this morning

This hostel is a hilariously crazy environment right now. It's seven in the morning and the kid i went walking around with yesterday has been up all night drinking. There was also a man who just came in claiming he started some cancer charity organization that's number three in the U.S. Here is a sample conversation:

me: You've been drinking all night, haven't you?
cancer: This dude's been fuckin' with all the wires in this room all night.
drunk: Does anyone know the password to this computer. I turned it off and back on and now it asks for a password.
me: Don't ask me for the password.
drunk: It says the clue is "Jasmine".
me: Try "tea". Jasmine's made from tea.
cancer: Dude, the fuckin' big guy is gonna come back and be like, "who fucked with the wires", and I'm gonna tell him it was you.
drunk: I didn't... I didn't fuck with anything. I... was simply rearranging.
me: Well, he's an electrician. He knows what he's doing.
drunk: I am not.. an electrician. I.. I need a cigarette. (searches under the table)
me: Your cigarette pack is sitting on the table.
drunk: You.. don't know... I put some under the table.
me: You are full of shit.
cancer: This kid, man, he was fuckin' with all the wires. He was takin' shit out, putting shit back in, pluggin' shit everywhere.
drunk: (smoking a cigarette butt)
me: Are you smoking a cigarette butt from the ashtray?
drunk: I am... yes.
some guy sitting with laptop: That smells like shit. Put that out.
drunk: I need cigarettes.
me: But you don't smoke.
drunk: But they're so cheap here! I need to buy them.
guy: I'm about to go buy you some new cigarettes just to get you to stop smoking those butts.
drunk: I just need to play this video game.
me: You know, we shouldn't be so attached to machines. You know, a hundred million years ago, were eating mammoths.
drunk: Elephants.
me: Do you know where the mammoth's heart is located?
drunk: I know! It's on the... the fucking bottom of the...
me: No! You're wrong. The modern elephant's heart is in the normal place, but the ancient elephant's heart is located on the other side. It's all evolution. You see, the cavemen would always stab them in the same place, so the ones with the hearts on the other side would survive.
cancer: You're fuckin' around, man.
me: I am not.
drunk: See, I would just stab them in the anus.
me: That's where the tenderest meat in. The choicest cut. Rump roast.
drunk: Right in the anus. And then the other caveman would stab them in their eyes. Right in the eyes.
me: You threw up all over the stairs, didn't you?
drunk: Listen, once it goes down, it never comes up, you hear me?
cancer: Hey, you gotta see this! (playing with mirror by the window).
me: (walks over). What's that?
cancer: Check it out! (focusing light on bystanders outside with mirror). They don't know a thing!
me: Hey, that's pretty funny.
cancer: Ha! Watch, let's look in this store. Hey, what's in there? Some stuff. Hey, look at this girl. She doesn't even realize!
me: Yeah. I never thought the sun could be so funny.
cancer: You know, if I focus the light long enough on one of those chargers near the power lines, it'll explode! I mean, I won't do it, but it would.
me: You could probably burn a hole through that girl's head.
cancer: Yeah, probably could.
drunk: (staring into space)


and so on....

The rest of my morning was spent in observation of "drunk". He has done the following: spilled coffee all over himself, smoked more cigarette butts, said the word "fish" out of nowhere and could not explain it to me when i inquired about it, told a german girl to "shut up", collapsed on the floor giggling and drooling after playing with a baby toy with a wooden hammer, spilled other drinks that may have been alcoholic.

arrival in Tokyo

I`ve arrived in Tokyo, the largest city in the world and the source of all the bizarreness in the world. Bizarreness is actually produced here in a factory only two subway stops away from the hostel i am staying in, the Guess T House. It is in the shape of a Hello Kitty and it speaks Japanese with an electronic squeaky voice. For now, my plan is to find breakfast. I spent this morning dragging my five bags through the Tokyo subway, asking random people for directions, losing feeling in my fingers and arms, barely awake after my sleep on the bus ride, it being about 6 am when i got off the bus. I have to leave my bags here in the trust of some suspicious gaijin. I met a French surgeon and a middle-aged man from New Hampshire earlier this morning in the hostel lounge; i don`t think they`d steal my dirty clothes and half-package of green tea. A large balding geek just entered the room babbling about Kyoto. He might steal my underwear. More later on future wackiness.

