telling people I had cheated on him with a student.  He was not literally correct--I don't think a peck on the cheek under normal circumstances constitues cheating.  And I didn't yet know how much I loved Akifumi.  I thought it was infatuation that would pass.

Time passed.  I went out with Ryusuke, of all people.  I decided to go to Japan to visit some of my former students, including those from Kumamoto.  When I called Akifumi, I found myself on the receiving end of an invitation to a homestay.  I accepted, despite how terrible I felt for feeling terrible that he was still with his girlfriend.

I never met her, although I went to his college with him and hung out on his campus and ate (tonkotsu ramen!) with him.  I stayed at his house for three days.  I loved his family, and they were incredibly gracious to me, despite the fact that the uni almost made me vomit and despite the fact that I didn't know I was supposed to leave the water in the tub after my bath.  There came a point, on my second night, when Akifumi and I were sitting in his sister's room (where I was staying) and silently staring at each other.  And then he nodded.  Twice.  Just nodded.  And I nodded back, because I knew what he meant, or I thought I did.  I knew at that moment that I would finally have to do what I had long wanted to do:  Move to Japan.

Oh, yes, and then we had a quite public and quite lascivious makeout session.  Just kissing.  But what kissing!

Eventually, after a fast and dirty trip to Tokyo (oh, Tokyo!  how I love you!) and its environs (Chiba! represent!  Seriously, no offense, but Chiba is like the most uncool place I have ever been), I went back home.  I wasn't done with grad school yet and blah blah blah, and it took a while to actually move to Japan--about a year.  I got a couple of letters from Akifumi in the interim, written in painstaking-yet-difficult-to-decode English.  I didn't worry about decoding them too much because all they meant to me was, "Oh, I love him!"  Deep. 

I moved to Japan, nowhere near Kumamoto (silly American, I was thinking, "Well, Japan is small.  How hard could it be to get to Kumamoto?"  Hah!  Pretty fucking hard once you get there.)  I called Akifumi who was rapidly losing his grip on his already insufficient grasp of English.  He was happy to hear from me but, alas, was still with girlfriend.  I didn't hear from him then for ages.  In the interim, since he had a girlfriend, I...uh...played the field and met T, my husband now.  T refused to give any sign of commitment for over a year, though, and I only heard from Akifumi once during that year.  A drunken phone call in which nothing of any import was discussed, let alone established.

So, I admit, I kind of gave up on poor Akifumi.  I thought his had been an infatuation that died.  I wept.  I wrote bitter diary entries.  I climbed Mount Fuji.  The usual breakup stuff.  I kept seeing T and eventually coerced him into moving in with me.

Then T and I brilliantly decided to go to Kumamoto together.  That was such an awesome decision, I can't even begin to say.  I called Akifumi in advance and told him we were coming, and he asked me to stay at his house again.  I said I couldn't because T would be with me.  See the with, there?  With my boyfriend.  Akifumi blurted out, "But I love you.  Ai shiteru yo."  I told him that simply couldn't be.  I had already done the weeping and bitter journaling, not to mention the triumphal mountain climbing.  It was too late to be in love with me.  It had ceased to be rational.

So, T and I went to Kumamoto and Akifumi met us at the station.  He was our guide for the next couple of days.  Our first night, he had set up a party of all his old classmates, so I could see everyone again and get powerfully drunk with them and share bawdy stories over raw horsemeat.  It was very fun.  T was having fun, too.  Akifumi was sitting right next to T, and I went over to sit next to Akifumi.  This is when Akifumi demonstrates his incredible diplomacy and self-discipline.  "But I love you," he says, within easy earshot of my boyfriend.  "I thought you didn't.  You didn't say anything for so long."  "But I told you once.  Itsumademo ai shiteru yo.  Majide. [I love you forever.  For real.]"  "But how was I supposed to know when you didn't even tell me you broke up with your girlfriend--nothing, for so long.  I thought you didn't love me."  "Of course I love you.  I can't stop," he says.  At this point, my boyfriend starts getting concerned, and the conversation breaks up.

