It's Tuesday, It Must Be Kyoto

Some much belated pictures from my family's visit:

Hakone - a popular hotsprings resort outside of Tokyo. The air was crisp, the winds lively. The closest I've been to pure paradise was sitting in a steaming hot bath outdoors - the extreme warmth underneath and extreme cold on top joined forces, melting away the tension stored in my joints and muscles. There's also a big mountain near there. Perhaps you've heard of it - Fuji.






Hiroshima - I was a bit nervous about Hiroshima. It felt wrong initially, hopping on a street car, camera in hand, going to the spot where my country cause untold amounts of human suffering, so much so that the city's name alone is a synonym for the deadliest of human ingenuities. The A-Bomb dome, a building whose frame survived despite being a few hundred meters below the site of the explosion, was, for locals, just another train stop. If my time there (just 24 hours) proved to me anything at all, I suppose it was that even the remnants of the atomic bomb can become just another tourist attraction with the passing of time.






Kyoto - This was a bit of a homecoming for me. Kyoto is the city where I spent my first weeks in Japan in 2005, so most of the sights reminded me of the time when I became determined to spend my year abroad here. It was as pretty as I remember it to be. Temples, shrines, a quiet walk along the Philosopher's Path, pensive amid a light drizzle.








Kamakura - A former Buddhist stronghold (the atmosphere certainly reinforces it) in 10th century Japan, I decided, visiting with the family, that if I were to move to Japan permanently (very unlikely; just a hypothetical), Kamakura would be where I would like to base myself. Small yet varied; quiet but active; humble without cause.

Coming of Age (Again)

The national holidays of Japan consist of an odd mix of nationalist (the Emperor’s birthday), religious (Buddha’s birthday), pseudo-pagan (the autumn and spring equinoxes) and kind of cute (Respect for the Elderly Day, popularly known as Old Folks’ Day) observances. Save for New Year’s, I’ve yet to really feel a part in the observance of these holidays (I’m not elderly, or the Emperor, or Buddha), but last Monday’s holiday changed all of that.

The second Monday in January is Coming-of-Age day, where everyone who turned 20 during the preceding year gathers in public spaces and enjoys a ceremony marking their entrance into adulthood. This was very exciting news, because I am 20, and by all accounts there was to be a ceremony at the local city hall for all the 20-year olds in the city. I delicately asked the student affairs director at the university about it, and she managed to push a few buttons and get me an invitation.

Of course, the problem here is that I’ve already had a coming-of-age ceremony – my Bar Mitzvah. Whether or not this disqualified me from coming of age a second time (I didn’t tell anybody, just to be safe), it struck me as odd that two cultures ended up seven years apart in their estimation of when a person becomes an adult, what with a pool of only 20 years to choose from in the first place. Of course, none of this could stop me from donning a shirt and tie for the first time in months, hopping on the bike and riding to my Japanese Bar Mitzvah.

A few points really distinguished this ceremony from my Bar Mitzvah nearly eight years ago. To begin with, in lieu of the synagogue I grew up in, filled with family members and close friends, mostly Jewish, my Japanese coming-of-age took place in an enormous hall filled with about 600 Japanese twenty-year olds and one non-Japanese person (me). Instead of shirts, ties and skirts, the majority crowd was in kimonos and other traditional dress, although a fair number of the males were dressed in suits and had that pan-cultural “If it was up to me, I wouldn’t be wearing this” look on their faces.

The only similarity I could really think of was that at both ceremonies I was constantly being congratulated by old people whom I’d never met before.

As I found a seat, the lights dimmed and the curtain rose, revealing two lines of five seats filled with important people whose exact titles escape me. A few of these people went up to the podium, bowed down to their ankles, and then bowed to each row of people seated on the stage, who bowed from their seats in unison, like a crew team slowly moving forward against a current. They all praised Mitaka (the section of Tokyo I live in), wished everyone a kokoro kara omedetou gozaimasu (heartfelt congratulations) implored us (not me, I deduced) to vote, and passed the microphone to the next speaker. As is usually the case at ceremonies in Japan, the crowd was fairly talkative throughout.

