From Rock Stars to TV Stars
30 June 2002, 21:17
Matt and I got gigs doing extras work for ‘SMAStation’ an apparently very popular variety show which we never watch cos its in Japanese, hosted by members of SMAP, an apparently very popular boy band. It’s a quiz game, so the contestants, Shingo Katori (for the record, the cutest member of the band) and some other Japanese celebrity are given a Japanese sentence and they have to translate it into English.
We get ushered into a tiny studio where ‘Katori-kun’ is waiting for us to laugh and clap and act like gaijin dickheads, which is well within our repertoires. Then, they kick us out, shove 3 crisp Y1000 notes into our hand and send us packing. The only tiring part is having to deal with the inevitable obnoxious wannabes (no, not us) who love the sound of their own voices and have egos big enough to blow the SMAP boys off the stage…
Permanent Link | George and Zeljko
29 June 2002, 21:17
Georgina and Zeljko descended upon our happy home last weekend. We took them to an izakaya (like a Japanese pub where you sit on the floor on tatami mats) where we dined on exotic finger food of the soya bean variety and supped on the tasty “house sake”.
After a few thimbles of sake, we were ready to hit the karaoke bars. There was a serious rock-star virus going around which we all caught. In a sake and beer induced delirium, I was convinced I could sing better than Britney Spears. Of course, I woke up hungover the next morning, realizing that just wasn’t possible.
There is something extremely humbling about singing in front of other people. Even if you have a voice that sounds like a wailing banshee, everyone has such a good time, no-one notices, cares and in fact, encourages it. Its almost like a religious experience. Mind you, it could be the beer.
Before George and Zeljko arrived in Tokyo, we didn’t know them so well, but when they left, we cried and looked for them on our couch for a week.
Law and Order
18 June 2002, 21:11
In spite of the Japanese obsession with rules, law and order, they are not above stealing bikes. About a month after Matt and I bought bikes, we were at the hospital near home (I use the term ‘hospital’ lightly - we were informed that they had no ‘specialists’ to treat throat infections which are apparently very difficult to diagnose in this country) and when we left to go to another clinic, my bike was gone. My shitty little Y8000 ‘mamachari’ (aka, ‘mama chariot’) was apparently hot goods on the street…
I got it back a couple of weeks later, believe it or not. You gotta love a country where things get stolen and the police actually find them for you.
When I went to retrieve my bike from the lock-up they took us into this little room and shoved a mountain of paperwork at me to read and stamp. An idiosyncrasy of officialdom here is that signatures as we understand them, don?ft exist. Everyone has their individual stamp, called a “hanko” that they use to sign off documents with.
So, being very obviously Japanese, with a very Japanese name, I read through the Japanese, nodding and hmmming knowledgably. When Matt explained that I didn’t have a hanko (I didn’t want to show off my advanced language skills), they looked momentarily confused, before producing a red ink pad and got me to thumbprint my whorls onto about 20 different places.
Eternally stamped for the next time I break the law…
World Cup Fever
14 June 2002, 21:09
Japan won the pivotal game of the preliminaries tonight and it was c.r.a.z.y on the streets. We headed down to Kabuki-cho where thousands of near naked drunk Japanese were acting like…. Australians. Men with Japanese flags face-painted across their faces, or with flags wrapped around them, whooping “Nippon, Nippon” over and over and over… Considering their advanced state of anaebriation, a simple chant proved to be for the best.
It was cool to be in the midst of it, but I couldn’t help feeling like I was at the Footy Grand Final. All that talk of “furiganism” and here they were; the Japanese illustrating the point.
Before the World Cup, the Japanese police had gone into overdrive, getting teams of riot police trained to deal with the onslaught of ‘furigans’; shops and restaurants near World Cup stadiums all closed down because the furigans were guaranteed to set fire to things (of course, happens all the time)... and during the Cup, the riot police were mainly stationed outside the gaijin bars waiting for the furiganism to explode into a chaotic post-game frenzy. The whole country was on red alert for a month, when the only problem children of the Cup were….the Japanese. And even then, the front page of the Japan Times the day after Japan beat Tunisia was a huge article about the wayward Japanese fans in Osaka:
“Fans jump into the river.”
The Japanese are just not used to other Japanese people misbehaving.
Nick in Nikko
1 June 2002, 20:35
Nicholas ‘Chad’ Bruse and his video camera (permanently attached) flew in to keep us company the last couple of weeks. We took him to Akhibara, electronics mecca where Nick’s filming of an apparently top-secret robotic dog at one of the stores nearly got us kicked out; Yoyogi Park and Nikko, the latter destination one that his VC particularly enjoyed.
And then in spite of the obsessive claim of the Japanese that climbing Mt Fuji outside July and August was ‘abunai!’ (danger!) he did it anyway.
When he left we sighed and said ‘thank god no more video camera’ and only then did we realised we craved the mini-screen stardom that it afforded us. The next week we went out and bought our own and have been torturing people ever since…
