in Pixels

Having Just arrived in Japan, I’m taking it all in.

After 24 hours of transit, from Detroit to Chicago to San Francisco, four other Americans and I walked through customs into a sea of Japanese people. Narita could be the busiest airport I have ever seen. soon afterwards we took a two hour bus ride, all of it in dense city, to the heart of tokyo.

Much to my dismay, we were given a 4 day orientation in the 1960s olympic village, right on the outskirts of a massive jungle in the middle of Tokyo’s Harajuku district. Along with two students from the Netherlands and two from india, it was mostly informational sessions and them explaining how we mustn’t tell dirty jokes in the middle of tea ceremonies…
but I had a blast with them all, spending at least 40 minutes in the hot baths each night and throwing our cultures back and forth. I’d like to see the Netherlands some day.

And now i know, I am the only exchange student in all of northern Nagano prefecture from YFU, and as far as I know, from any other program. We’ll see.

On the third day of our orientation in Harajuku, we split up into two groups to be taught survival japanese. My group was for the comptetent… one of us was half japanese and the rest had some idea what the hell was going on, some of the time. (I wasn’t the half-japanese one.)

A small, prune-esque Japanese woman walked up to a stage in front of us four and spoke for an hour on the subject of Japanese innovation, or what Japan had to offer us.

‘Our land produces nothing but hot water,’ she told us. So why is it the world’s second largest economy, with the 10th largest population? When soichiro honda first dissected the motorcycle, he took note of the parts then completely redesigned it to the model used today. when cameras came to japan, they were bricks… and, well, we have all seen Japanese cameras. anyone who has ever had desert in japan knows that the fruit is better- after ridiculous genetic breeding experiments, they arrived at an apple that grows once, on a tree that takes five years to come to maturity. they then cut that tree, and grow a new one.

And so, the point she made was that in the absence of any mineral wealth, the japanese have flourished via innovation. she seemed extremely proud, pushing her shoulders up and together as she spoke- a pretty funny image, but I have a hell of a lot of respect for her, and for the japanese sense of pride im sure ill be seeing more of.

Now, I have had a while to settle in to my family, house and location- the furthest you can get from the sea, dead center of honshu, the main island of Japan. I stepped off the train and noticed that the entire town is surrounded by jagged mountains, so any way i look, nature seranades me. they are beautiful. I am living in Toyoshina, Azumino-shi, a town in Nagano prefecture of about 100k- looking around, from any one point, on the other hand, you might think it was populated by about 200 people and twice that in rice fields. the Japanese system of ‘city planning’ is different. there is no downtown, just varying population densities. my house, for instance, is surrounded by rice fields, but a 5 minute bike ride takes me to a crowded as hell station. there are small veins of busy business districts runing here and there, with large patches of green inbetween, carrying on throughout the entire valley.

were you to climb to the top of a mountain and look down, i bet Azumino-shi would look like a miscolored diagram of human tissue- something you stare at in 9th grade biology class…

my family is fantastic. my sister, misaki, spent a year in stockton, california and has great japanafornian english slang. shes extremely bright and energetic, in… stark contrast to others. she is japanese girly. it makes the 40+ min journey to school fun.
my little brother, shun, is shy but sweet and tries pretty earnestly to speak in english with me. he seems like a pretty smart kid, and loves to throw around the football. good times.
my mom and dad are both great, as well. i still dont really understand what the dad does exactly,(checking wether or not animals are safe to eat?) but hes an eccentric insect-enthusiast who works in the rice fields in his free time and is a really nice guy. the mom is a secretary, but really does make an effort for her kids. they are adorable together…
so my name for six months, as of yesterday, when i wrote it on a chemistry test, is jiei maruyama. (pronounced [G]-[A]-[E] maruyama.)

Now, now that things are more calm, i have started school, this time my actual school. ‘actual’って何だろう？？

chances are, you have heard of swine flu. has it touched your life?
There is a hypersensitive repulsion from disease and general uncleanliness in japan. you take off your shoes when entering most any building and put on slippers, which you exchange for new ones when you enter a new room. my highschool was closed for a week due to the swine flu, and so, in the time i had free, I went to my sisters all girls school. all girls, all 18, all eager to ‘practice english.’ it was pretty damn cool.

and now, i have spent a week in Matsushou Gakuen Koukou, my actual high school for the duration. as far as i know, im the only foreigner in the entire school. I’m getting to know the way things get done around there… its coming slowly:

we change our shoes/slippers whenever the opportunity presents itself. when the teacher talks, he stands on a stage and speaks down while the students either listen or sleep, but say nothing unless adressed, in which case they usually answer a question or read a passage. between classes, the boys are rowdy and noisy but respectful whenever the teacher is in the room. and finally, its totally cool to wear a mask. a mask?

I walk down the street some times and feel like i am living in a country of surgeons. the japanese obsession with cleanliness extends to facial masks worn everywhere but marriage ceremonies, at least to my knowledge. i have no idea what the teacher is saying 75% of the time anyways, but with a mask to muffling everything as well, i usually turn to Atlas Shrugged and just chill.
so, on my first day at the school, the principle presented me with a facial mask, while he smiled behind his thick glasses and said,

‘Welcome to Matsushou Gakuen.’

starting next week, ill be taking real classes, too.

My host sister, Misaki, went to see a college in tokyo yesterday, and, since it was tokyo, i bit the bullet and tagged along. i knew ahead of time there would be no time for fun and games, as it was a college visit, but even from the seat of a bus, tokyo in all of its technocolor brilliance is worth 3 hours. the buildings look like superman ice cream some times. id like to live there at some point in my life. And so, i spent a total of maybe 2 hours outside of the college building- here and there, i noticed some things.

ive gotten semi-familiar with the rythms of japan:
japanese is all about the timing and rythm of conversation. every syllable, in itself, consists of either a vowel or a consonant followed by a vowel (or the just the letter n)- there are a limited number of syllables, somewhere under 70.

thus, easier for robots. pretty damn convenient.

but also, two people talking will carry their own time. its a quick back and forth, with each party frequently confirming what the other party has to say. for instance:

miyuki: its cold today
mizuki: yes, today is cold, isnt it?

jay: im rather fond of tempura
haruka: oh, do you like tempura?

and, when i was first getting acquainted to the language, i was like
jay: yeah, of course. i just said that.
but its not like that. its back and forth.
in the streets, or in a mall, you can walk by a store and hear smartly dressed showgirls speak out into space, at no one in particular about their product. i try to make eye contact, but its not as if they are talking to me, even if i catch her eyes. she just kept on talking like she was working with her hands, looking up for a break from the showcase. she was selling these little banana-shaped pastries filled with cream; My cousin living in tokyo gave me and my family some last time i was here, in japan.

when asking questions to get aquainted in japan, there are about four, and by now i know what to expect. were i an artist, i would liken it to a dance and say each person has a role to play, but that would be lame and i get enough ridiculous drama from dagny taggart… and japanese tv dramas…
what are your hobbies?
apparently japanese sleep a lot on the weekend, or at least the majority of class 1-13 seems to think thats how they spend their days off.
what do you want to be when you grow up?
most people are tracked already by highschool, as you take tests and choose quazi-majors. speak to an guy, you say business. when you speak to a girl, or a mother (this is a killer move, btw) you pause a second, looking off, and say you look forward to being a father.
when i want to be honest, i say im not sure. but that breaks rythm.

in tokyo, my host mother, sister and i, after a day of college visits, found a small udon shop and ate a bowl apiece. i saw a small, quaint shop like a hole in the wall where a woman in a kimono sat with her hands in her lap. i bought a banzai headband, for intimidation, and a ‘daruma,’ a doll made of paper mache whos eyes you fill in as you realize your wish. (something you work towards, something possibe) we got home and now here it is, sitting on my desk, neither eye painted. im not sure what my wish is, yet. misaki decided to enter the english language school, for the next two years, and i congradulated her for it. she’s gonna do great.

…

i still havent found any pokemon.

I told a friend around a week before leaving about a vision i had:
when climbing a fog-shrouded mountain, i would arrive at the top and see a small, yet clean wooden shack. i would enter. i would see a wizened, shriveled blind man sitting and meditating, crosslegged on the floor. yet he would seem to rise above all else. he would educate me in the ways of the world, in lengthy, mystical proverbs, then i would climb down the fog-shrouded mountain and… and… well, i hadn’t figured that out yet. that was why i still wanted to do it.

a few days ago, late in the day, the house was deserted. i live in a fairly rural area, in the sense that there is some distance between houses, usually rice fields. In my house, my dad’s dad chills at night but, even though hes been living for quite a while (79 ballpark), still works the rice fields all around us during the day. I decided id go to see what was up, so i got on my bike and rode over to his fields, about a kilometer away.

i found the grandfather and a friend of his huddled in a densely smoke-filled shed, downing sake, smoking, eating grilled sheep and arguing and laughing in passionate and ridiculously dialect-ified japanese. they were totally cool with me being there and i spent almost an hour just talking with him and his friend about their histories, kareoke, rice fields and their more of their histories. seems they had both been living in the same houses since whenever, working the fields and growing their children, who now live next door(s). they loved talking just as much as i did, because, as i observe, few people still take them completely seriously. anymore. the kids dont talk to him at all, and only really grunt when asked questions, whereas the parents are respectful but uninterested.

dont get me wrong, i think they respect their elders here, quite a bit in fact. but they are not respected for doing more of the same for longer, or having been around for an unreasonable amount of time, even though that is often the case; I was glad to find that, when speaking of the achievements of elders, people wont count the years but give praise to their life’s work. so far, its mostly been elderly school teachers. but hey, there are quite a few mountains in nagano.

so no, im not counting that little run in as my enlightenment. im holding out for someone older, blinder and on a much higher mountain. more smoke, too. this time, though, id like it to be incense.