Upon the conclusion of these welcome speeches, two males, probably local high school or college students (they received numerous “woo!”s from the crowd), informed us that we were about to view a performance (the program read “Performance”), so would we please all stop talking and be respectful. The white noise of scattered chatter slowly dissipated into a whisper, and once again the lights dimmed.

As soon as the silence had become whole, a thick baseline erupted from the speakers hanging on either side of the stage, and four youths dressed in matching black tracksuits galloped on stage and began a very specifically choreographed hip-hop dance routine to music containing the only English heard that day (variations on “Let’s dance,” and other passages directed at a girl with whom the singer would prefer to be physically closer). There was much gesticulation and gyration in the direction of the audience, and just to make sure nothing had been lost in translation, I double-checked with the girl sitting next to me (wearing a kimono and hairdo which had taken 3 ½ hours to put together, so she said) that there was indeed no relevant connection between this performance and the rest of the ceremony. After their performance was over, and the group stood in a line breathing heavily and bowing, their leader forwarded us a very formal congratulation from the group and exited stage right.

At about this time my neighbor became interested in my presence (she saw that I had a cell phone), and we exchanged the traditional greetings between a Japanese person and a foreigner (Your Japanese is really good! – No, it’s not – It really is! – It’s really not [when someone compliments you, its considered a little boastful to say “thank you, so you’re supposed to brush away the compliment]), and she told me that she likes Americans and Europeans because they’re tall and have blue eyes (oh, well), and did I know her friend who goes to my school (no). Her friends, sitting behind us, started making fun of her because she was talking to the foreigner. I turned around and introduced myself in Japanese, and they stopped making fun.

In the middle of our fourth or fifth exchange of “Your Japanese Is Really Good – No It’s Not,” the lights dimmed again, this time for a slideshow that went through each year of the attendees lives (1987-2007), showing a one or two pictures that detailed the big events of that particular year, set to cheery pop music. Here’s a sampling:

1995: the Kobe earthquake (6500 killed, $200 billion in damage, a major city uprooted by mother nature); Tokyo Subway Gas Attacks (an act of terror in the public transportation system of the largest city in the world)

1998: Ichiro breaks the Japanese League hits record

2001: World Trade Center attacks

2003: Hideki Matsui comes to play for the Yankees

2007: Billy Blanks*


*(Billy Blanks [of Tae-Bo fame] is HUGE in Japan. Walk into most department stores and you hear his videos being shown in the background. I really really really wish I were making this up. But I’m not.)

I haven’t the data to back this up, but I’m pretty sure that this is the first time that 9/11, Ichiro and Billy Blanks have appeared in the same presentation. Again, my neighbor was unfazed. I was too confused to request an explanation.

To conclude the ceremony, we stood sang Tabidachi no hi ni (On the Day Your Journey Begins), which is to Japanese graduation-type ceremonies what “I Believe I Can Fly” and that “Time of Your Life” song are to American graduation-type ceremonies. The lyrics were printed on the ceremony program, so I tried to sing along a little bit (You read Japanese so well! – No I don’t), and though I lost the tune a few times, I was able to follow.

There, singing together with about 600 complete strangers a song whose meaning I could only feel through the melody, I felt an unusual sense of belonging. Most of the time, I feel adrift in Tokyo – I don’t belong to the Japanese, and the foreign community is, in general, a scattered one. But standing in that hall, lending a voice – nationality indistinguishable - to the group, I felt, however fleetingly, that I was no longer just a visitor; after all the months of viewing their culture from the outside, I had found this hidden avenue to the inside, and, wrapped in the evanescence of melody, nobody seemed to mind letting me in. I wasn’t a foreigner; I felt I was a natural part of the whole.

The feeling lasted just a brief few moments, but that small glimpse of being just one of the crowd was clear enough to convince me that I had arrived at some sort of destination. By no means did I feel like had just begun or finally completed a journey, but somewhere in between confusion and understanding, singing words that I could only vaguely define with people I would never meet again, I came of age in a way that had nothing to do with getting older.

