Roach!!!
30 May 2003, 20:25
Last summer we were pretty worried about getting cockroaches (in Japanese: gokiburi) in the apartment. We even went so far as to “bomb” the place (a can purchased from the local pharmacy that emits toxic smoke while you shut all the doors and windows and stay away for 5 hours). As a result, we only had a few little ones under the fridge and that was about it.
We bombed again this year, not 4 weeks ago. So you can imagine my surprise when I heard a rustling this morning whilst lying in bed, and looked up to see a cockroach TWO INCHES LONG crawling along the wall RIGHT BY MY HEAD!
The sound a cockroach makes is unusual - it is comparable to the rustling of a plastic bag, and in my dreamy state I thought perhaps there was a plastic bag at my side. You know, maybe I bought an onigiri rice ball or something from the local convenience store last night and lazily placed it by my bed. But a plastic bag that moves by itself?
In a single move I leapt from the futon, grabbed the roach spray from the kitchen and ploughed the cheeky bugger full of poison. Several layers of it. It looked kinda helpless, on its back, gasping for life. The Buddhist in me cried for sympathy, but all the while there was only one thing going through my head.
Die, die you bastard!!!
Permanent Link | Seismology 101
27 May 2003, 06:16
Just hit by a motherf**ker of an earthquake.
North of Tokyo, in Iwate and Yamagata prefectures, the earthquake was rated a category “7”. In humble Toshima-ku, it was rated a “4” and our little apaato got a serious shakedown - felt like I was on Regan’s bed in “The Exorcist”. Since I’ve been in Japan, I’ve experienced god knows how many earthquakes, some weeks on a daily basis, but this is perhaps the second earthquake I’ve felt where I’ve seriously thought the shit was about to hit the fan. Luckily, it just caused some minor skiddies.
The conundrum is, however, that Japan has formulated its own “earthquake” scale, the “shindo” scale, which is quite unlike the richter scale. The “shindo” scale measures what people actually feel at any given location, whereas the richter scale measures the energy released by an earthquake. Kind of like the “touchy-feely-seismic-scale”. Who said seismologists weren’t caring and sharing?
Sore winners or an ancient custom?
26 May 2003, 19:56
On Saturday, we hiked into the Kokugikan Arena to watch the second to last day of the “Emperor’s Cup” Sumo Tournament.
It was a high drama day, as 3 of the wrestlers were vying for the top spot, including Asashoryu (affectionately known in certain circles as “Arse, I’ll show you”), the recently appointed Yokozuna, the highest rank of sumo wrestlers. The other Yokozuna, Musashimaru, was injured, so it was down to Asashoryu and two Ozeki (the second highest ranking), Maio and Chiyotaikai for top place.
In an ironic twist, the two Yokozuna are both foreigners - Asashoryu is Mongolian and Musashimaru is Hawaiian. The Japanese have been supportive of both its Yokozuna (both of them speak fluent Japanese), however, in the last week, an incident involving Asashoryu and one of the Japanese wrestlers, courted some disfavour toward the Mongolian. After Asashoryu lost a bout to the other wrestler, he was bumped by his opponent, to which Asashoryu shot him a glare (oh, nooooooooooooo!). He was consequently reprimanded by the Sumo Association. Can you imagine the AFL reprimanding one of its players every time they shot a glare at someone?
Asashoryu was fighting Kaio in the last match of the day. Our man, Asashoryu put up a valiant fight but was ultimately catapulted out of the ring by Kaio. When he went down, hysteria erupted in the Japanese audience, and suddenly, what seemed like hundreds of cushions were thrown at the dohyo (the sacred ring). Matt, Albert and I watched the display in disbelief, particularly when, during the final ceremonial dance, one of the cushions hit the referee on the head.
Being foreigners ourselves (and infinitely paranoid foreigners at that) our first instinct was that it was anti-foreigner backlash. “Cheer the Japanese who managed to outwit the foreigner!” but even so, if that were the case, we were surprised that the audience would be so obvious about it. We then started to ask ourselves what would happen in Australia if an Australian team beat say, a New Zealand team in the rugby, and we decided that Australians would be far, far, worse, and the anti-New Zealand display would undoubtedly involve beer cans, nudity and several sheep.
But this is Japan. Japanese people just don’t do this kind of thing.
Yesterday, I learnt that this throwing of cushions is actually an ancient sumo tradition which happens when a Yokozuna (yes, regardless of nationality) is beaten by a non-Yokozuna. OK, fair enough, but the Sumo Association takes great pains to tell the audience that the ring is sacred and that hell hath no fury like a dohyo defiled.
The final round was yesterday, and we watched it from the comfort of our humble apaato (the seats are much comfier). Asashoryu turned the tables on his opponent in an almost anti-climactic bout, ousting Chiyoutaikai out of the ring with brute force and a sizeable girth. But when Asashoryu was named winner of the May Sumo Tournament, the audience surrounding the ring (who can pay up to 50,000 yen (about A$650)) a ticket, seemed to barely put two hands together for the man.
Perhaps we are simply paranoid foreigners who perceived an innocent custom as an anti-foreigner jibe. Perhaps, there was a tiny bit of resentment that a non-Japanese won a major tournament. Or maybe the audience surrounding the ring had simply imbibed too much sake, wanted to throw something, and figured the referee’s head was as good a target as any…
Mecha Ike!