My host sister, Misaki, stayed with a mexican family (mother) when she lived in the U.S., which she loves to talk about. maybe, she will study spanish in the future.

i asked her if she wanted to go eat mexican food, (loves taco bell…) and she was into it. we went and found the only one in this valley and the next one over, had a solid coupla neatly prepared burritos, and got on the train home…

now, i have been surrounded by nothing but japanese folks for about 5 weeks. on the train, i spotted some nice looking white folks, got excited, and wasnt sure where they were from, but goaded misaki into starting up a conversation with ’em. (you dont quite do that… in japan)

we had a great, trainride long conversation about japan with a pair of honeymooning canadians, just graduated from college and spending 3 weeks walking, training and busing all over japan. as we were weaving through the mountains, from one valley to the adjacent one, misaki and i attempted to explain country japan vs. city japan. if you look out the window, it comes pretty easy.

when i started the conversation, it was in japanese. but that was short-lived. just to make sure.

and, as it turns out, canadians are a lot like americans, but with better manners and, according to them, less fast food. i learned quite a bit from talking to people from a country 45 minutes away, and it felt great to speak in english.

it feels great to remember that you speak a language, well, and that you can make your ideas known, unrestricted.

other than that, i dont see many foreigners these days… if i do, i make every effort to catch their eyes and start a conversation, which doesnt happen often enough. except for reading, i spend my entire day in japanese… im succumbing…

people in my dreams speak to me in japanese, asian or not.

the characters in my book, though clearly having nothing to do with japan, have put on japanese faces and mimic the way people here move through the japanese aether.

I decided i would write about this the other day, when i saw myself in a mirror, at school, and was excited for a moment.

I like to think that the universe is large, very large indeed.

you know that line at the end of transformers, where plasmatron or whatever the hell his name stands on a cliff, with the sun shining epic on his metal plates, and says
“this is a call to autobots roaming the stars”
(if i am incorrect, excuse me. if you correct me, !?)

yeah, so imagine me, paler than when i left and sitting, with the lamp-light reflecting smeared in my hair, surfing the internet for some semblance of foreign life.

-J

Spring-

If you say love in Japanese, you speak of romantic, heavy-breathing love, like the way grown men and their wives embrace, sometimes. There’s no intermediate terms of affection to bounce off your family, and so, when you climb the stairs to sleep, you declare your intentions and shut off the lights.
The Japanese don’t touch or hug much either; parents even seem to avoid hugging and kissing their children. At school, we don’t show too much interest in the other gender, but you can see girls walking down the hall, holding hands and waddling back and forth in their little sailor uniforms. I find it highly observable. We men, on the other hand, find comfort in sitting down on a friend’s lap, playing Gameboy and discussing ‘Monster Hunter.’ All the while we grip our thick cigars and trade compliments on being masters of the universe.
When you walk down the hall of a japanese high school, you cant help but be relieved that there are no displays of hardcore affection for the world to see. but then again, it seems quiet.
I talked with my home-room teacher about high school romance, and he wouldn’t be specific, but he thought it was something to be taken seriously, not a hobby or an alternative to a part-time job. At my school, teachers sometimes joke with the kids, drawing two kids’ faces with an umbrella overhead. it symbolizes love.

the Fall-

I like to think I could be the romantic foreigner, if I wanted to. For the past 5 weeks, I’ve been able to get a warm greeting and giggles from almost anyone lining the halls, but I usually wont know how to react. Ill most likely say good afternoon and stand awkwardly, not knowing if I should sincerely shake hands and make conversation, or just smile, and wave.
At home, in America, I hug and smack chests with most everyone I know, as a way to mark our friendship. I find it a nice way to start a conversation, with contact. When I lean forward, out of instinct, and nothing happens, I feel like an Island. I’ve had to give that up.
I have friends of all the genders though, now, who stand in groups, laughing and talking about american pop stars and video games I don’t know but can pretend to… I don’t feel as awkward, not saying anything when people encourage me to say anything, in this way. I can always just stand back and try to catch the little pink dimpled bubbles and stars that float back and forth.
I like to talk to the snickering seniors in my Judo class, as well, and Im sure they love to bring out their vocabulary of… unmentionable English words.

the Eclipse-

A few nights ago, when the culture festival came to a close, all the school gathered on the playing fields to see the closing ceremony. they called up the three most handsome of every gender from every grade, and if they had a significant other, they were called up as well. they kissed on stage in front of all of us, some as sheepish pecks and others the first instance either body drifted close enough to touch the other. I stood next to a few girls from my class, who where happy to explain what was going on, while smiling up at me and forming a line of hands.
I realized the other day that I haven’t hugged or been hugged by anyone lately save a sweaty third grader in judo, this morning. I realized I don’t know how the bodies of my family feel, only look, and felt a shiver when, playing rocks-paper-scissors, my brothers paper folded over my fist. I think I’m succumbing…
but I feel good coming in every morning and getting an ovation of warm greetings from smartly dressed classmates, and doing the same for others. late that same night of the festival, once the fireworks came to a close, I spoke for a while with friends from the next class over. I ended up riding on the back of Takayuki’s bicycle, all the way to the station, surrounded by the gang. it was late at night, and as we rode under the bright lights of raamen shacks and department stores, we traded stories of Japanese and American girls, until he dropped me in front of the station and told me he’d see me the next day.

In the same way, I go on drives with my mother and father pretty often these days, and we can just sit and think and talk about all sorts of things for however long it takes to get to the supermarket.
I still trade email with my previous Japanese host mother, too, over an ocean away and over a year after I stayed at her home. She loves to hear anything I have to say and let me in on whats good with the family, still laughing with me and piling on the exclamation marks to encourage me, in anything.

lately, I’ve realized that touching somebody may be superfluous. I’ve realized that touching is just another use for time you might spend in silence, looking at their face. And I can feel comfortable just looking and having few words to say, these days.

I think I’ve started reaching out to people in a whole new way.

Yesterday, in our classroom, after a few rounds of back-and-forth proclamations, a few of my classmates got in an argument over who was more ‘hentai.’ (‘hentai’ means perverted, but in a cute, japanese way) they got into a little scuffle, pushing and slapping the hell out of each other. they ran around the room, laughing at this one kid and yelling about the massive volumes of smutty magazines he reads, across the room so that every one could hear, quite clearly.
nobody payed much attention, except this one kid in the corner who was drinking juice but laughing too hard to keep it down, and me- I, too, was crunched over and looking back and forth between the screaming, well-dressed gentlemen, and the circle of girls sitting next to them, on the floor and very quietly eating their lunches.

I thought I might share some of the things I find funny in my everyday life, because nobody but me thinks they are, and it feels wasted like that.

There is a very distinctive sound when you take a picture with a Japanese cell phone. It sounds like a cartoony version of old-fashioned cameras. when i take pictures of my host sister or of the girls in my class, they all gather around to see what it looks like- if acceptable, it passes, and gets sent to all of their cellphones. If not, we try again.
the times i’ve gone ahead and taken the picture, without notice, she picks up on the sound like a cat and a laser pointer, wails, snatches the phone from me and deletes it. there will be no images out there of her, unless she knows about it.

Everybody brings a ‘bento box’ to school, as lunch. the bags you put them in are about the size of a regular woman’s handbag.
since the start, i noticed that i was uncomfortable holding it while walking to school, and so have been stashing it in my already overcrowded book bag and just crossing my arms… people have asked me before what i do with it, and i balk and sheepishly say my arms get tired.
that shape was intended for women! you dont know me, man… i… i just cant do it…

someone told me the other day that they like practicing their English, when they talk to me. now understand that english study in japan is structured around memorization- there is no speaking or listening class offered until senior year, and no english is spoken in the actual class. ill see kids with these massive books full of vocab words they have to memorize, studying on the train… better vocab than me.
But I was curious, because this person as well as the rest of the school only really dealt in japanese.
sometimes, when i talk to people and say a keyword, they will repeat it to me in english after i finish the sentence…
Jay: are you going home by ‘densha?’
Souta: oh, yes, densha: “train.”
practice away…

Any time I see a foreigner, who i think might speak english, i always start the conversation in japanese. As if im not sure if they actually are asian or not, even when they are blond as hell and wearing an ‘aussie rules’ shirt. thats just a code among us.
this has happened to me before, but today, a pair of those described above sat down across from me on the train, smiling and leaning forward, expecting me to say something. i said, in japanese:
Jay: Hello
Blond guy: ‘ello
Jay: do you understand english?
Blond guy: oh, im sorry, i dont understand.
he was a little bit taken aback, and i was mystified. I sat back and was like, ‘really?’
in actuality, he had no idea what i said, past ‘konnichiwa,’ and was just knew the word for “i dont understand.”
i did end up talking to them.

the dialect of my area just so happens to have everybody talking like eric cartman, from south park. when you want to sound like you are from the area, you take something with the pronunciation ‘ai,’ sounds like ‘eye,’ and replace it with ‘ee,’ as in ‘shAve.’
I think it would be even better if i caught this as a habit and would speak like eric cartman for the rest of my japanese career.
in other news, i see kids with southpark characters hanging from their cellphones, not often, but enough.

Whenever i introduce myself to a new group of kids, theres always one kid who will point across the circle and call another, more innocent looking kid ‘gay,’ while looking at my face and laughing. that kid usually retalliates by a soft slap at accuser, as if i dont get the joke, and might actually get that impression and dislike him for it. and they all think i am laughing at joke in the first place.

Gym class in highschool is for the most part just like any american one, except with some aerobics to start us off. well play some sport, like volleyball, softball or basketball, and then pack it up. ive always been the way where, whenever i do anything physical, i sweat like a champagne bottle and flush up all red. the thing is, japanese kids dont seem to change color at all, they all just have a little perspiration… so you can guess that i stand out extremely bad. ive made up all sorts of excuses for it, like ‘yeah, americans sweat so much!’
even though i routinely have to explain that ‘americans’ come from every gene pool on the planet…

on another note, after every gym class, and most classes in fact, all the boys run to the bathroom to do their hair again. im glad to say that i have had all of my deepest conversations in the second floor bathroom.

My humor and theirs is very, very different. to be honest, i couldnt explain to you what they find funny here, beyond slapstick, nor laugh at a tv show, beyond that gameshow where they wear unitards and have to position their bodies so as to not get knocked into the pit of plastic bubbles by the moving plaster wall with an oddly shaped hole in it. (??)
when asked what americans laughed at, i couldnt explain the way i would have liked to. i said that people laugh at exaggeration, things over-the-top, and people doing things poorly or out of the ordinary. for example, if someone works 20 hours a day, then comes home and is so tired they pick up their toothbrush and brush their hair, i would laugh.
what do we think is funny?
I`m glad that I’m at least laughing, even if its not at the same time as everyone else.

Yesterday, the government put out a typhoon warning such that the trains stopped, stores closed and my school, along with many others, closed. We had a massive downpour for about 3 hours, early in the morning- I was still asleep at the time, but when I woke up, I went for a walk and found myself surrounded by puddles, and puddles.

My host parents both had left for work despite the warnings (or after, im not sure) and my sister had just left for Tokyo to see a boy-band concert. When I got up, I was the only one in the house, except for my younger brother, who was studying silently.
The Japanese don’t necessarily encourage ‘kids’ of my age to go out, either, (or allow it) so I found myself with 10 hours and about 3 ways to spend it. After a vocab session and a bowl of rice, I switched on the telly.