O-matase shimaimashita

(First, a note on the subject of the post. At any store in Japan, if you are kept waiting for any period of time longer than nothing, before paying for or receiving something you ordered, the clerk or applicable body will say a heartfelt [or sometimes not so heartfelt] o-mataseshimaimashita, which is an untranslatably polite phrase that means, sort of, “I have shamelessly and undeservedly made you wait.” In Japan, a country with, in general, very little sense of irony, this phrase is said at points even when it’s obvious that a) there was no choice but to make someone wait, or b) the time spent waiting was approximately 1.37 seconds. So, because I feel that it’s been far too long since I’ve written, I wanted to say to all of you o-mataseshimaimashita; it won’t happen again.

In an unrelated note, whenever I’m with a Japanese friend and I have to tie my shoe or run back inside to get something, I come back and say to them o-mataseshimaimashita. They are never terribly amused by it, but I think it’s really funny every time. Okay, onto the actual post.)


Besides the obvious, I think that a lot can be learned from a language textbook. Gauging the category of vocabulary learned early on, the examples of discussion and role-play situations, a student can learn not only some new words but, in general, what cultural attitudes and experiences go along with speaking this new language. For example, in the Hebrew textbook I used, the situations given for conversation practice usually included arguing over prices at the local market, telling someone they were crazy, or lamenting the situation of the world-at-large in a uniquely enchanting Israeli way.

The authors of that textbook were correct (in my opinion) that the situations often encountered in Israel, where one will probably end up speaking Hebrew, usually revolve around arguing and passionate displays of emotion and opinion. It makes sense – prepare the students for the real-world situations they’re most likely to experience as speakers of the language.

So I think it’s safe to conclude that the context in which a language is taught provides a lot of implicit information about the culture.

Consider, then, the Japanese language textbook. Almost invariably, the situations described in Japanese textbooks involve a confused foreigner trying to figure out Japanese culture. Almost never are a Japanese and an American talking like normal friends, and almost invisible is the foreign student with a deeper understanding of Japanese culture.

For example, two weeks of class based on an essay written by a Japanese person bemoaning the lack of proper thanks given by an American he took care of. The American thanked him once and not again; the author could not understand how someone could stop after just one thank you. Roles for discussion are often given that include an average Japanese explaining a particular custom to a baffled foreigner, and popular essay topics include how Japan is different from home, what shocked one about Japan upon first arriving, and the difficulties of learning the language.

I know that much of this is out of consideration and politeness, and they certainly don’t have to go out of their way to help foreigners out, but if we compare the Hebrew and Japanese textbook models, it would be hard not to conclude that the expected situation for a student of Japanese in Japan is utter confusion. It certainly seems, based on all of this and my own personal experience, that I’m expected to not have any idea what’s going on around me.

It often feels like this kind of attitude is designed to keep reminding me that I’m an outsider, though I simply need to walk outside for that reminder anyway. The truth is that not much shocked me when I first arrived here – I had been to Japan before, taken a class on Japanese history and read enough Japanese literature to have at least a vague grasp on its collective unconscious. Does this make me an expert? Of course not, but with the world shrinking every moment, few people come to Tokyo without some sort of knowledge of Japan, its history, and its customs.

Yet the image of the confused foreigner continues to be promulgated. This isn’t to say I understand what’s going on – what I don’t get could fill multiple encyclopedia sets – but nearly four months into my time here, I’m ready to shed the image.

In fact, I may have to. This week I’m playing host for the first time – at first to a Japanese friend from Kyoto (I will show him around Tokyo, in a strange twist of roles), and then to my parents and youngest brother. With the job as host comes a certain feeling of ownership of one’s surroundings, and I’m enjoying it even before my visitors come. In the face of the expectation of being overwhelmed, I will show people around, tell them which trains to take, walk to new places without a map, serve as translator, and try to share my love for this incredible city.

The thought has come to me more than once that perhaps it is the locals who are overwhelmed by my presence, and that the confusion they expect me to have is in part their confusion as to where I fit in their society. Many times I feel that, when I go to a place where foreigners aren’t expected to go, the locals don’t know what to do with me. They certainly seemed as baffled, if not more so, than the foreign characters in my textbook.