24 May 2003, 19:58
Absolutely my favourite show on Japanese television, Mecha Ike (How Cool We Are!) is a variety show starring the comedy duo known as “99”, Takashi Okamura and Hiroyuki Yabe. It’s difficult to classify because it jumps from travel information to food sampling to just plain silliness. But the highlight of this show is undoubtedly when the show’s six or seven male hosts dress up in biker gear (and Elvis wigs), climb aboard Harley Davidsons and play a Japanese word game while going round in a circle on their bikes.
Here’s how the game works: in English, counting stuff is easy. 3 cats. 7 spoons. 1 minister of defence. But in Japanese, objects are counted differently depending on their size and shape. There are probably 30 or more different ways to count things, and this game tests the competitors ability to count stuff in their own language (note: if Japanese can’t do it, how is a foreigner ever supposed to get their head around it?)
So round they go: vroom, vroom, vroom-vroom-vroom! 1 dog, 2 wardrobes, 3 poofters… until someone makes a mistake and counts “7 wardrobes” as “nanatsu” instead of “nanatosa”, and they have to fight a sumo wrestler. That’s right, the real thing. To the music of The Godfather, ten big fat angry sumo wrestlers complete with colourful mawashi loin cloths and snarling faces appear, and the unlucky loser has to tackle one of them.
And they go down. Big time.
These sumo boys are big. And strong. And they show no mercy. Guys have been dumped arse-first in rubbish bins, spun around and let loose to fall crashing on their backs, and given a good solid kick to the guts while they are down. And everyone laughs. Everyone except for the poor bastard lying on the ground, grimacing in real pain. Then they start all over again.
But for the person who loses the most rounds: the batsu game. Last week’s batsu game involved making the poor guy dress up in a sumo mawashi himself (the ultimate wedgie - surely humiliating enough?), go to McDonald’s and order a meal and specifically ask for everything to be not small size but sumo size, drink the cola of an old man next to him, then leave McDonald’s shouting “gotsu-an desu!!!” in a high-pitched voice, a stereotypical sumo wrestler phrase for “Thankyou for the feast!”
It doesn’t get much better than this.
[For those in Japan: Mecha Ike, otherwise known as Mecha mecha ike te’ru: Saturday nights, 8pm, Fuji TV. Don’t miss it.]
A day in the life of a Tokyo JHS
22 May 2003, 09:06
Once upon a time, there was a girl who taught exclusively adults - she spent her days teaching very well-behaved cabin attendants how to say “Would you like a drink with your meal, Sir?”. However, after a year and a half of teaching the same material, she became bored as all hell. So she asked her company to send her to a Junior High School as an ALT (Assistant Language Teacher). She thought, “I’m up to the challenge” even though there was a time in the girl’s life when she had the power to make children cry just by looking at them.
So it came to be on a sultry day in late April that she started her tenure in an inner-city Junior High School. When she arrived, she was faced with rows of small wooden boxes with shoes in them. “How strange” she thought, “Do these people walk around with bare feet?” She contemplated that maybe she had accidentally wandered into a Queensland University, until she realised half the boxes had little leather slippers in them. Hoping for the best, she took her shoes off and changed into the leather slippers which were three sizes too small.
She waddled to the staff-room like a duck with a twig poked up its arse so as not to slip out of her slippers, and met with the vice-principal and her JTE’s (Japanese teachers of English), four lovely ladies who laughed off the fact that they messed up the English language on a daily basis. No-one else in the staff-room spoke a word of English, which was probably just as well, as she didn’t want to know what the buff female P.E. teacher sitting next to her had to say.
She had heard stories about how strict Japanese schools were and how the students were so terrified of their teachers and so anxious to get good marks that they would sooner fart the national anthem on television than misbehave in class. Things looked good at the beginning of class when all the students stood up on command and sang “Good-o mornin-gu Miss Kim”. They all sat in orderly rows, one girl and one boy to each desk.
Imagine her surprise when one little bugger in the second to front row, starts whacking the head of the boy in front with his text book. Supressing the urge to snap “Easy there, Tiger!” she reverts to the “Look of Death” (perfected through countless experiences with ogling salary-men) which shuts him up. This look of death proves a welcome disciplinary action in keeping with the Japanese laws of interpersonal communication, that is, doing by not doing, and saying by not saying, which she, frankly, never understood until that moment.
She then realises that, in a complete reversal of the “Good ol’ days” when teachers ruled classes with iron fists, Japanese schools now seem to be at the mercy of Japanese children. This could be both a good and bad thing, she thought. Good, in that Japanese students are learning the value of healthy (for the most part) competition and are being encouraged to make their own decisions. Bad, as at some schools (not the girl’s school), kids can choose whether they go into an advanced, intermediate or elementary class for English. That’s right, they can decide whether they are shit-hot English speakers even when they know perfectly well that they are not. And there’s now’t the teachers can do about it.
And how Japanese students love competition! Quite contrary to the cherished concept of the “Group mentality” in Japanese society, high school classes operate on a completely different plane, more akin to “The Fitter survive; the Weaker go down”. When the ALT introduces games and competitions to the class, excited anarchy erupts as each student fights to win! And when the kids catch glimpse of her bright stickers with English written on them; “Good Job!”, “Wise Choice!”; “Teacher’s Award!” well, lets just say the Tianamen Square uprising had nothing on a third grade English class…
After only three weeks at her school, she looks forward to her Wednesday and Thursday morning classes (the school does, after all, have a coffee machine for its staff, virtually unheard of in most schools). No doubt there will be more idiosyncracies about the Japanese education system that she has yet to discover, however one fact is destined to remain a mystery…
Why is everyone so shit-scared of the P.E. teachers?