For my family, and, as far as I can tell, the inhabitants of the valley and beyond, TV is a constant part of life. most any time I am in the house, the news, baseball, the Disney channel, sumo, game shows and on act as the centerpiece of the family meal, upbeat entertainment, or as a soft background of reassuring, brightly colored conversations. We don’t have to talk, when the TV is on.

I told myself it would be listening practice, or a day spent to the best of my ability. soon, though, i was too comfortable, and resembled a radiator beyond the point where i wanted to write down words and memorize them. I was taken in by what was bright, moving and warm before me. would you like to hear my impressions, on Japanese TV?

Every morning and night we see the news broadcasted from Tokyo. Its a quick paced preview of your day, rain and everything, but the guy who throws it all down for you in high-powered tokyo slang makes it well worth it. elderly japanese dude, swept back black hair with gray roots, wrinkles only where it feels just right… sexy smooth…
he does this thing, (i love this thing) where they have boards with the day’s stats written on the back that pivit around their vertical axis drawn down their middle, and he just flips them around and reads his words like such a casual sonuvagun…
I actually do like him, and see him in my dreams from time to time. there are few men so directly in my life right now, but if i ever had a question about girls, the human anatomy or how to throw a baseball, id probably write him a letter.

It seems a staple of modern life on the isles (yeah, we have our own lilo and stitch) is the japanese drama, a rotating feature of a persons life, dreams and romance put to j-pop. they saturate it like a pressure canon, though, so the amount of emotion poured out in every episode is twice that of any one person’s extended life and what seems like ten times that of the studious and silent crowds. until a week ago, ‘Tsubasa’ featured tears of happiness and life-threatening crises interspersed between, in every episode. And so, i dont think i can trust these things because they dilute where i might put the emotions i might feel, at some time.

(korean dramas are quite good, actually)

a distinctly japanese thing is the ‘shocked’ face closeup, stepping back with a chinese drum sounding inbetween. you look at a guys face, his mouth drawn down to his chin and his eyebrows pushed up, (bong) his shoulders, (bong) and it returns to the scene. if i ever direct a tarantino-style film, l would abuse the hell out of it.

following my favorite news cast is usually a human interest story, which usually features a gross human (or animal) defect and a tour of their life, or a supermodel who died young, or americans being total tools. as i watched last time, it was a dubbed reenactment of a texan mother attempting to murder another texan mother because texan mother prime’s daughter was a better chearleader… the day before that it was on siamese twins connected at the skull, and i remember one about a korean woman whose face was inflated like a balloon. we are… all unique? arent we? i mean, that proves it, right? its diversity!

I spent the rest of the day formulating a plan- create a small cartoon character with neon-colored fur and a 3-syllable name that can be clipped to every cellphone in japan. I actually went for another walk and then read a book, then had dinner and my family switched on the television again. I think i actually had a pretty standard day, not by my standards, but this is japan. I think this is what kids do on their days off, or at least those in my life. Ill look into it-

-J

my journey towards emoticons-

the first message i ever received on my japanese phone said this:

“hey jay (^_^)/

do you know where my school is? can you come to my school at 5 oclock? [picture of a clock]
see you then! [picture of an apple, then a train]”

It was my first day in school. I replied back:
“yeah ill txt”

when I saw my host sister later that afternoon, she seemed a little bit irritated. with her phone held open in her bent back wrist, she told me that in japan, people don’t quite text that way. she told me that if you send somebody a message, it should be pretty and have enough text such that it doesnt seem like just a quick comment scrawled on a cafeteria napkin.
I find these filled with faces made from punctuation and these bright, little pictures after and between lines of text. if i hold my phone back, it sometimes looks like a bowl of lucky charms.
she said to me that she knew what i had meant to say, but i should make more of an effort while here. i sent her back a message a few hours later, with a picture of a hand with an up-turned thumb, saying no problem. but i couldnt do the face. i just couldnt.

If i am on a train in japan, i will see a cellphone. in fact, it is my conviction that i will see quite a few cellphones. japanese trains are silent, much like the gaps we find in conversations hereabouts. and people spend time riding on trains- As my cousin living in tokyo once explained to me, japanese trains leave no room for trifling things such as books, or newspapers, and so people will huddle up against their cellphone and read their comics there, on the lcd screen. they will watch tv, there, on their lcd screen. or, as i figured out the other day, they will read their novels there, on their lcd screen. Ive seen it before where through the silence of the train, two friends texted back and forth what they had to say.
so I find myself talking about cellphones quite a bit these days, with people i know and people i have met. its an easy thing to talk about, since its right there, everyone has one and everyone knows about it. Its a glaringly obvious example of the differences between american and japanese culture, as well- japanese are high tech, american ones are pretty average. japanese cellphone cameras take in more pixels than people living in belgium, and I can usually get a pretty blurry image of my friend flipping me the bird, while snickering, while chewing cheetoes. japanese phones are small, aesthetic, and american ones are…
Ive gotten tired of telling japanese how much more high tech and aesthetic they are than the U.S.. But hey, in America, we grow beards, not flowers.
when we talk about cellphones and the possibilities snuggled within, we talk about shape and function. I’ll put my hands together and slide one along the plane of the other to explain how it all folds out, overseas.

I sent the appropriate amount of text, most times, but in an effort to preserve what shrunken dignity I had, I kept my punctuation linear.

* * *

Two weeks ago, all of japan had ‘aerobics day,’ a day where, as i understand it, people of all ages make an extra effort to work out and get outside. (this is similar to the daily aerobics routine played on the radio at 6:30, since world war II, in an effort to boost morale. I know the routine, pretty goofy, and can usually get my mother to smile by breaking ou the hip swing and humming the tune) My mother decided to take my little brother and me, along with two of her co-workers, to Hakuba, one of japan’s most famous ski areas and a pride of the locals. it was a beautiful morning with the only clouds framing the top of the mountians, and chilly enough to feel the kickback of the air as I breathed it in.
We crowded into a gondola with around 70 other tourists and started our climb up the mountainside. (the tickets of which were more expensive than a bus to tokyo!) shun dozed off on the shoulder of one of my mom’s friends, both of whom were looking out on the scenery. My mother was looking across at me.
I talked with her on the way to the summit, a some 3 kilometer hike on a elevated wooden path, high enough up that i never had to get my feet wet. we had to breathe faster than regular, because the air was getting thinner. She approached me pretty slowly with what she wanted to say-
there are two words i find myself using too much these days;
honne – one’s true intentions
tatemae – what you say, show or do
I consider myself pretty damn clean if, even if i pollute some holy structure or drop some crazy profanity in front of a priest, my intentions are clean and i apologize, or i sincerely pursue making things right again. that is, i value a person’s true intentions, a person’s honne. Japan aint so. the presentation is of the highest importance. things are clean, things are organized and always bitterly smooth for those watching. Without knowing, I looked my teacher in the eye for the first four weeks of school when talking to him. I adressing him like any one who has anything to teach me, but was taken down pretty hard by my family when I let them know. My mother and sister pretty regularly complain about my handwriting, on documents that are for my own reference. When i told them that what is written is what i valued, they were unphased.

I ask people if they had a good time every time i see them, everytime they have done something that might have been fun. when i asked my oldest sister if she had had a good time while she had been in tokyo, she withdrew from me and wouldnt tell me what was wrong, wouldnt speak to me. She had been at a concert, while there, and her father hadn’t known it was the concert she was going to. the dad still didnt know, and i hadnt given anything away, but it had seemed i was asking about her time at that concert, to her. and so, for a week, she didnt talk to me. they usually wont come out and tell you, if you do something wrong. direction is indicated by tone, not so much words, and so if my mother doesnt want me to go out, she might tell me its too cold or likely to rain. its like were all keeping it from someone who doesnt quite speak our language, sometimes.

My mother was worried about me, getting this. I told her i made every effort, but that didnt seem enough. she explained for a good portion of the last leg the emphasis with which the little things are watched, and how that was what i might put my effort into. one thing she suggested i might do was insert the little faces into my messages.
when we got to the summit, it was a massive face of snow-covered rock that dwarfed the pine trees growing below. I spent an hour, just looking at it and eating rice balls, then we turned back and headed down the mountain.

I spoke with some older kids in the weight room the other day, after weigh-lifting club was finished, late at night. they were some of the most ripped kids on the playground. after a session of “how we disrespect nerds, and swimmers, in america,” on the blackboard, i got a rundown of the faces japanese kids use when they write. id write some down, but i think google beat me to it.

So i smile at people when i text, now. i guess my words dont seem as stiff, when i take the care to do things like this, or when i convey myself outside of the vocab that i, well, am supposed to be studying. I told my sister this morning that i was going to get a haircut, in the next town over, a much larger, more exciting town with restaurants and arcades. when she asked me why i wouldnt just go to the one nearest to us, i paused. i said it was too busy today, resisted the urge to wink, and rode my bike to the station.

-J

A little over a week ago, my dad sent me an email saying that a friend of ours was coming to Tokyo to cover the annual motor show there, and that he had asked if i could come. This guy’s a real neighborhood pal, one of Dad’s biking buddy’s and a total motor-head. My dad and i frequently make major detours on our way, to wherever, to see what hes breaking and building in his garage, that night. I was able to set it up such that i skipped half the week of school, to take a trip to Tokyo and see the motor show, and he was generous enough to let me crash in his hotel room. last tuesday morning, i rode the train in.

he had come over with nissan. ‘with nissan?’ i didnt get it either, but it seems like large car companies bring reporters and journailists over to large events like this, where they are revealing a new car or system, etc., pack their schedules with informational sessions, and hope to get a good write-up. as we walked around the show, all of the hundreds of journalists we met exchanged the question, ‘who are you here with?’

the nissan group, who we followed for a good portion on the time, was pretty entertaining. there were these curmudgeonly old men who complained about the lack of trash cans (there really arent many trash cans), some younger, more energetic writers from around the country and then quite a few writers from latin america. At a dinner party they provided one night, way at the top of the well-kept hotel we stayed in, i talked with a friend of my hosts from mexico and looked down on the lights of the city. he told me the less expensive a car was, the safer he felt driving it, in mexico. in Tokyo, there are a pair of white-gloved policemen on nearly every corner.