So, then we go to karaoke, naturally.  And Akifumi, on discovering my passion for Miki Douzan, decides to sing "Lifetime Respect."  Akifumi pointedly did not look at me while singing, but every other person in the room was looking back and forth from him to me and then with occasional sidelong glances at my long-suffering boyfriend.  You see, the lyrics to the song translate (very roughly) like this:

"Even though I seem irresponsible, I hate this betrayal.  I want us to respect each other and grow up together.  If you would be with me for the rest of our lives....if you looked at me with love...I don't know about marriage, but I want to have a baby with you..." and so forth.  Apparently, no one there thought clever Akifumi had chosen that song at random.  Why, oh why, didn't you sing "Kill! Japanese"? **

Anyway, for the next couple of days, until T and I took off for Nagasaki, Akifumi was our host.  A very tense host, and we were very tense guests.  T and I fought.  Akifumi and I fought.  At one point, we all bathed naked together.  Yes, that was brilliant.  Nothing like bringing a little nudity to the love triangle. 

When we left, Akifumi gave me that nod again.  He wished us well verbally, but the nod meant, I think, that he was acknowledging that we were finished.  He hasn't wanted to hear from me.  He has not said as much, but he has made it clear.  I don't blame him.  I can't imagine, if he loved me as he insisted he did, what it was like for him to hear that I was getting married...and having a baby.  Because I did the breakup ritual, I would like to hear from him and to keep in touch.  I do love him.  I know that if his timing had been a little better, I would have had his baby and not T's.  I don't think this is unfaithful to T, because T knows.  He witnessed the whole bloody scene.  No one knows better than T what Akifumi and I felt.  T is relatively copacetic with the fact that we don't hear from Akifumi.

But every April I want to write to him, to let him know I think of him and still care for him.  I would.  I never forget your birthday, Aki.  Never.  I don't want to make it worse, though.  It pains me not to know where he is or what he is doing.  I think, though, that I have to let him go.  I think there can be no more birthday cards.  I know I am where I belong, and I have never regretted marrying T.  He is a fabulous husband, and I am crazy in love with him, and I never really think of how it might have been or of cheating or anything else. 

It's just the birthday cards.  That's all I get hung up on now. 

I love you, Aki, and I always will.  Just know that. 

**Sidenote:  Damn that Miki Douzan.  I hadn't seen that video before, but he is now officially my favorite samurai, knocking Beat Takeshi to second and Shingen Takeda to third place.  Bonus sidenote:  I used to date a direct descendant of Shingen.  Unfortunately, he was a software samurai, not a fightin' samurai.  Software just isn't as exciting as swordplay.  Extra super bonus video below:  "Lifetime Respect", with cheesy but mostly accurate translation:

Super bonus sidenote:  Osakaben is my favorite Japanese.  I wish I could speak it without sounding like a total ass.  I don't get the affect right even when I do know the words.  My husband, despite being from Saitama, can totally do Osakaben, and that may be how he stole my heart.  Maybe.  He lived in Osaka for a while, and he just gets the affect perfect, and that's some sexy affect. 

The residents of Kakegawa, Japan (Shizuoka Prefecture, the most beautiful prefecture in all the land, if I dare say so) would like you to consider this:

"Humans live about 700,800 hours (assuming an average life expectancy of 80 years), of which we spend about 70,000 hours working (assuming we work for 40 years). The remaining 630,000 hours are spent on other activities, such as eating, studying, and leisure, including 230,000 hours sleeping. Until now, people often focused their lives on these 70,000 hours of labor, devoting their lives to their companies. However, with the "slow life" principles, we would now like to pay more attention to the 630,000 hours outside of work to achieve true happiness and peace of mind."

