Who's having a birthday?
30 March 2003, 23:30
If you ask that question in Tokyo at the moment, the answer is the same; “Atomu! Atomu!” When I first heard the name I thought; “Who the hell..???” Turns out that Atomu is none other than Astroboy that kawaii little munchkin with the body of a puppet, the heart of a child and rockets for feet.
April 7th 2003 is Atomu’s birthday according to the futuristic 1960’s cartoon. His birthplace? A factory in Takadanobaba, a suburb of Tokyo.
Not a country to miss the opportunity for a festival, April 7 has been deemed “Atomu Day” in Tokyo - for the past couple of weeks, the Takadanobaba (try saying that really fast while you’re really drunk) station has been playing the Astroboy theme music to herald the arrival of trains and Monday week there will be a birthday parade in Takadanobaba.
For a country that’s in the midst of an economic and political slump, its reassuring to see that our Japanese compatriots thrive under the adage; “any excuse for a party”...
Permanent Link | The Other Side of the Fence
29 March 2003, 22:16
I made a conscious decision two weeks ago not to expose myself to any war coverage. I haven’t bought a paper, I change channels whenever the news comes on (quite easy considering most of it is in Japanese) and I deliberately don’t read any internet news. When it comes to sensational reportage and an incessant front-page body count, I don’t need it.
Just before the war broke out I had a teaching assignment out at the airport for two weeks. The director showed me to the training room on the first day, gave me the security code for the floor, handed me a class list and left me to it. I never heard from him again. It was bliss.
This past week I had an assignment at the same client, but for a different department. Every day, I was formally met in the lobby by this department’s director, escorted to the training room, escorted from the training room at the end of class and then lead right to the front gate. I thought it a little strange at first, but decided it was probably just his manner.
Imagine my surprise (considering my naive ambivalence about world news) when one of the girls at my office informed me on Wednesday that they had become “very strict with foreigners because of Iraq”. Now, this client is located in an important airport building - if it goes up, then domestic airport traffic is, ahem, fairly fucked. I can therefore appreciate the increased need for security in the building. But when I am riding in the elevator with a bunch of external Japanese contractors who are not under microscopic escort, then I take exception.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t Koizumi-chan (fairly publicly) endorsed Japan’s involvement in this so-called “foreigner’s” war? I’m not about to get all political about this, only to make the point that my perceived “risk” to this client is squiffy logic in the extreme.
Yesterday was my last day there, and I met the director’s director at the elevator. He said to me; “Oh, you are Miss Kinki from Australia!” I replied in the affirmative, before he begins a diatribe about how he can tell the difference between an American, an Australian and a Canadian just by looking at them (huh?). You must understand, by this stage I was kinda pitching for a fight, so when he asked me if I could tell the difference between a Japanese and other Asians (a lot of Japanese hate being confused with Koreans in particular because of the whole North-Korean kidnapping thing) I told him the truth. Bluntly.
“No. I always get Koreans and Japanese mixed up. Sometimes its impossible to tell.”
I left him looking bemused at the elevator whilst the doors closed on my personal escort and I for the last time…
Should I stay or should I go?
27 March 2003, 10:45
Someone asked me a while back why I stay in Japan. In recent weeks that very question has been niggling at me, transforming me into the type of nutter who debates with themselves (or worse, with an imaginary audience) on the train.
After 18 months in Tokyo, I am torn between wanting to stay and wanting to leave. Although Matt and I have made some great friends here, sooner or later we will have to leave them and return to our friendships in Australia, that, through no fault of their own have suffered the test of long-distance.
Should I stay…
1. We love our jobs. Teaching English as a foreign language is cool. Not least because I am endlessly entertained by the funny, unconscious mistakes students make with English, such as; “My husband is a cock!” (cook) and “I want to eat my wife!”. What the hell we are going to do when we get back to Australia is a question neither of us is prepared to deal with right now.
2. Living in a foreign country, particularly one as quaintly alien as Japan, is an undeniably gratifying experience. I have been forced to learn a language that I may not have otherwise studied, in spite of my former insistence that I didn’t have to study, rather I, “soak up information by osmosis”. This was folly. I admit it.
3. Tokyo is unique. After 18 months the novelty of certain things is starting to wear off, such as pint-sized apartments with paper-thin walls, but I still manage to see something I have never seen (or have never wanted to see) before, for example, a young man on a bicycle, stopped at the end of our street, curling his eyelashes. A man would be socially crucified for less in Australia.
4. ...and convenient. I am not ready to face hour long waits at Westgarth station for a delayed train. Japan is the only country I know of where flights arrive ahead of their scheduled time.
5. I would miss Japanese TV and pop-culture (read, karoake) like a baby misses breast milk.
...or should I go?