I got to Tokyo early tuesday morning, after the 3 hour train ride. and, no joke, for the last 40 minutes it was all city, all Tokyo. I dropped my bags at the hotel, while my host was at a meeting, and left to walk around tokyo for the day. i made my way around quite a few districts, mostly taking back streets, had lunch in a small noodle shop outside of roppongi, then took the subway to shinjuku, one of the largest stations in the world.

after walking around alone for the entire day, I was tired and skipped the massive electronic stores for the cafes, finally finding myself on a backstreet, slowly getting darker. the neon signs were lighting up, and it was getting a bit chilly out. I was dealing with a vending machine, when i heard a voice behind me and turned, then looked down; a ‘stout’ little woman was fumbling with her words and asking me if i spoke japanese. i was curious, and having been to myself all day, i decided to talk to her. she told me about a church, in the outer districts of Tokyo and how the lord had sent her to spread the word to me, and i listened and decided i had better follow this stout woman because it sounded interesting and i had another 3 hours to kill, at the time. she took me to the station, gave me a ticket and we took a 20 minute train to somewhere that doesnt exist on the metro maps. we talked all the way about me, her, the church, japan and a pool of other things. but yeah, i, too, was silently wondering what type of kidnap it was at this time.

pretty tight, actually. it was a teeny little building snuck in between two short apartment buildings, on top of a hill in mild city climate. we went in, and were immediately greeted by 3 well-dressed hosts, given tea and a bible, and a fourth came to sit with us. we ended up talking about stories from the bible and what they ment to us, the three of us, for about an hour; i actually read steinbeck’s ‘east of eden’ just before i left, so had the story of abraham, translation and interpretation of the words of the bible to lean on… which actually fit the conversation perfectly. we finished up the talk with a session of blabbering, talking in nonsense. i didnt really get it, but apparently you say ‘halleluiah’ many times, very fast, and new words come down to you.
And now i realized i was yelling nonsense with two others in a church in the outskirts of Tokyo… and had to restrain myself from laughing, to myself, while chanting. they entered me into their books, and now i can go visit their branch in new york, if i want.
the woman, a real smiley and perky japanese housewife, took me back to the station and gave me a subway ticket to the hotel, molestation free. she wrote down her number and mail address, i gave her mine, she smiled up at me and then she wished me a good journey. i have been texting with her, a little, since then, and im glad to say that she very sincerely cares.

When i knocked on the door of the hotel room, I heard an excited english voice saying ‘come on in!’, and spent the evening catching up with my host and friend, in english and between french restaurants and dimmed, warm lights.

theres a lot more to Tokyo, and later, ill tell you all about it.

This morning, the weather was fall’s calm clear and i could see the mountains in the distance. tonight, clouds are overhead and i can almost hear the rain if i listen, closely.
I am sitting in my room cross legged and back straight on the mattress, bottom bunk such that there is a roof over my head, but I am elevated from the floor. light from my laptop’s notepad is showing me my hands, since i don’t have the light on. sometimes, after a day in the presence of the family, i come here; this is my rare normal, a state of peace- not tranquility, like sitting quiet with the warm vibrations of game shows reminding you they are there- but peace, when my thoughts finally speak in english, speak clearly, and when they speak directly to me. these are the things that i am thinking, as of now- these are my thoughts of the night.

My host mother was in a car accident yesterday morning. streets that cut between rice paddies are thin and few, so you pull over when another car drives towards you and take it slow when theres one behind. She was driving straight, stopped at a sign and saw in the rear view mirror that the car behind wasnt slowing down. it was a back end collision, where she was bracing for the shock, in her large toyota van, and the k-class (extremely small cars that, according to my friend from the motor show, only exist japan) pickup truck behind her had the airbag inflate. She was fine, only surprised and spoke quickly like if she stopped, she might forget- the kid in the k-class behind her, however, took a blow.
she told me that the kid went into “dogeza.” it sounds like “together,” so i thought it was a bit funny at first, because it was like saying they did it “together.” i asked what it meant; the kid had stumbled out of the car, sat on his knees and calfs, on the pavement, and crunched over while bowing, repeatedly. he had touched his forhead to the ground in apology, repeatedly. this is “dogeza.” my mother thought it was a little embarassing, but respectful. like always, i sank back and looked at the faces of my family at the table, and thought. the image is still sticks my mind of a kid bent over on the pavement in the morning, who looks up quickly, painfully, squinted eyes and upturned eyebrows, then rips his glance down and continues rocking back and forth. and when i see it, it’s from my mothers point of view.

I have a folder in the bottom shelf of my desk, across the room, where i keep pieces of paper i want to save. theres a few photos and quite a few letters, but i saw a bright slip the other day when looking myself over again, at a time like this, and pulled it out. it said “let’s protect our important lives” in impact font, then listed a number in red letters. Its a suicide hotline. when I step off the train in the morning, there are usually people waiting with bags full of tissue packs, advertisements printed on the front- i think i picked this one up a few weeks after i got here, and thought it was a valid insight into what goes on.
I talked about cancer with some friends after class, continuing from smoking, then asked about HIV/AIDS. I hadnt heard too much about it since coming here; it seems so clean and we relate disease with grime, plus people dont readily open up to someone who cant pronounce their word for “Cooking” correctly, as i found out. And its true, there arent many lives lost to STDs or cancer, not when you compare; when i asked about death, they took it to mean suicide. they talked about suicide and when it touches their lives.
they thought it was one of the leading causes of death among kids their age, such that its not a foreign word to even young kids. highschool kids lose their way sometimes when they feel they have no hope and pain is what prevails too many times, was what they all seemed to come to.
there are times when i cringe and think that something is wrong in every sense, not believable and something i cant comprehend. you can distance yourself from these things, they dont exist as solid bits of life, i sometimes thing. i thought about the time on the elementary school bus when Tim Van Riper told me that humans were animals, and i wouldnt believe him.
when i finger a leaflet distributed at a train station to random people, as an outcry to stop it all, thats when i believe it. i cringe.
if someone has no fear of death, is it right to scare them? if someone tells you they have nothing to live for, is it right to ask them to stay? i think the answer, is in how you think the earth looks, your perspective and where it has and hasnt been, what things youve found and what hope they give you, what you expect the world is coming to after walking around and listening at the places you have been.

yes, i think i have found some perspective.

last night i came out of the shower and stumbled to the sink. i had water beaded on my skin, was red and breathing deeply. i leaned forwards on my arms, supported by the two corners of the sink and looked forward into the mirror, squinting my eyes. when i compare mysdelf to the boys in japan who walk around with perfectly disheveled hair and pre-wrinkled jeans, i think i cant compete. i tried messing up my hair with wax before school, a few times, and thought it was only mild. ‘your an ugly bastard, jay,’ i thought, like it was reckless, ‘but you look mysterious. thats an asset.’ people cant know what im thinking, ive concluded, no matter how clear i describe things. hell, ive been at it for almost 17 years. can people feel for me? can i know what they are thinking?

since the end of the summer, i have been living here, in this house, and commuting every day. i spent the weekend at my area representative’s house in nagano city, sightseeing during the day, and at night, we spoke. this week, i will be changing host families. my representative agreed, and i came home this morning with him, sat down around the low table in the living room, and spoke with my mother. my two siblings, when she asked them to leave the room, seemed annoyed but had some idea of what was coming. we spoke calmly, in there, for almost half an hour. she agreed that if it was what i wanted, and what i thought was best, then it could be done. i think she has been watching me lately, and has the idea of how i feel. i think she gets it that its a large, large maze, dark and often silent, that ive gotten in.
she was sad, clearly, and i was too, but only she cried, and only slightly, with gently puffed red eyes.
my little brother turned 13, and i called my parents to send some english spiderman comics and put it on his bed earlier today. i spoke to him for a while on the night of his birthday about 13, while he sat on the top bunk and i leaned on the rail. we ate american halloween candy, also from my family, two or three nights ago as i explained the widepsread influence of wax lips on childrens halloween attire. the wax lips didnt get eaten, though. I think about how id like to leave it with my family, and i think these final things will make it the softest.
after my area rep left, there was tranquility, peace, in the room. it was a soft way to bring things to a close, after a difficult while. maybe she saw it on my face. my mother and i sat on our knees and calfs on the floor, in silence. i looked at her and told her i still wanted to be in contact, still wanted to see her every now and then, i would be here for a while; i still love her, i love them all, but things didnt quite work out. we exchanged apologies, and her eyes closed a bit and she solemnly, quietly tucked her lips inward.

i told her that jinsei, our lives, are long, and her glance floated slowly down from my eyes, like a fall leaf that might float down and come to rest at your feet.

theres a thing i do when im in a quiet moment, where i touch the pads of my fingers to eachother in rhythm, in a pattern- odds connect, waterfall then evens connect, repeat. its always a pattern i can repeat. i think ive been at it ever since piano lessons at age 7, or so. it helps me reason all my things through.

I used to ride the train to school in the morning, to the next valley over. plenty of time to tap my fingers while i waited, plenty of time to think as well. all in all, it was about 10 minute bike ride from my house to the station, a 25 minute train, then a 25 minute walk to my school. so, adding this all up, we get an hour commute, but luckily, a good portion of it was outdoors.

i walked out a few days ago and had to come back inside to grab a sweater, to put under my jacket. that day, I was a wizened old man, blowing smoke rings of my own breath as i waited for the train. its getting colder outside.

i trained and walked most of the time with a girl, initially introduced to me as my host sister’s friend, named Erina. She’s shorter than i am, slight and quiet but polite. very japanese, you might even say. she got on the train a few stops before me, and we walked alongside until school. I made the effort to talk to her, as its a long way to go. morning is a good time to ponder, and i am fresh so always wanted to attack it, once more. maybe through conversation, ill get a better look at why, i think, because tapping my fingers and wondering takes me only so far.

while we walked early that morning down the main avenue of Matsumoto, i mentioned seifuku- the uniforms we all wear to school. Matsushou Gakuens consist of a red, green and gold tie with black checkered (plaid? perpendicular stripes? not very good at this game…) pants and a coat. most girl uniforms are made out to look like a sailor might have at some point, or as the formal navy uniforms go these days- a square piece of cloth folded over the back, and a skirt. (im pretty sure that the navy omits the skirt, though, and maybe the tights.) i asked her what she thought about them, but it was hard to get an answer, so i told her how i felt. I am not such a fan.
this is a pretty standard debate, i think i even saw it on the example japanese AP exam last spring when i was surfing the web. she tells me it saves time and money, which is true, she always knows what she is wearing the next day. she doesnt waste time pondering it. I guess she doesnt worry about rejection, either… women.
I thought- told her she was welcome to wear the same thing every day, but im sure plenty of people had other ideas, other things they wanted so they might feel differentiated. didnt they?