too Japanese and difficult choices

That was Friday night. Saturday morning i cycled to a station four stations away from mine to meet some friends to go on the long-anticipated hiking trip. When i arrived, an older British woman studying organic chemistry, whom i met at an international party late last year, and a British college student who works with her were sitting on the steps. The woman, who is bizarrely frantic and anxious but usually quiet and antisocial, offered me a burnt sausage that she cooked. Naturally, i politely declined, but a crafty orange cat that had been hiding in the bushes nearly swiped one from her plastic container. She shooed it away, but it still lingered in the bushes, and was soon joined by another black cat looking for breakfast. Danni finally arrived and we got on the train. She had organized the whole trip. Emi, Danni's Japanese friend, was already sitting on the train when we climbed on, and Derek, a Republican Christian vegan from Seattle who studies bible, got on at a later stop. All these Republicans, living with what i used to think were liberal lifestyles, have changed my image from a fat sniveling old man to a backwards-thinking youngster. Although i cannot criticize other people's opinions, i think that there are just a few things that these kids choose to ignore, but that's another story. When we arrived at Kamojima, the same place where Canadian Alex lives, we met up with three other Japanese: an English teacher named Keiko and two of her students, one 15-year-old boy named Atsushi and one 14-year-old girl named Chiatsu, brother and sister, both with an extremely minimal comprehension level of English. This was our team.
The hiking trail we took was the same one that Alex and i took with some others late last year. It was interesting to see it in a different season. There were cherry blossoms in bloom and beautiful birds songs, one of which reminded me of a Costa Rican bird. When we climbed to the mid-point of the first mountain i tried to find the bird that was singing that song, and i happened upon a traveling older man who asked me a two word question: "Baado Wachingu?" I said yes and then asked him if he knew the name of the bird, and after he told me he remarked that it was impossible to see because it is extremely sensitive to human noise, but that it had a beautiful green plumage. Throughout the hike i could not manage to see this bird, but its song accompanied us throughout our journey. The trail was a bit less strenuous this time, perhaps because i had done it before and knew what i was in for. During the hike, i talked to everyone a bit, alternating between people and having nice little chats, sometimes half in Japanese, sometimes only in Japanese, usually only in English. After all, everyone could speak English besides the two kids, and they were very quiet and obedient. Derek speaks very natural and nearly fluent Japanese, and he would converse with all the Japanese often in their native tongue, which must have been comforting amidst all the English. Danni speaks just about as well as i can, but she speaks very slowly and stubbornly refuses to use English while she is trying to think of the right words, and all her listeners must always be very patient. In this respect, i usually speak much faster than her but in shorter sentences. It is just humourous to watch the agonizing looks on her listener's faces sometimes, looking like they want to scream out the correct word or conjugation.
We stayed in the temple complex of the temple that sits atop the third mountain of the hike. By this point were were all sweaty and tired, though not soaked thanks to the cool breezes of the early evening. I took a Japanese-style bath, which consists of soaping up on a small seat and rinsing off the soap, then emerging oneself in a deep hot bath and steeping one's body for however long one can stand. When i emerged, i felt like a new person, and shortly afterwards we were served a delicious vegetarian dinner. We slept on futons upon tatami floors, and lights were out at around 9:30. We were all amazed to find ourselves so sleepy at such an early hour. Up on the mountain, my conception of time that is usually correlated to the frequency of car noises and city sounds was useless; the only sounds were the creaking of the wooden floors and the soft night sounds of the forest. The view outside our window looked out upon a breathtaking expanse of misty mountains and forest.
In the morning, after our Japanese breakfast of rice and miso soup and pickles, i joked with the British student, Will, about how this trip was so Japanese. Essentially, everything we did was entirely parallel with our conceptions of what was Japanese:
1. Eating rice with every meal of the day.
2. Hiking up mountains to a temple.
3. Admiring cherry blossoms.
4. Sleeping in a temple on futons upon tatami mats.
5. Greeting numerous white-cloaked Buddhist pilgrims.
6. Taking a real ofuro (Japanese bath) at night.
7. Ending the second day with a trip to an onsen (bathhouse).
The only thing missing were the ninjas, but we assumed we would encounter them soon enough. Before we left the temple we were given little crackers with delicate etchings of a religious figure and the kanji that stated the number of this temple in the 88 temple pilgrimage of Shikoku: twelve. I ate them.
The second day we hiked down and then up again to a tall waterfall. Will decided to scale the rock wall beside it using a chain fastened there for that purpose, and i decided to follow, along with Danni and Emi. It was frightening to climb such a slippery wall with my only support as my own two hands, but i got to the top, sat around and marveled at the waterfall from a closer vantage point, then slowly and carefully made my way back down. I had taken off my shoes as a suggestion from Will and paid the painful price of sore feet. After this, we went hiking up a nearly 45 degree slope to an isolated small temple on the top of this mountain. No one lives there, nor does anyone work there often, as it is so difficult to get to because no paved roads lead to it. On our way back down, it started to rain, but the tree cover protected us for a while. Eventually though, i was soaked from head to toe but still persevering, trying not to slip off the trail on the slippery stones and plunge into the pit of brown pine nettles and rocks. We managed to leave the mountain without injury, and proceeded back into the rural town of Kamojima, having made some kind of oblong circle. We entered the onsen filthy and tired, and happily stripped off our clothes, separated by sexes of course, and did the wash and rinse routine before entering the hot baths. By this point Derek had left already, and it was just Will, Atsushi and i. It was Will's first visit to an onsen, so i went around with him and showed him the ropes. Towards the end, Atsushi reccomended we join him in a special bath that was steeped in an herb mixture. What looked like an enormous tea bag floated in the water. I told Will that things were getting a little too Japanese for my comfort, because we were basically sitting in a huge bath of tea. The ninjas could have burst through the walls at any moment, sensing the Japan-o-meter reaching its peak, but we left the bath too soon for any hazard to strike.
After the onsen, we hopped on a bus headed home. On the bus, i had Keiko write me the kanji for good and evil, and i wrote upon it, "Good and Evil. Choose!" I gave it to the two kids, who both chose good. I then remarked how the kanji for good looked like the one for sheep, and Keiko wrote the sheep kanji just above it to show me the difference. I then asked Chiatsu to choose between a sheep and evil, and amidst confusion and indecision, finally chose a sheep. I then asked her to choose between a good sheep and a bad sheep, and when she finally chose a good one, i told her that the good sheep was unclean and the bad sheep was beautiful, and this just threw her into a state of deeper confusion. She could not answer.
This marks the end of the trip and all the important episodes contained within it.