The other day I went to buy a pillow and sheets for my guest coming on Friday. Outside the store, an older man saw me and said, proudly flaunting his English ability, “Shopping visit?” I answered in Japanese and we had a nice little conversation about where I lived, what I was doing in Tokyo, and other things like that. As we were about to part, he said, smiling and grandfatherly, “Be careful!”*

“But Japan is really safe, isn’t it?” I answered jokingly.

Turning away from me, he mounted his bike. “Be careful,” he said quietly in English, as if to himself.




*I feel I must clarify. The phrase he used is "ki o tsukete," which is kind of a cross between "take care" and "be careful," but I think it can be translated either way. I hope, anyway.

A Week in Hong Kong

I know that including an entry on Hong Kong kind of damages the accuracy of the title of the page, but I think we’ll all agree that “A Year in Tokyo” is catchier than “A Year in Tokyo [including five days in Hong Kong and a day in Macau],” which for that matter wouldn’t be correct either (half-day in Yokohama, etc etc), but to keep things easy I’ll keep it how it is, although it would not surprise me, given the size of Tokyo, that it extended to Hong Kong in some way or another, if not now then sooner or later.

A little historical context: Hong Kong was an English colony from 1842 until 1997, when a “transfer of its sovereignty,” a kind of purposely vague term, to China occurred. Whole books have been written about why it was transferred (I saw one in the bookstore yesterday), but the end result is that Hong Kong is both part of China and not, and theirs remains a very complicated political relationship. Unlike mainland China (Beijing, etc), a traveler doesn’t need a special visa to enter, as it operates its own immigration policies.

If European capitols are cities of the past, and Tokyo and other big Asian cities hosts to the past and future meeting, then Hong Kong is most definitely a city of the future. The first thing that struck me was how foolproof their transportation system is – it’s nearly impossible to go in the wrong direction. The streets of downtown are connected via a labyrinthine system of overpasses and underground walkways, and each subway station seemed to have so many entrances that it would be harder not to find one than to get lost.

Of course, the main attraction in Hong Kong, is the city-of-the-future look of its skyline, where this incredible system of transport weaves in and out like ivy.





It seemed the entire city was on its way to a meeting with a high-profile client that would push Hong Kong’s economy even further. Well-dressed businessmen dominated the landscape, shoulder to shoulder with both each other, eyes down cell phones open, and wide-eyed tourists trying to find the point at which the skyscrapers ended (they don’t).

The skyscrapers literally had no end – as my dad and I walked further up the central hill on which Hong Kong is built, each building, whether it residential or commercial, rose 40 stories above the ground as if it were no height at all. Closer to the bay, expensive brand names and western-style hotels were the norm, and each corner turned revealed another shopping center with stores familiar to buyers the world over. Further up the hill, Hong Kong’s Chinese side slowly revealed itself – the ubiquitous small restaurant with the roasted duck hanging in the window, red lanterns hanging lazily outside rundown bars, dimly lit fruit and vegetable stalls, and dusty old storefronts selling electronics, souvenirs, and everything else.

In Hong Kong city:

Hong Kong Park



Incense coils and candle at Man-Mo Temple, the oldest in Hong Kong. They celebrate the God of Literature there - needless to say I had to get one. There's a sticker on the bottom that says "Blessed."




Hong Kong Flower Market




Yuen Po Bird Market. This was kind of heartbreaking, seeing all these beautiful birds in cages.





One gets the feeling, exploring downtown Hong Kong, that there is more to the area than that. Hong Kong’s largest island, Lantau, a ferry ride away, revealed rural areas that seemed miles and centuries away from the shiny capitalism of downtown. A long bus ride that seemed to ascend and descend the same mountain every few minutes lead us to Po-Lin Monastery, home to the largest outdoor Buddha in the world (who knew?) and, to my surprise and delight, a vegetarian cafeteria (quite the rarity in Tokyo). It was wonderfully peaceful, and even the presence of a largish bus terminal right in front of the monastery wasn’t enough to diminish the feeling of entering a sacred space.