They have proven their immense awesomeness by declaring themselves to be a "Slow Life" city and holding activities to educate people on living the slow life--how to focus on quality of life versus quantity of cheaply made, garish cell phone straps you can acquire.  They offer these guidelines:

The practice of the "Slow Life" involves the following eight themes:

SLOW PACE: We value the culture of walking, to be fit and to reduce traffic accidents.
SLOW WEAR: We respect and cherish our beautiful traditional costumes, including woven and dyed fabrics, Japanese kimonos and Japanese night robes (yukata).
SLOW FOOD: We enjoy Japanese food culture, such as Japanese dishes and tea ceremony, and safe local ingredients.
SLOW HOUSE: We respect houses built with wood, bamboo, and paper, lasting over one hundred or two hundred years, and are careful to make things durably, and ultimately, to conserve our environment.
SLOW INDUSTRY: We take care of our forests, through our agriculture and forestry, conduct sustainable farming with human labor, and ultimately spread urban farms and green tourism.
SLOW EDUCATION: We pay less attention to academic achievement, and create a society in which people can enjoy arts, hobbies, and sports throughout our lifetimes, and where all generations can communicate well with each other.
SLOW AGING: We aim to age with grace and be self-reliant throughout our lifetimes.
SLOW LIFE: Based on the philosophy of life stated above, we live our lives with nature and the seasons, saving our resources and energy.

God.  I love Japan more and more every single day.

You can read the full manifesto here (also available in Japanese, if you're into that). 

Here are 5 Japanese food products I can hardly live without anymore:

1.  Kewpie mayonnaise.  If you think all store-bought mayonnaise tastes the same, you got another thing comin', punk.  I don't know what they put in this to make it taste so good, but it's likely to be chemicals of highly dubious origin.  It doesn't matter.  In Japan there are actually people who guzzle Kewpie mayo straight from the adorable squeeze bottle, it's so good.  Plus, the top has a star shape, so your mayonnaise squeezes out decoratively.

2.  Yukari furikake.  I guess it's a furikake.  It's red shiso (um...shiso is...perilla? in English) mixed with salt.  It's great over rice or in onigiri, which is the original use.  It's also fantastic on (otherwise unadorned) pasta.  Rice without Yukari is just so white.  The Yukari with dried umeboshi in it is a particular favorite.

3.  Matcha.  Obviously I was familiar with this green tea powder before I went to Japan, but I didn't get addicted to it until I was there.  Oh, I used to make these matcha cupcakes and matcha poundcake and matcha this and that--and, yes, I even drank it, tea ceremony style.  Sometimes I just want to dust my naked body with it and streak through town.  Hajikeyo!

4.  Lotus root (renkon).  It is not only a tasty and wonderfully crisp vegetable, it is also lovely, and you can't beat that with two sticks.  I especially miss these little lotus root appetizers we used to get at izakaya a lot (I made them sometimes, too):  You make a meat mixture with ground chicken and some umeboshi paste and sandwich a little glob of that between two thin slices of lotus root.  Then you add a shiso leaf (at home, I put the shiso leaf inside, with the meat, but a lot of izakaya seem to put it on the outside, sort of wrapped around the sandwich).  Dredge the whole thing in flour and fry it up (they don't need a deep fryer--a shallow oil bath will do) until the meat is cooked inside.  The lotus root stays crunchy, the ume and shiso flavors marry magically, and the texture of the meat provides a taco-like synergy with the crisp lotus root. 

5.  Umeboshi.  We finally ran out of my homemade supply that we lovingly and carefully smuggled through customs to bring with us to America (along with approximately a gallon of homemade umeshu, what is usually incorrectly translated as "plum wine."  It isn't wine, and it isn't made from plums, but you can call it what you want to, I guess.  God, I'm a pedant.  Sorry).  We now have to plant ume (Prunus mume, I think), because where the fuck else am I going to get them to pickle?  Ah, yes, umeboshi are pickled ume, ume being usually translated as plums, but they're really more like an apricot (pedant!).  You pickle them when they're not quite ripe with a little shochu and a lot of salt and some red shiso (no vinegar; Japanese pickles usually don't have vinegar).  It's a long, complicated process that involves many months, air drying outdoors, and a hearty helping of intuition.  But the result is gorgeous, red, salty pickles that really wake up the old tastebuds.  Man.  I love them.

I frequently get to pining for Japan.  I actually miss Japan more than my (Japanese) husband does, and I think that is because I wasn't really confined by Japanese society the way he was.  That's a topic for another day. 

When I get to missing Japan, my nostalgia/homesickness often focuses on a few, recurring themes.  Ramen.  Love hotels.  Train station soba.  Papaya Suzuki.  The total hotness of the men there.  My much loved Mt. Fuji.  Pickles.  Oden.  OK, so lots of food.