more old man hijinks and WW2

Time is ticking away.
Friday night i went to a little place i found when i first arrived for dinner. It is in the bar district near my house and owned by an older husband and wife, and they serve pretty traditional Japanese food. I was only there about 3 other times, and i got vegetable tempura all those times--they already knew about my diet and the fact that i could speak some Japanese, and therefore were not afraid of me. When i walked in, i sat next to a skinny middle-aged man finishing his dinner at the bar. Behind us were a Western-style table with chairs and next to it, tatami-matting and several cushions beneath a Japanese-style low table. The man was obviously nervous, and the owner said something about Italy so the man asked if i was Italian, and i answered no, that i am American, and he apologized profusely. I then began to try to converse with him, though he spoke very fast and nervously and was apparently quite drunk, as he nearly tipped over my miso soup bowl while performing an expressive action with his arms. Shortly after i arrived, an old man came in with a friend and sat down next to me. He said to me in English, "Your name is Jamie, right?" I said yes, and he said, "I know you, yes, I know you very well." I was puzzled but i remained unsurprised. I finally asked him how he knew me, and he told me not to worry about that. Then he said something about Germany, and began to ask me questions about it, and it finally clicked. He was the man who gave Yuuki and i directions when we were trying to find the artsy cafe a couple of weeks ago. He remarked then how i looked German, as he was trying to guess my nationality (which is a celebrated past-time here), and i simply affirmed that i was, to avoid any complication and to ensure that no more English would be thrown my way. But by this point he knew i could speak English, though he was still convinced i was German. I was busy entertaining him by pronouncing several German words, whereupon he would laugh deeply and try to repeat them, then insist that i clink beer glasses with him (at this point i had felt compelled to order one too). We must've clinked glasses at least thirty times, because every time he looked at me he raised his glass with a threatening look on his face, as if to say, 'If you know what's good for you, clink the glass.' As he spoke English, he would force an unnatural grin upon his face and look either straight through me or at a point in space just beyond my face. He needed time to think of words every so often, and would sit there grinning deeply and staring until he found the word, and when he spoke he would enunciate in all the wrong places. The other man, who could not speak much English aside from simple sentences, was complaining to me about English study, and then began to talk to me about world war 2 after he learned i went to Hiroshima and visited the museum. I smiled and nodded as this man spoke, but i only understood the simplest points he was trying to make. Eventually, after the woman cook was confused about my ambiguous nationality, i had to invent a story in which i was German but studied in the U.S., and somehow everyone believed me. The old man ended up paying for my dinner.