A 15-minute walk away from the main monastery revealed the Wisdom Path. In the shape of the symbol for infinity, the path is surrounded by 38 halved tree trunks, on which are written passages from the Heart Sutra, a sacred document in Mahāyāna Buddhism.






Our second-to-last day in Hong Kong took us to the very north of the territory. Our destination was the Hong Kong Wetlands Park, a vast nature reserve on the border with China proper. The New Territories, as the area is called (it was the last section of Hong Kong to be incorporated), is home to both half of the population of Hong Kong (about 3.3 million), and new government subsidized housing projects for the built in order to maintain their stability as its likely future economic hope. These housing projects were awe-inspiring. Like downtown, each building was over 40 stories tall, and they literally went on for miles. The buildings were organized into single areas, each of which had a separate name. Each of these areas had their own grocery store, train station (explained later), play areas and other amenities. We saw many kids running about and giving us \ looks (we hardly saw another foreign-looking face).

The reason for this is probably because the Wetlands Park is so far away. We took a commuter railway out to one of the final stops on the line. Each of the stations on this line was nearly empty, spotlessly clean and utterly state-of-the-art. There clearly had been a large movement recently to increase the access of those living out in the New Territories to Hong Kong city. We hopped on what is called the Light Rail, which consisted of one little train filled mostly with young kids, old folks and the like. This train wound its way around all of these monstrous housing projects and stopped near every one.

This area struck a chord in me much more so than the Emerald City-esque city skyline. While exploring that area, I was struck by the feeling that although it seemed all-encompassing, there had to be a segment of the population of Hong Kong whose lives in no way related to the high-stakes business going on downtown. I believe we found it in the New Territories. It wasn’t desolate, nor did it seem crime-ridden or like an inner city at all. It seemed quite organized and the faces I saw did not appear to be those living in dire situations.

For me at least, what was overwhelming was seeing this endless skyline of apartment buildings and trying to picture the mass of people who lived there. Thousands of people living here, in such close quarters, in identical buildings in a community that looked exactly the same as the one next to it. It was humbling and made me feel quite small, especially since in the background of any view in the wetland park (which was quite beautiful), these buildings dominated the view. I doubted those who looked at the park from their small rooms on the 34th floor of a nameless building cared how many acres they had saved, or how many birds could now fly free.


The view looking south...



and the view looking north.




A common side trip for visitors to Hong Kong is to the nearby dependency of Macau. Macau was a colony of Portugal but, like Hong Kong, its sovereignty was transferred to China in the late 90s. It remains capitalistic, but unlike Hong Kong, it exuded a more provincial, laid-back feel. Although newly built-up sections of Macau are becoming indistinguishable from Las Vegas and other gambling hotspots, in the old sections colorful old colonial buildings dotted the landscape in between dilapidating apartment buildings and shops selling second- and third-hand goods.

From a chapel crowning the highest point on Macau, we peered at China proper lurking mysteriously in the distance, and walked around the small peninsula on the withered cobblestone walkway. Away from the glitz of the casinos and central tourist areas, Macau seemed tired. Our last stop, the A-Ma Temple, was a fog of incense that acted as a veil, an Oriental fog that clung to the skin like a sweet memory. Wrapped in dust, the sun set.

All of the street signs were in both Portugese and Cantonese. I took 7,000 pictures of them.




The Ruins of St. John's church, from the 16th century sometime, an important site for Asian Christians.



Colonial colors and styles.





A-Ma Temple





As is my tendency even when the occasion doesn’t call for it, I attempted to place my trip to Hong Kong in the context of my greater year abroad. Aside from the actual sightseeing, eating (the food, Chinese and otherwise, was fantastic) and photography, all of which opportunities were better than I could have hoped, this trip to me served as an extended meditation on the meaning of “home.”

Waiting for the elevator in the hotel one morning, a Japanese woman noticed that I was only wearing a t-shirt and, rubbing her arms to make the universal symbol for cold, asked me in Japanese if I wasn’t cold? I responded to her, No no, I’m fine, and she nearly fell over with surprise that I spoke the language.