But today I'm missing the love hotels.  The love hotels of Japan are one of the greatest inventions ever.  They could be Japan's gift to the world, if only the rest of the world would wise up. 

Love hotels have become so popular because there is no privacy in Japan.  People tend to live with their families until they are way, way into adulthood, and the walls are made of fucking rice paper!  Not in the love hotels, though--no, those are serious concrete bunkers.  Yes, yes, certainly love hotels are used for adulterous trysts and for hookups with prostitutes.  But they are also regularly used by legitimate couples, even husbands and wives who just want to get away from their extended family and that goddamned rice paper.

Love hotels are often the cheapest accommodation available if you're a couple (except some hostels).  Of course, you have to be out in the morning, because the room is also rented (for "resting" in, usually, 2- and 4-hour time blocks) during the day. 

Love hotels are very anonymous.  In many of them, you will see no person.  Frequently, there is a board in the lobby that shows pictures of all the rooms; the vacant rooms are lit up.  You choose one based on what you want to pay and what, erm, accoutrements you desire (some of them come with outlandish S&M equipment).  Sometimes you then proceed to pay a set of hands, apparently human, but who knows?  Sometimes you pay a machine.  You go to your room.  The room will nearly always have a huge bathroom, Japanese style, with a deep tub for two (usually with jets) and a large shower.  Sometimes the shower has a see-through wall so that your honey can sit in bed and watch you shower, because nothing is sexier than watching a girl shave her legs.  Sometimes they take this a step further and put odd disco lighting in the shower and so forth.  The room will also have video games, a huge TV (or two), a large bed (yes, a bed rather than a futon), frequently karaoke machines and/or slot machines, and a complete array of toiletries and grooming products, in case this love hotel thing was spur of the moment, and you didn't bring your toothbrush. 

Heh.  When we just moved, my husband and I found a large--but LARGE--collection of toothbrushes saved from various love hotels.  They are all marked with the name of the hotels, so we reminisced a bit.  Or I did.  My husband remembers none of them, although he seems certain that we had a nice time there.

Not that we ever stayed in any love hotels.  No.  Certainly we are chaste and completely not into any love at all.  Yes, my name is Mary.

Anyway, so you can play some videos, watch a big-screen movie, pomade your hair, and gamble.  There will also be condoms there, because the Japanese are nothing if not condom users. 

What I love about them is--oh, all of the above, really, but also that the better love hotels (and, yes, there are definitely better and worse) have a theme.  Because this is Japan we're talking about, the theme is usually totally insane.  There is a chain of love hotels (and it was once my goal to stay at each of them, but we have not yet) called Snowman's.  Each Snowman's has snowmen everywhere.  But each Snowman's also has a subtheme.  One in Osaka is a Casablanca Snowman's and has a gangster theme and red-and-black polka dot wallpaper in all the hallways and feels bordello-ish.  I'm a fan.  I have a picture somewhere of me standing in those halls.  Another Snowman's--I think it is in Otsu--is Spaceman Snowman's or something like that, and there are black-light neon snowmen floating through outer space on all the walls.  There are also plenty of love hotels with a Christmas theme, and I thought that would be righteous, but the one we went to was kind of lame.  Sure, there was a Santa in the lobby, but the room had no Christmas kitsch at all, and so then it's just a big, comfortable room with a huge bath and a vast bed.  It's good, but not really thrilling. 

One of the first love hotels I ever stayed at had some kind of funky neon stars revolving on the ceiling, and, honestly, I thought it was going to give me epilepsy.  But it was still cool.

I haven't really ever stayed in any of the "special" rooms, i.e., those with S&M and bondage gear at the ready, and, to be frank, it skeeves me out to think of using bondage gear that is used by approximately 15 total strangers everyday.  Snowman's also has special rooms that are not bondage oriented but have a sub-sub-theme, like a giant racecar bed or something.  We have never managed to get one of those either.  I think you have to wait in line.