in japan, if you have something you want to say, you dont quite say it directly. I asked her how she felt about not having this ability, and she didnt think it was bad. in fact, she liked it better than the way i described america… but having only travelled to taiwan, on a school trip, hard to get the picture. i asked her if she felt silenced, but, being without extensive individual identity from the time of her birth, kept mostly inside the boundaries of ‘normal,’ she doesnt have much new to say… and she agreed with me on this. and i felt logically defeated.

i find it funny that english books treat me like hard drugs; Its my way of escape from things i hear. I tell myself im going to go a day without thinking in english, and i always come crawling back. i feel isolated, on the outside of whatever it is that everyone here is in on, and i come crawling back. ill pick up and read, then find myself lost and clueless for the next hour, trying to catch up with nagano slang- my old host family told me i needed to stop, when i told them about the effects on my language skills… i started to hoard them in my room. the closest thing i can get to a real book in japanese is a book for elementary schoolers, because it has the pronunciation of the chinese characters written in the columns, trailing top-down, right-left, the way they read over here.

and lately, im thinking really hard about starting a big, fat, padded volume. funnily, its all about addiction, or so ive been told.

there are things i cant prove or reason because my way of logic doesnt reach them. but others, in an odd way, finally reason themselves to me, and then a sick feeling of what reality might be clouds my vision, and i might sit down and read until i feel like coming out. I cant tell you directly why people everyday restrain themselves from their own freedom because of unwritten rules for slight reasons… it seems sometimes like society here is a separate plane, held up on stilts which we all support. i dont know why one would want to create a fake reality of rules and padded human experience. but then again, reality is full of pain, eh?

I planned on taking a shower tonight, so went in and stripped down to the greasy skin. it was cold like a bitch! i couldnt figure how to turn the hot water on, so i ended up washing my legs down with freezing water, then my hair and walking out because im sure this has been explained numerous times before and was too embarassed to ask. so now, my head is still recovering, middle is still greasy and feet are under the heated blanket we keep in the middle of the living room. I can only laugh, and i think naohiro might get the joke.
now, i have moved into my new host family and new environment. a senior friend from the weight room told me hed love to have me after i talked to him one night, and i have been here since that friday. my jolly, round mother and ex-sumo wrestler turned shy badass little brother were also glad to have me, welcomed me in. in 5 days, 3 trips to onsen hot springs; every night we talk about something, like jazz music, (the mom is a jazz vocalist, the passed away father was a drummer) origins of music, india, indian cuisine, the difference between american ‘indians’ and real, legit indians. i explained that columbus thought that america was india and therefore the scantily clad civilization he saw was full of indians… i always thought this was ridiculous, but they nodded and seemed to think it was a reasonable explanation. like that explained it all. ruined the damn punch line.

My new house is in the city of matsumoto, at the top of a hill on the outer edge of the valley, a 12 minute bikeride downhill with friggin freezing air pushing back my tufted hair. (i got a japanese hair cut, and naohiro showed me how to wax it up like a man.) its cold in the mornings, but at home with the heat turned on, naohiro, ryouhei and i walk around the house without shirts until bedtime.

when you slip into the water of a hotspring, the japanese call the tingling sensation of bubbles and needles pushing beneath your skin “chiku-chiku.” onomotopeia like this, words that convey their meaning through sound and feel, rather than merely a name, are attatched to every action, like the pencil lines and ripples that show motion in comic book magazines. tonight, my host brother and i, submerged in an outdoor stone pool of mountain spring water discussed it at length-
kuru-kuru = a helicopter spinning motion
moya-moya = gloomy sauntering or gliding
pyoko-pyoko = short lively hops, as in a rabbit
nyogo-nyogo = a snake-like slithering

and im sure you can imagine two naked young men splashing, waving their arms, puckering their hands to explain these things. the place was empty on our side of wall, (a few elder women talking about their grandkids on the other side, or so i was told) so we had plenty of room to speak in louder voices than usual and think louder than usual. i like the way mist floats over the water and how people look behind it.

naohiro wants to learn english, he told me in the baths one day. he had a deep desire to travel, but never knew it was so possible. plans to go to france and fly out to michigan to chill with me, but first things first, he says- learn english, learn how to speak it. in the morning, downhill on our bikes we go back and forth in engrish.
“what does ‘borrow’ mean?”
jay explains
“oh- can i borrow your coat?”
…
“can i borrow your girlfriend?”
“… no understand…”
he understood perfectly well.

it was an old style bath, with natural spring water. first thing i did when i walked in the room- take it all off, compare pec muscles with naohiro, which lead to english frat-boy vocab on the subject. told me he likes slang. everybody is totally stripped down on the tatami (grass-mat) floor, which was the two of us at the time and the two of us in the mirror. that kid is hillarious how much he looks in the mirror.
the baths are a place to discuss things because its a step outside, but i was confused at first- it seemed contradictory that people who value isolation and distance would put it all out there, like that.

three weeksa ago on the clearest day ive been through in a while, i drove to nagano city to see a special mountain hotspring with my area rep- a pack of mountain monkeys liked to dip in and out, and didnt mind the hikers watching them either. families of four or five were all over, shrieking and running around like animals. after f***ing it up once, tamura-san warned me not to make eye-contact with the males, because they would charge you. i took it to heart, twisting away like a five year-old whenever a monkey looked my way. in the lodge, an infant in a basket resting near the fireplace turned my way, and i quickly looked down.

i asked him in the car why it was what it is, with silence in public and naked, shriveled old men quite talkative when submerged in hot water, leaning against the stone next to you and sighing;
japan was once in a state of war, between kindgoms and samurai. it is renowned for its warriors of the age, all of whom spent the better part of their lives training not only their bodies, but their mind and strategy. the japanese samurai sword, known as the katana, is one of the deadliest weapons around and museums of the crafstman who made them are all over. ive seen two exhibits in matsumoto, and another separate showcase on and upper floor of the town’s famous castle.
people wore long decorative robes, “kimono,” stitched from thick fabric. these robes were long enough to stick something dangerous in. in fact, most people carried short knives next to their chests. you dont want to seem disrespectful to an asian hulk who might be, probably is, holding a knife. and so they withdrew.

but when you slip into the hotspring, all the heavy robes come off and we relax in knowing that this is ourselves without suspicion and concealed knives. there are no knives. they were actually banned along with guns outside of cooking and fishing, a few years back.

* * *

through talking with kids and teachers in the school, i learned about the other american in the school. i had been introduced to him once, by my homeroom teacher for a short conversation about the weather, ann arbor and where he was from in boston. spoke perfect japanese and had been at this same school since almost 20 years back, so as he explained it, there was no reason he shouldnt get it. he apparently translates japanese books.
he teaches the seniors, and so had nothing to do with me but the fact we both stood out like white people in japan might. i learned he was a total bad-ass who broke peoples cellphones when caught texting in class. the librarian broke her two hands over her knee when she described it to me, like a tae-kwon-do excercise. thats a bad-ass way to break a cellphone.

I finally got the chance to talk to him. he saw me in the hall today and struck up a conversation, asked me if i planned to take the mid-semester exams and i told him no, i didnt think i would. we got talking about japanese culture, quite easily. it was nice to get someones opinion without directly asking. but i did ask, and he told me what he thought.

the popular phrase KY stands for “kuuki yomenai,” or an inability to read the air and tell how a person feels by the atmosphere. its an insult, not very insulting because all i can think is its not i who should be blamed for not seeing emotions unshown, but still shameful. i didnt think the problem was on the receiving end. he said yes, its total bullshit, they think they transmit these magnetic waves from head to head and i shouldnt mind it, its got no weight behind it, nothing pushing it forward, its just their phrase. i walked the rest of the way down the hallway and down the stairs shaking my head and laughing at what he had said, because nobody says those type of things anymore.

I feel like there are themes in my life, now. people stand for things, and there are symbols for the larger ideas im hoping ill be getting sometime soon. i remember a year ago my brother and i were in the basement and i wondered to him wether reality was made up of themes and symbols, like the books that read about them. he told me he definitely read his life like a book. interesting.
I wondered out loud to naohiro what things would be like if all life was lived as if in a bath, while we ate ramen and half-watched a report on a recently caught murderor on trial. he said he didnt know, but high school would be a hell of a lot more interesting and we would need some heavy air conditioners to stay warm. i stayed up with him until 3 last night, with 4 other friends and talked about exactly this type of thing, then woke up and trudged to school. im getting to know him better, as well as his friends. a friend of his wants to take me to a hotspring on his side of town. he invited me after we talked about the books of Haruki Murakami for a while, last night.
so it seems someone is writing about the impact of the seeming absence of deep social connection on the mind, and how hot water and steamy baths and 18 year-old humor compact this. you come to see that its not the man-made illusion we live in, but what we can observe and only those who wear a heavy robe put it back on when leaving the baths.
I asked Nao what he thought while we walked out the other day, and he laughed and shoved me so i lost balance on my tall, wooden sandals.

I spent a day with a camera strapped to my belt and asked a few people to snap photos of me along the way. let this represent the imagery in my average day, with a manlier-than-usual slumber party appended to the end. we talked until 3 that night.

The kid in most of the pictures with me is my host brother, the kid im holding near the end. in the red is my friend taniguchi, a body builder who insisted i put his biceps on the internet. he came over later that night as well.

I consider this a combination of feng shui and a jackhammer. or a T-rex.

Its my take on what energy looks like.

Naohiro can do it too:

I put my hand in the upper front pocket of my blue bag late tonight. its a beaten blue backpack ive had since middle school, but is still stitched together. i reached into a dense sack of sloppily folded papers, some grimier than others, all with pencil lines lightened by sweat from my hands. i sat back and thought damn, i have to clean this. i have to get rid of these things.

Whenever i hear a new word, or realize a new arrangement of the chinese characters that make up the written language, i write it down to “memorize later.” when i get things made of paper, its sunken into a reflex for me to crunch over and obsessively cover it in characters, diagrams, etc- handouts, receipts, envelopes, my math notes, like they might have been pushed twice through the printer. i am studying Kanji, the chinese characters that are the basis for the written language.

A small group of people came to see my drawings, today on the inside cover of my ‘science’ notes; i avoid definition of new words and their characters in english, and so will draw stick figure scenes to illustrate the idea- recalling the word is more direct, or fluid, this way. we write smaller and more fine for the complex, sharp and compacted shapes and lines of these characters than english letters, a skill i am training my fingers, arm and upper back for. i have a thing for broken tips on .5 lead because they write with a sharper point. i break it off when my characters get sloppy. a kid in class is teaching me to twirl the pencil between my fingers.