1. The main issue is the uncompromising ethnocentricity in Japan. One of the “novelties” that wore off a long time ago was the ignorant (yet benign) insistence that if something is stolen or if a violent crime occurs in Japan, then an assumption is made that it; “must have been a foreigner”. This title of ‘foreigner’ extends to other Asians, such as Koreans, Chinese and Taiwanese, who are tarred with the same brush as ‘whites’. I have met many Koreans in particular who have changed their name to a Japanese moniker so as to avoid this discrimination. Interestingly, the discrimination is often tacit. You won’t find many Japanese people comfortable with sharing a negative opinion about you as a foreigner, as ingrained as it may be. The Japanese call this approach “not losing face”. I call it passive-aggression.
2. Experience is one thing, but when you have to navigate a linguistic minefield just to buy a pair of shoes, it can get pretty exhausting.
3. I miss my friends and family back home. Although we have made excellent friends here (including plenty of Japanese), they can not replace the ones we have had for years. I haven’t been lucky enough to find many people in Tokyo who I would consider kindred spirits. And the very temporary nature of living in a foreign country means that those you do find, usually don’t stay forever (including yourself). With respect to Japanese men and women, there is often a language or cultural barrier, even amongst those who I would classify as ‘westernised’. Tokyo can be a pretty lonely place, not just for ex-pats who have had to generate new support groups in a new country, but for Japanese people too. Like any big and ostensibly soulless city, it tends to swallow its residents and forget about them.
The crux of why I stay here is simply this. Japan gets under your skin. It becomes an experiential addiction after a while. And it will be a hard habit to kick.
A big thumbs up
25 March 2003, 09:29
A big thumbs up (I would give the trusty Japanese “peesu” sign, but wouldn’t want to appear to be making any political “statements”) to Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (English title, Spirited Away) for winning Best Animated Film at the Oscars last night.
It’s technically anime, but more like Disney meets Japanese quirkiness with a little bit of Brothers Grimm thrown in.
If you haven’t already seen it, rent it for an insight into Japanese culture. At every turn it revels in it’s “Japan-ness”, from the hot springs bath culture to their pantheistic shinto gods to the pigs everyone makes of themselves at the open-air yatai…
Small Screen Superstar (??!@#$!??)
22 March 2003, 21:18
Wednesday PM
While I was window shopping last Wednesday, I spotted a funky pair of shoes in Seibu, but had no idea of how to justify the expense (now I am affianced, I need to worry about what could be perceived as frivolous purchases). As if on cue, I received a call later that night from an agency I had registered with months ago. I had done a few shows for them as an extra on SMA’s Bera Bera Station months back, but got over that pretty quickly, in spite of being able to perve on Katori Shingo at close range.
The agent asked me;
“Are you free tomorrow afternoon? We need beautiful ladies to speak english for Bera Bera Station.”
One thing one must remember about Japanese men (and women) is that foreigners are endlessly fascinating to them. You could look like the arse-end of a bus and they would still think you were captivating. They are also astigmatic in the best sense - I was told once that I “was beautiful, just like Nicole Kidman” despite the fact that Nicole is 6 feet tall, size 0 and has bright red hair.
So I let the rhetorical compliment slide and affirmed that yes, I was free that afternoon, and yes, I could speak English.
Thursday PM
Bera Bera Station is the English segment of SMA Station 2, where Katori-kun (of the perennial fave, SMAP) faces off against his guests in translating english snippets from films, TV shows, political speeches etc. into Japanese. Every episode there is an english “Phrase of the Week”, usually a colloquial expression, where foreigners are filmed doing role-plays, or dodgy “on-the-street” interviews centred around that phrase.
This was to be my job.
When I arrived at the studio and discovered that in a previous week they had been made to say, “I catched a cold” I thought I might be in trouble. Fortunately, our phrases were fairly innocuous and, more importantly, grammatically correct. Unfortunately, the shoot was outside in the courtyard, it was freezing cold and I was asked to cry on cue;
“Oh sure, no problem”, I say nonchalantly (“WHAT?????”).
Luckily, the (goddess) agent had some eye whitening drops which made my eyes nice and moist which at least made it look like I was crying. The downside of this was that after four takes of my Meryl Streep, my eyes took on an eerie neon sheen and passersby (and the film crew) were giving me a wide berth.
As it happened, the studio is next to the U.S Embassy, which, predictably, was host to a deluge of anti-war protests on Thursday, and camera crew helicopters were circling the area. Every time the choppers neared the Embassy, we had to stop the shoot because of the noise. In fact, every time a person walked past, either dragging a suitcase, or slurping a coffee, we had to do a re-take.
After 3 hours and a mild case of hypothermia, me and the other “beautiful people” took our money and ran. I didn’t care about how I would look on TV, all I saw were those new pair of shoes I could now afford to buy…
SMA Station 2 - Saturday nights (Japan only) on TV Asahi @ 11pm.