Speaking of which, most love hotels also have a very discreet waiting area, in case your room of choice is occupied when you come (or all the rooms are).  There are all these plush booths where patient lovers can hide away until the glorious time that they can finally go up and feed their money into a machine.  A lot of love hotels also have programs where return customers can get special goodies.  I got this grooming set (again with the grooming)--a couple hairbrushes and whatnot--from the Circus Hotel in Nagoya.  God, the Circus Hotel (or Circus Resort?  something like that...I can still remember exactly how to get to it, and I remember the little dancing elephant mascots) was awesome.

[Heh.  Now, thinking of the Circus is reminding me of this one time, back when ours was still a long-distance relationship, that we couldn't find a room in any of the Sakae, Nagoya, love hotels, so we just ended up walking around all night.  Just walking.  Oh, we got exhausted, but we talked so much and had such a good time.  That's really one of my best memories from Nagoya.  Now that I think of it, we walked all the way to Osu, and then I think we got breakfast there.  It was in July, after the Nagoyako festival, so of course there weren't any rooms.  Man.  Just to walk around with him all night, my future husband--what a sweet memory.]

Ah, love hotels.  I miss them almost as much as I miss the spicy nozawana pickles from Marugen. 

Every month now when I bleed, I think of two things:  The child I have, and the child I didn't have.  The one, of course, fills me with overwhelming joy; the other is a deep well of sadness that I don't seem to ever fully get over.

This is what happened:  I was living in Ichinomiya, Aichi Prefecture, Japan.  On the weekends, my boyfriend lived with me (during the week, he had to live in the barracks).  We were getting quite serious, talking about moving all around the world together, but we hadn't yet spoken of marriage, or not really.  It was, oh, late summer.  I hated--but HATED--my job.  My boss and the head teacher at the little private school where I was teaching were supreme assholes, and I hated them with a kind of hate I usually reserve for Dick Cheney and "Play That Funky Music White Boy."  Yes, that kind of hate.  My boyfriend and I, but especially I, wanted no children.  I was certain of that.

So, of course, I turned up pregnant.  We weren't always, admittedly, super cautious about contraception, but I thought we had been cautious enough.  Then I was sick for a while and very moody and then the stick turned blue or whatever, and I freaked out.  I thought a hundred different things--that my body had totally betrayed me, that I had betrayed my young boyfriend who surely did not want kids or want them with me or want them now, that this was going to ruin all my (and his) plans for the future, that I had let everyone and everything down.  I sobbed with disappointment and fear, especially with fear that I was no kind of person to be caring for a child--I could barely hold myself together half the time.  I told my boyfriend who, well, did not get upset at all and started thinking (while jogging) about how we would do this, what we would do to make sure we took care of this child.  Note the we.  I called my best friend who was happy for me, less so when he realized how happy I was not.  I told my mom who was concerned, also because she realized this is not something I wanted or was happy about.

I started taking prenatal vitamins and eating better and laying off the gin and cutting down on the coffee.  I kept going to my shitty, shitty job, although my moodiness and apprehension did not help my relationships there.  I worried and fretted.  I thought a lot about a baby.  A baby.  The thought of having a baby mainly made me want to drink a lot of gin, but I persevered in my abstinence.

And, at some point, with an imperceptible, accidental slippage, I started to care about the baby.  I started to love the baby.  I started to want to have the baby.

Then I told my boss I was going to quit at the end of the year, and she helpfully suggested I quit at the end of the term instead, a time fast approaching.  So I had abrupt financial worries.  I had to immediately find and start a new job.  I did, thank heavens, and it was a much lower-stress job.  I also had to move because my apartment had been tied to my job.  I had to do all of this without my boyfriend around much because he was off on the other side of Japan doing bizarre training exercises. 

It was during the move that the bleeding started.  My boyfriend thought I was doing too much, so I tried to slow down.  But when I first moved in there, it didn't even have light fixtures.  So I would get up in the morning and pedal my bicycle off to my new job, work for 8 hours, pedal home, then go out to buy light fixtures and furniture and all the other crap I needed for my new apartment.  And the whole time there was blood.  Buckets of blood.  And pain.  And a huge, overwhelming fatigue, and I knew I was losing the baby, and no one was there for me.  No one was there to hold me.  No one came to the doctor with me.  No one helped me screw in the stupid light fixtures.  No one cooked me some chicken soup and let me cry. 