This is how my days go by in the classroom, while the teacher is talking and when everyone else is reading and working. all was well until i found myself an outlet to cling to a week or two back, and havent parted with it since- the books of Haruki Murakami. ever heard of ‘a wild sheep chase’? a surreal, unusual adventure of a slow and incredibly uninformed narrator to hokkaido to capture and retreive a sheep with mystical powers, making detours, getting lost on the way and smoking and drinking as he waddles along. ive read it in english before, which was great, but i love what i can get out of the japanese version.

things certainly make more sense in the original language; these are the authors original words, not another’s interpretation. it wasnt clear before, but what becomes obvious is that the main character, who we think is a brutally honest, exceptional loser when stated in english, is actually a brutally normal japanese 30-some year old. said in japanese expressions in a much more japanese context, his character becomes an instance of a much more common set of people you get used to around here. i see so many faces that would fit to this guy, walking the streets. i say ‘this guy,’ because Murakami doesnt give him a name.

I certainly find things to think about in my foreign reading. when i compare it with my memories, its a good excercise in methods of translation. i talked with my brother on the phone about it. he asked me, “is that the one with ‘the Rat?'” “the Rat? you mean his friend ‘Mouse?'” – same in japanese. Its interesting in the variations of chinese character representations of words: some, archaisms and meant to be so to give an effect, others not even official readings but after-the-fact synthesized combinations chosen because they form the correct pronunciation, and may loosely represent the actual meaning, but bring out some other connotation in the word. (ex: Murakami’s spelling of “tobacco,” a foreign word, is composed of ‘smoke’ and ‘grass/plain.’ certainly more open to interpretation than just the word, or its pronunciation. i think of reeds in the wind in a wide flat plain, when i see that second character. when our hero smokes three cigarettes in a bar looking out on the city, it seems desolate and he seems displaced from his surroundings.)

There was a relatively recent movie of romeo and juliet starring Leo Dicaprio, forget the girl and forget the director but i think he was italian. there were neon lights, guns, beaches and hair gel, but it always rested on these spaced-out slow guitar riffs. i saw it in a unit on shakespeare in my 10th grade english class, looked up the soundtrack on itunes and now listen to it when i read, when i get the chance. they fit perfectly.

I was reading at home, and Naohiro told me hed like to read the book once i was finished, so we could talk about it. he seemed interested.

my mother sings vocals in a jazz band thats been going for 30 some years. i told her i was interested, and she invited me to their next practice that week, on the condition that i would correct her pronunciation for the first few tracks on chick corea/return to forever’s ‘light as a feather.’ she sang it beautifully. in a crazy connection, a recent irish exchange student who apparently has been going to a school near mine also guest starred at the practice and played a traditional irish flute for us all. (i brought my ukulele but chose not to take it out, because these guys were clearly about playing music, not screwing around.) he seemed like a nice kid, so we exchanged contact info after a quick conversation and i told him id love to hang out.
yesterday i got a text message from him, asking what i had in mind, and so today i met him after school and we went for coffee. hes a tall, buzz-cat (cutted?) 19 year old already out of highschool and here for a semester, knew some dirty japanese and had things to say. i got his opinion without even having to pry for it, on so many things and we talked for 4 hours until the first cafe closed and the next one started locking doors, steadily, one by one.

We talked about impressions on japan, japanese food, japanese females, our own countries (and their respective females), and finally i stopped asking questions to structure myself while we spoke louder and faster in a mix of the two languages. i described to him my summer and how i liked my ‘bouken,’ roundabout adventures with uncertain outcomes, then he scrolled down a list of his ridiculous undertakings from the past year or two. he had biked full circuit around ireland in 20 days with a friend, a tent some money and a cellphone, all planned in under a week and only a dublin music festival flier as an “itinerary.” he had slept in houses of people he met that same day and people he hadnt seen for years, over a decade in one case. he described it in terms of how it felt before and after and the fact, while we were drinking that one cup of coffee we had to to legitimize being in the cafe. and at one point, he told me about a hobby of his to set out in the morning with a backpack and the same bike, kicking it with his friends and turning left until he was lost.
they dont have the opportunity to run like that here, we agreed, when you are considered a child until 20 things are clearly layed out, like course plans and meal plans and when you should rest. (city streets are pretty well marked, too)

i told him to come to my school tomorrow and we could continue the conversation, kick it and he could meet my friends. as of now, it looks like were going to get along.

two days ago in a sang karaoke with Naohiro and two friends, from 12 to 530 and they said it had to be ‘cut short.’ i know very little about pop music from the past ten years, let alone whats been good in japan; i ended up singing stairway to heaven, a few tracks off of a coldplay cd my dad likes and, to my friends delight, the Jonas brothers, since i could read the lyrics and was hinting that i wanted to, really bad. (i thought the girls here liked them… the girls…) We biked over to the nearest mall and crammed into a ‘purikura’ photo booth- arcade attraction that takes your photo, allows you to draw on it, add colorful backgrounds and designs and then prints it out as small coin-sized stickers. i thought i might put them up in my desk for safe keeping, but then thought i might put up the digital files to share:

(please dont take offense, its actually pretty cute to cut filthy american slang and gestures here. at least now it is…)

When i last talked to my cousin living in tokyo, i asked if he wanted to talk. he was combing back his hair and looking in the mirror when he said to me “yeah. wait, it could be dangerous. what if she falls for me?” when i asked him that night in the baths if i could put his face up on my blog, while we scrubbed ourselves down, and he said “yeah. put my phone mail address up too. wait, dont, i pay for people not on my plan.” he sounded like he might actually be worried, then smiled and looked back at the mirror. funny kid.

I told him i hadnt seen the beautiful nature of the area, and thought he might like to go hiking. he called our friend taniguchi, who started laughing and wanted to go tomorrow. (which isnt going to happen, because we have school, but i didnt tell the kid that, ill just wait for the weekend) they have never been hiking, and at first Nao suggested a paved road that lead to a grouping of onsen bath-houses further up the side of the mountain.

and it seems jamie will be glad to come, as well.

I’m getting closer to Nao and the family, making efforts with the thought in mind that i only have a little over one month left. i get a sense for when they might laugh, when they want me to laugh, when they might call a evening run to the onsen baths, etc.. when i walked in the door at 930 tonight after talking with Jamie, everything was alright because my mom told me she knew where i was, and i could find my way up the lit streets to our house.

* * *

This is breaking news, to me and everyone else who hasnt heard-
sitting around the heated ‘kotatsu’ table tonight reading with only my mother still awake, she suddenly turned to me and started talking. she walked back on things we have discussed now and then for the past few weeks; the dynamic of japanese families and society in which people sacrifice their own personal interests for what might be the benefit of another, her own disappointment in realizing that she had partially compromised herself times before; her impressions with the world after her first airplane ride since she was born to a week of hiking in sedona, arizona, and living in the same house as someone from another country. she excitedly told me her story again of stepping on the plane and being shocked that she was “surrounded by people from all sorts of countries- indians, americans, asians and so few spoke my language.” i could never guess her age by merely looking but it seems she is around her early 50s, a nurse since before she was married; she told me just now that she was going to go out and find a new job.

i was taken back, listened closer and we talked for another 30 minutes or so. she had just decided today that she wanted to find something new and better, something that was in her interest and that could hopefully get her in on what she hadnt known about the world for so long. she had taken the first step today, telling her office she was looking, and i was apparently the first of the family to know. she didnt know what specific job she was going after, but wasnt phazed by the difficult economy and said she had been building this idea for a while, and had finally been inspired upon coming back. its not a common thing at all, especially with her as the main (only) breadwinner of the fatherless family. she has until march to figure out what it is she wants to do, and we discussed until she got up and went to bed.

when the rest of the fam’ hears next week, i think they’ll be all for it, and here’s to whats going to be moms (second?) great, bitchin’ ‘bouken’ adventure-

-J

One thing my mother says she loves about ryouhei are the cups and bowls he makes from clay. when i wake up in the morning, i eat a serving or two of rice out of a shallow, rough textured bowl he made earlier this year with swirls in the bottom. she said it was great that he had found something he liked to do and pursued it; he is a pretty quiet, shy kid at home, but spends his days at a high school with a track in art, specifically pottery. in the glass cabinet low above the kitchen cabinet, our mother has colorful mugs, bowls and a thin vase of his, as if they were on display. I told him how cool eating off of something handmade was, after school, the other day, and he pulled his puffy cheeks back and blushed. I have a statue of his, a dragon, in my room.

a week or two ago, we took a day trip to Ueda, in the south of the prefecture; there are more mountains and fewer rice paddies, but the atmosphere is much the same. we were going to the top of a mountain to meet a new age hermit, the owner of the kiln and the chef of a mountain cafe. when we were getting in the car, i asked him how it was, and he said he thought i might like it.

It was a beautiful day and the house, as i had it explained to me, was in a “center of chi,” relating in some way to feng shui, the shape of the mountains and arrangement of the trees. there was good energy all around, man.

we got to the top, and a 50-some guy with his hair pulled back, wearing sunglasses shuffled out onto the porch, greeting us warmly with a laid-back posture. name was Sasaki-san; this guy was a legitimate new age hermit. he had built his entire own house (on the top of a massive mountain) out of the wood planks that cut under old railroad track, built his own clay kiln and workshop looking out on the valley below, grew all of his own food and tea and was “interested in buddhism, lately.” we sat and talked on the front porch while his wife, running the ‘cafe,’ made some of the best cake ive had in a while. the house actually reminded me of a family friend’s old house in maine, beautiful and natural but cold like a bitch.
we talked about all range of things, specifically japanese technology and information overload, or the balance that he thought was missing. his daughter had been studying tai chi in rural china for the past 6 years, apparently. he had these tibetan flags hanging all over, as well as his own works of pottery. before we left, i asked him if he knew who john lennon was, and told him he could pass for an asian version of him. he laughed, the way john lennon probably laughed where he threw back his chin, and then slowly came back down.

here are some pictures from the day:

I saw a friends post on facebook last night, after a phone call to my mom where she suggested i might start to ease back in to the ann arbor life. the friend said he was a fan of pokemon, a game we americans may remember from a few years back, which abruptly went out about the time i turned 9. 10 years back, we had just red and blue- that is, 150 friendly, cuddily pokemon, and you only needed one other friend or a bitch of a spoiling mom to collect them all. we spent our elementary school careers strategizing on how to beat the elite four, linking games with a cable (a physical, made-of-rubber-and-wire cable), and i remember getting a charizard trading card at a birthday party that brought my brother to tears.

for years, the game lay in their basements while middle schoolers trashed it, like they had never loved it. we had sent it back to japan. but little did they know, it didnt need them to love it. it was still growing, gaining colors and expanding generations and bonus packs, where comic-book characters decorate pornography and every highschooler’s cellphone attaches to a chain, attached to a small, furry character. they were 493 strong, and i saw them on the shelf two weeks ago.

this kid made some comment, 11 people responded below him and only one of them wasnt sentimental. it seems almost everyone has good memories, given the time they need to appreciate them. but they dont know pokemon… no, they dont know the pokemon like i do. they dont know pain-have you ever seen a highschooler weep on losing a pokemon match, who stuffs his gameboy in his backpack and then sits alone? have you ever seen a grown man sitting on the floor of a train, huddled around his DS like it were his only source of heat!? since when is it an obligation to buy pokemon to fit in at the lunch table, since when did vocabulary rotate around imaginary species, since when did my love life become an affair with an role playing game!?
i was up until two every night last week, and im still not even half way through.

so i wake up with my eyes sore sometimes, now. of frequent trips to the school library to skip classical japanese literature and history, more and more were turning into naps, until just recently. i closed my book and slept for the first three hours of school on tuesday and only woke up when the library teacher touched my arm. we talked over lunch that day, and i finished ‘a wild sheep chase’ the next period. at her recommendation, ill be starting the wind-up bird chronicles, soon as i get this friggin game out of the way. just gotta beat that elite four.

-J

In a concerned voice, they warned us that on our return home, we might get a shock like living in a foreign country. every once in a while, YFU (Youth For Understanding, the program i am on) will send out an informational packet detailing the measures you can take to lighten the load, slow the pain as you figure out its all over, and lately, the position we might find ourselves in once we get home. they say our local social scenes will have shifted and we will see more and less of different people, we may be more mature than our friends and that will be seen as arrogance, etc. to finish off the year in papers and informational sessions, they invited all the exchange students in the area, along with their families, for a re-arrival orientation in tokyo this last weekend.

on the night before we left, I stayed up until 3:30 rolling sushi with naohiro and my mother. when ryouhei woke up, came in and his face had swollen to make the shape of a sphere (apparently a nervousness-triggered non-viral version of the mumps…) we made some quick plans in our dazed, late night confusion. im sure none of us could have walked in a straight line, as this was getting near all-nighter #2 for naohiro and i, but my mother somehow managed to stumble to the phone and arrange it such that my area representative would take me and naohiro to tokyo; from there, as we had originally planned to do as a family, he would take us to a theme park at the foot of mount fuji for the day. he was surprisingly flexible for someone who works from from 9 to 10.

lately, i have been writing a lot of speeches. in preparation for the orientation, they asked all the students to write a japanese summary of their experiences and their thanks, to present in front of everyone; in a burst of a soft ending, my school has my scheduled to make a farewell speech for 1300 people on christmas, my last day at school. I am also writing “specialized versions” of ‘thanks, its been cool’ for my class and the teachers of the school, but those are only short ones. those can be written at 330 the night before, or taken as an excerpt from one of the ones i have already written because you can only state things politely, yet creatively, within the boundaries a limited amount of times. this week, i sat in the library and talked things over with the teacher there, each time slowly approaching her office door and politely asking if she was busy; each time i either skipped the next class because we kept overflowing to new subjects or was really really fashiobably late. i try to put thought into these speeches wherever they will let me, lately my method being descriptions of very specific, special events and times rather than grand roundabout discussions. looking my time back over, searching for special things and then writing them down has really started bringing them up to the surface, and has helped me think about bringing it to an end. who knew these things made it into memories?

the secret objective of the orientation was to compare the languages skills of the kids from different countries, and shame those who didnt do their kumon worksheets. they had the eight exchange students lined up in a batting order, clearly those who were incapable went first and they had a video camera trained on the mic; all the families, too, seemed very curious as to which country had the best language skills. we americans were 3, a friend of mine from the beginning orientation (actually half japanese, so his language skills are impeccable) and a kid from minnesota. as all the kids went down the line, thai after dutch after australian, me and the half sat smug in the back and bumped fists, saying “the ball is in our court, man,” laughing at bad accents, as we were scheduled to go last. then, just before me, a good looking thai girl got up and gave a near-impromptu speech full of giggly, girly things, but our faces dropped. naohiro, who was taking a video with his ipod, kept going over our faces just to record our reactions; it was a bad speech, but like a japanese high school girl had just gotten up to have a conversation with the crowd. we felt defeated.

these mark the last of my days at the school. i have been trying to spend them carefully, not that i was ever reckless in anything, but i talk to the right people now. when all five kids sitting at my table pulled out their PSPs, i talked for the period to the one kid in the room who ive ever seen reading a novel, the quiet kid who sits in the corner. i cleaned out my desk, full of filth and english tests, and looked up to see my homeroom teacher standing there, who had written down at least 5 ways of reaching him. after business talk was over, he stayed by me and said he was going to miss me. i think he will be reading this blog. (wassup, sensei?!)

when the girls walk by in the hall, saying “herro,” and giggling when i give it back in smooth english, thats when i know im going to miss being the romantic foreigner- that kid with the accent who doesnt quite get what you are saying the first time, but keeps listening. ive taken every attempt to be spoken to by any english teacher or otherwise, knowing its the last time i might ever get a conversation beyond greetings with that guy. the girls of my class asked me to stay after school tomorrow, to go take photobooth pictures at a nearby mall. the kid who sits next to me, best student in the grade and only kid to sincerely try speaking in english, gave me a christmas card when the class gathered for a farewell karaoke party, this wednesday:
“I am wishing you a merry christmas!”
talking to people, its getting harder to lie that i might come back and see them, someday.

late at night, when we have finished lifting weights in the weight room, all the club gathered in the back room and ate cake to celebrate christmas eve. we talked a little about how i felt about leaving, and i gave a round of overdone hugs to the gentlemen, saying “you will remain in my heart,” directly quoting a karaoke song and hinting at the tune. our leader is the type of kid who just picked up a carton of unopened warm milk from the corner of the room and started drinking, then looked surprised when someone asked him where it had come from; he could sit on me and kill me, but he gently handed me two pieces of chocolate before i packed up to go home and smiled.

tomorrow is my last day at the school, christmas, and if you believe in so-called ‘time differences,’ the last few hours ill be 16, for the duration. i give a speech in the morning to the room of teachers, walk around the school taking photos with the various kid who spots me and realizes i am leaving, pack it up. im nervous as hell, sitting here and typing that this is where it all ends for me, but i tell myself there are still a few days left outside the school.

this week, i have been staying around long after the halls go dark and only a few classroom lights remain on. ill look around my room again, re-read the posters ive seen every day, look at the staplers and chalkboards i used every day. right when you exit the shoe-less section of the school, there is a poster of a girl standing by her bike on the sunniest day, telling kids not to drink alcohol. i had a friend snap a pic of me and her, after i explained to him that she was the hottest girl in the school, and he blushed. i would have liked one of the blush, too.

I know that tomorrow marks the last day ill do so many things, like slide open the glass doors or change into the library’s brown slippers; ill be coming home with a notebook page full of email addresses, but i somehow know i wont keep in touch with more than a few close friends. for a lot of those kids, writing down their name will be a goodbye ceremony. Im going to hug some people and awkwardly shake hands with others, maybe wink at some girls and then finally ride home with my brother to celebrate christmas, maybe nothing at all, and maybe at a ramen shack nearby.

For us, new years came and went in just under 24 hours, the time it took me to try significant thoughts, give up and listen to bump of chicken lyrics in my head. all the while a light snow fell that turned into thick slush, just enough to kill my feet as i walked down the streets outside.

the five of us prepared foods, cleaned the living room, and when naohiro declared he was the best nintendo player in the house, well, somebody had to take him down. our older sister, just returned from studying in kyoto for the holiday, sat on her knees and put things away while my mother spun 360s in the kitchen small enough that you can touch any 3 corners at one time. i read until the door-bell rang and our grandfather waddled in.

of all the holidays in japan, new years (お正月　＝　oshougatsu) is the biggest, baddest most streamer clad and lantern lighting bully on the playground. if holidays in japan were characters from highschool musical, new years would be the main girl after those pictures of her leaked on the internet. families gather, kids come home for the weekend, grandparents get driven over and get ready for the highly ritualized evening celebration.
we sat around the low-level table in the living room and ate designated foods until 9. there was some light chatter over sound of the TV, where naohiro was turned 90 degrees away from the real action to watch a yearly reality TV special. my grandfather had seen a reenactment of the japanese military campaign in china during world war two earlier that day, and so was eager to talk; as a young man, he had spent a year in manchuria. he never fired a rifle, but buried plenty of chinese. he kept telling me that the 66 years since then seemed like nothing when he thought about it as much as he did.
you know, i told my self at one point i had to avoid these things- the top three you cant bring up in an american-japanese conversation are the bomb/world war II, yoko ono, and the american air base on ookinawa. i kept asking questions to the granddad though, even hitting two of those three we didnt get anywhere uncomfortable or awkward.
(living in japan, my conversational attack style coupled with an eagerness to use big, unneccessary words i just learned makes for very uncomfortable situations every day. think of it like a guy you slightly know finding you, looking you in the eyes and suddenly asking, `wanna hang out?`)

we went to a shrine that night, and yes, i threw in my coins, prayed my prayers and got a fortune for the year. mine was `good,` and apparently the person i am waiting for is coming, but will be late. everyone else had either `pretty good` or `really good.` they clearly dont give out the bad ones, but its all for the best. we missed the streamers and everyone fell asleep before 2, except for me, and i read the longest time i have since coming here, until 6 am. i woke up on the sofa and lunch was being served.

in the end, this japanese holiday consisted of resting, for us. we had some events, some new foods, but we mainly sat around the table slowly talking until night time of the 1st, when we went to a bath house, the same as any other weekend. we passed around new years cards at the table that afternoon; ryouhei and i pointed out which girls we would receive as our girlfriends, and when we both decided the good looking thai girl from my orientation ‘belonged to me,’ we rock-paper-scissored it to find that yes, she belongs to me, he got the other asian chick and naohiro gets my chemistry teacher. he was spread on the sofa and putting in comments in comic voices, (he referred to ryouhei as “warm pillow,” constantly) still wearing sweat pants and a vodaphone jersey; three of our six soon fell asleep under the heated blanket and ryouhei retreated to his video games. it was clear that the day ended here, as far as events were concerned. i was still in my jeans and sweater from the last night.