Why was I crying, I kept wondering?  I hadn't ever wanted children and certainly not right now.  But I had.  This had been our child, and I grieved.  I blamed myself for not having wanted it at the start; if only I had been happier, I felt sure, this wouldn't be happening.  I hated my boyfriend for not being there with me.  I hated everyone and everything for all that I was going through.  I hated everyone for leaving me there, alone, to just bleed and grieve and get this big, black hole carved out of me.

The hate took a long time to wear off.  I took it out on Japan for a long time.  I took it out on my boyfriend.  The miracle of my boyfriend is that he understood why I did, and he insisted on sticking with me even when I pushed him away.  I wanted him out of my life, and he refused.  Eventually he married me and together we made this beautiful boy we have now, almost 2 years old.

Every month when I bleed, I look at that 2-year-old and am so glad that I could have him, that I have the gift of fertility and reproduction, and I also still feel wrenching pain for that other time and the child we didn't have.

How did you meet your current, or most recent, significant other?

It totally was kismet.

Did I already write about this?  If you already know the story, by all means, visit someone else's blog.

It was a sunny spring day in Shizuoka Prefecture, April 2002.  I had been in Japan for about four months and was living in Fujinomiya.  I was the happiest I had ever been in my life.

I had arrangements to meet a friend in Numazu, a city about a half-hour away by train, every Sunday.  Ostensibly I was giving him English lessons, but mostly we just talked and drank either his very good coffee or his very good whiskey.  Anyway, he paid me for the lessons.  So, I was in Numazu on a Sunday with some time to kill before I had to meet him.  Numazu has this street, as most Japanese cities do, which is a pedestrian shopping mall.  I can't remember the name of it--I think it was Nakamisedori or something.  I used to go there a lot to watch people.  They had places to sit there and the Freshburger place had great lemonade, so it made for a nice, relaxing day.

That particular day I had gone to eat Chinese food at one of the restaurants on a side street.  I left the restaurant and turned left into Nakamisedori and found walking by my side this handsome young man.  Hottt!  He looked at me.  I put on my best smile and said, "Konnichiwa."

See?  Kismet.

I tried talking to him a little bit, but I had only been in Japan for four months and spoke very little Japanese.  He was a little shy and not at all used to talking to foreign girls (or foreigners of any sex), and he got flustered when I couldn't understand a phrase he used.  It wasn't in my dictionary, either, because Japanese-English dictionaries don't have all the pseudo-onomatopoeia that Japanese people use.  Very annoying.  The phrase was "bura bura" which has now become something of a joke with us.  It can mean to dangle and swing back and forth, but in the context he meant he was just wandering around aimlessly, which is what he usually does with his free time.  He's a bura bura sort of guy, and I've come to love that about him.

So, after the mutual frustration at misunderstanding, we parted ways.

Perhaps a half-hour later, I had wandered over to watch some street performers, jugglers and whatnot, and was sitting on one of the chairs.  I spotted my earlier quarry.  He had apparently used the intervening time to fortify himself with liquor to better withstand the fits and starts of bilingual romance.  He approached, very red-faced (from alcohol), and we made more attempts at chatter.  We relied heavily on the dictionary and phrasebook I had with me.  Eventually we agreed to go have coffee together. 

I found out he was a soldier, in a tank battalion.  Just like my father had been.  I also found out he had no hobbies to speak of, except walking bura bura, and he was 21.  I was, oh, goodness, 27 I guess.  I also found out his birthday was only two days (and six years) after mine.  How's that for your kismet?

I asked him for his phone number.  Actually I asked him for his phone so I could use it to call the guy I was supposed to be meeting, and he did let me use it, but I got his number, too.  Not that we could speak over the phone, given the linguistic barriers, but what the hell?

Somehow we agreed to meet the next Sunday, Sundays being the only days he was allowed off base, and we met.  Then he moved to Aichi Prefecture, and I followed him.  And the rest is history, destiny, and luck.  We have been together for nearly five years, married for two, have one child, and are currently buying a house together.  He is giving up bura bura in favor of puttering in the garage and ice fishing.  I don't care what he does as long as he stays away from the gold-panning shows.  God.  Listen to me.  We have totally already become old people together.  It's so awesome.