japanese people think i am crazy for going walking outside, especially on cold days like this. my family tells me it is dangerous, asks me where i am going, gives me a reflector vest, but in the end lets me go as long as i have my cellphone. i celebrated my new year by walking up to the hillside graveyard and seeing the early night industrial cityscape in this valley, then responding to a few text messages, giving up thinking and going home.

after seeing 2012 and the trailer for “alvin and the chipmunks, the squeakquel,” I resolved to only watch good, worthwhile movies this year. Ive had a tendency since 8th grade to see movies ‘just because i want to see big robots get beaten up,’ but its time to put an end to it. we didnt go out last night, or tonight and might not this week, but in a bag on the sofa, the truman show, trainspotting and fight club are all just waiting to get watched.

happy new year, cheers-

-J

Jamie, my irish friend i met just over a month ago and have loved like a father ever since, leaves for tokyo in a number of hours, from where he flies home to ireland. as a last meeting, naohiro and i spent the night at his house. we had a feast that night with 10 other friends of his from the neighborhood, passed out on the tatami floor in his room around 2, and then went to a bath house the next morning. ryouhei took this video for us that second day, right before he walked us to our car. i put it up on youtube-

愛の意味探している三人；　three young men questioned their love

Jamie wonders aloud what love is, and i propose it “feels a little like this.” naohiro didnt know/couldnt pronounce the lyrics, but had a funny way of whistling, so we had him help us out a little.

I felt horrible the rest of the day, after saying goodbye. my stomach was shaking too much to eat anything until late in the night, and me and naohiro only sat cross legged on the couch talking slowly for the next half hour. people and things are disappearing all over; hes a great kid, and we had too much of a good time making fun of japanese people and drinking that one coffee, over and over again, went skiing, lifted weights, played frisby at 3 in the morning while naohiro tried to get us to lower our voices, did all the things it sucks to finally record because they wont keep happening. i couldnt stop thinking about it and couldnt sleep until, well, maybe in an hour or two.

it was great, man. i hope you have had a good time too. 人生の残りを楽しんでね、thanks, and youre welcome to michigan, any time-　

– 治永

I want a drug like me, dancing to j-pop in a room with blank walls, no furniture, like maybe a conversation with my mother once everyone else has gone to sleep. me and her, we talked until 3 after a night until 5 on a 3-4 hour run, where she consistently, yet absent-mindedly, hit me with the deepest, most un-answerable questions like “where does your soul reside in your body,” and, “do different people experience time in different ways?” Now, here is something to take home, i thought and laughed, walking in from walking in and out of department stores in the morning; i felt like an epicly groomed badass with longer hair, tighter jeans and my black pearl-izumi jacket zipped up tight then, but i couldnt find myself any souvenirs. that may be something ill have to forget about.

i found myself in the last two days of my 5.5 month long “exchange excursion,” as i called it in my first ever blog entry, when i woke up, the morning before shopping. I get hit with sensations in 1, 2, and 5 minute bursts like some sort of relapse, when i suddenly remember a time four months ago on a train or outside in the mountain air, and i lean forward, my heart races, stomach trembles and my head pushes me back like maybe standing in a wind tunnel; my appetite has significantly dropped and my Japanese turns worse and worse, when I am thinking about these other things. but in conversation, i can only tell people how quickly it went by, giving these quick summaries and wishing them good luck. i think its time i set down my thoughts.

Time ran short after new years, and a last act towards my best friends in a manner to suggest “yeah, this is the last time i will see you,” Naohiro broke out his cellphone and texted down our list. in a drowsy series of repeated dazed “what the f#$% !?”s, like an electric massager in a heated bath, we spent one night at a friends house, we all biked back across town to our house in the bitch of a cold evening, where another 4 came over and stayed until 2 pm the next day. now japanese parties arent as wild as anyone might have thought them to be, but the snack food is superb, energy drinks are stronger, and i had a solid sendoff with our 10 hours of card games and two trips to the bath house. the one kid who was getting on a plane to london the next day talked with me for hours about it; when i asked him why he was going, he grinned like it was funny, and said he was going to “find himself.” I happen to know he is going with his mom and i can guess that they will stay at hotels, but we were all saying wild and ambitious things to eachother, faking crying a little bit. now i am mailing back and forth with them all, telling them this isnt it because we still have email, skype, and there is still a day left if they feel the need, or when i need them, to drop back in again.

I like to think of naohiro as what an asian older brother of mine, with our relationship like this. He does looks suspiciously like a Hack… i met him in the weight room, we talked for a few hours that first night and struck up a friendship centered mainly around the bench press and those dirty english words. meanwhile, the nights i only wanted to go to sleep, listening to radiohead and chick corea came more and more frequently; i sent him a text message back when i changed hosts, and just today, i heard his story from my mother- when she had come in the door, returned from her week long trip to california, she was thanking her kids for being so understanding; naohiro said ‘dont mention it’ and held up the screen to her face.
I most frequently talk to people when we are just two. he told me the deepest conversation he ever had was on that night after the night i had come to his house. we mustve talked about love, or maybe stephen hawking and “a brief history of time,” which i tried to lend to him, but he looked at the back cover and nodded at me, almost laughing. but i did give him every thought i had on travelling, i looked up the word for “expansion of the mind,”i told him about my experiences here and there, we got all excited.
on living for so many days with the same person, always riding to school together in the morning, always locking his kickstand when hes not looking, too many times writing dirty, dirty words on the fogged mirrors in his favorite bath house, i got to know when he might laugh. I have explicit rights to cross his mood at any time, like snatch raamen noodles from his bowl the night he fails a test, unscathed other than a dirty look and fewer noodles that next day. naohiro told me he was in love with a girl i doubt exists and never considered what might happen if, for some reason, his plans to marry her on graduating college and move to tokyo never went through. that season came and gone when i was worried what might happen to my brother. he wants, and hell have, his own adventures.
i think he tells only me these things, like a little brother who we both know is only here for his 2 and a half months, and will then leave. and once i leave, naohiro will listen to his ipod full-time when in the house. his ears take in less than 50% of whatever you say, on the ipod. he goes back to it when he doesnt want to reach out or be spoken to. i told him staying in touch has never been so easy.

i shouldve asked ryouhei to paint a portrait of my mother, before i leave. she could be any flavor of slightly worried, deeply sentimental, oblivious but always smiley. i wanted some way to preserve the fact that i never meet people who ask to suddenly start world travel and “healing” at the age of no one will tell me. we cant go places without her talking about traveling; apparently, its all the rage among the middle-aged nurses at her office now, suddenly deciding to travel for the first time. a woman who, through my mother, invited my irish friend me to her childrens ballroom dancing class for an evening last month (?) leaves for france in only a few weeks, with the sudden interest and sense that it couldnt wait for another holiday.
for three days, she has started our conversations in english, english that sounds like its written down in a notebook, somewhere, because we only get in a few phrases before we get to ‘confused face,’ where we laugh and drop it. we might talk one night, and she would bring up that same thing the next at dinner, maybe more excited or eyebrow-bendingly curiously. she never watched movies seriously before, so i wrote down a list of every freaky movie i saw, i loved and woke up the next morning thinking “what!?”: so far, we have seen fight club, trainspotting, the truman show, a clockwork orange, oceans 11, slumdog millionaire, and being john malkovich is on the counter. and she loves it.
she wants to speak english over skype, send letters and email and, also, speak japanese over skype, she told me. earlier at the table, she humbly slid across a note with her contact information on it, like i might not accept it and would just continue eating. I offered the homestay up to her as well, and she would love to come to america to see me and my culture, but for now just wants to write letters for all the talking we wont be able to continue.

I looked at my cellphone once more before i told myself i would go to bed the other night, back at my most cherished notes from the last half year, like “how come my female relationships never start with me walking in on her bathing under a waterfall?!” this last half year, i gained a sharper idea of what was before a pixelized image: in starting every relation i had, walking, training and busing the japanese landscape, in writing the character of jay in weekly periodical documents of my adventure, we now know much more than we did before.
in significant times, there is a deep, warm pressure in my chest that pushes it up and forwards, makes it feel filled with warm liquid. on being inspired, hearing or seeing something i previously couldnt comprehend, it kicks in and my head goes light, stomach quivers and i can only imagine myself in so many angles with some new dimension, some previously unthought of dimension. I had this when i was younger, quite a bit, when anything would do it like a night at summer camp or a circue di soliel video tape and stayed up all night thinking of my future break dancing. it took me a while to feel it, but now i feel that pressure like nothing when i stopped to think and write, and im shaking and blushing while typing.
I had the most significant day in my life in week long spurts, since maybe when I got off the plane. I was mystified, repelled and confused at the things Japanese people construct their environment from, still feel sick sometimes, but then again, the thought that a 17 year old could comprehend everything would be disappointing. I think i have found myself at the summit of these 17 years; now, however, things have opened up and ive seen new dimensions and angles on who we are as people, and what we can make of it. My adventure ends here, but its hard not to look forward to the rest of my life, in the widening and diverse world that my experience in japan has introduced me to. I know I am going to be rolling off quotes and lessons from japan as long as anyone will listen.
And I have new friends, new people who have touched my life and I have played a role in so many others, knowing me exclusively for the fact that I came here and did these things. When I leave, its going to take years and years for the presence of eathother to fade, im thinking tonight. This is going to stay with me, hopefully with my friends and family, until we are beaten and aged, and the memory of jay hack disappears completely.

* * *

this marks the end of ‘in pixels,’ as i get on a train to tokyo in just under 7 hours. I would love to keep going at it week after week, but it is time for me to go home. i saw an article on comcast news the other day on massive winter storms hitting the midwest; facebook is plastered with people referring to their chemistry homework, winter dance, etc., and i looking forward to revelling in it all over. I will be a second-semester junior at my same highschool, but am entirely unsure about how the new (old?) environment will feel in comparison, what will have changed, and where i will be when things settle down. another adventure? eh?
this is going to be a great personal record of my thoughts and feelings while in the midst of my half-year exchange. I plan to keep it up on the internet for at least a little while, so feel free to stop back by. I hope you have enjoyed reading what i had to say, and thank you for your attention, comments, for providing me with this justifiable thought-log, and sending the love back out here. I am back in the states near midnight on the 10th, so drop me a line.
thanks, enjoy that weather-

-Jay