Why is this relevant? This has never happened to me in Tokyo, that a random Japanese has talked to me in such a harmless manner. She undoubtedly talked to me because, in her mind, there was no way I could respond – in the same way that people sometimes tell deep secrets to people they have met once and will never meet again, secrets they haven’t told even their closest confidants.

Being out of one’s element is both a scary and liberating experience, and I suppose that I’ve gotten used to having that duality in my everyday life. In Hong Kong, when I looked at a menu in English for the first time in months, I felt like I was cheating on an important test. The ease with which I read all the signs in English unnerved me – I actually longed for the challenge of having very little available in English, and for the feeling of accomplishment that wells up inside me when I learn a certain word and can finally understand a sign I’ve seen so many times before.

As I walked through the airport back in Tokyo, I felt once again at home, but in a different sense than I would have expected. I count four cities in which I’ve lived in the past seven months, so I suppose I’m used to uprooting myself as of late. Although Japan is still a riddle I’ve yet to solve, I’ve realized that I’ve become comfortable not knowing the answer. I’m never going to “look” like I belong in Tokyo, but if that had been the goal in the first place, I wouldn’t have felt so wonderful when, upon returning home, I saw that my apartment was just the way I had left it.

Odds & Ends

My bike was impounded yesterday. I suppose it had to happen sometime, law of averages and everything. I was really steaming mad, too - I had parked where I parked almost every time I came to the station. Why this time? Why???

To get from the south side (my side) of the station to the north side requires (I am not exaggerating here) taking five sets of stairs. This didn't improve my mood, but between the third and fourth I saw a man and a woman staring out the window. "You can see Mt. Fuji!" they told another person. I took a look myself.

Against the primal red of the setting sun, one could see the graceful silhouette of Mt. Fuji, the sun sinking behind it like a pebble in the ocean. The perfection of the slopes leading to Fuji's peak could be seen even from where we were, many miles away.

Mad as I pretended to be, seeing something so utterly magnificent (there's no other way to describe it) puts the impounded bike in enough perspective to float a tanker on.


But still... WHY ME??? I marched over to the impounded bike lot (quite far, considering most people going there don't, uh...have bikes). A kindly old man in a uniform fit for a submarine commander asked me when my bike had been taken, and had me pick it out of a bicycle lineup as if I were some kind of important eye-witness. He told me in very grandfatherly Japanese that I should really be careful, Wednesday mornings they clean the streets and I can't park there and will I be alright going home at this hour when it's already dark?

The man behind the counter, another older man (every bicycle parking attendant is between 75 and 85 and wears a hat) asked me if it's alright if I pay the fine ($25) and then gave me a receipt (?) and a packet of tissues with a cartoon on the cover depicting three people yelling out "Dang!" "My bike was taken!" and "I didn't know!" respectively. How could anyone possibly still be mad after that?

But still...


Last of the Autumn Leaves at School






Yokohama







My main activity Wednesday, other than getting my bike back (grrr) was a day trip to Yokohama, Japan's second largest city which is actually really for all intents and purposes an extension of Tokyo. It was a gorgeous day and I felt the travel juices flowing within me.

I learned before going that Yokohama is a sister city of San Diego, which made me very excited indeed. Not that I expected preferential treatment or anything.

I'm not sure if all sister cities are like this, but the areas of Yokohama I explored really did remind me of my hometown. Yokohama is a harbor town but also a bustling convention center. I explored harbor-side parks overlooking spectacular bridges and walked along a gorgeous autumnally colored avenue lined with old hotels modestly hiding their vintage interiors.

Yokohama is also home to Japan's largest Chinatown, where I heard some Chinese spoken and saw many tourists (Whether this title applies to me is debatable. You can guess which side I take.). Climbing a nearby hill, I saw the foreign cemetery (Yokohama was a very popular residential area for foreign dignitaries), and some small French-type bakeries and cake shops. It was Wednesday morning and the pace of life was slow; it was a leisurely stroll to Tokyo's constant sprint.

The unexpected highlight of the day, however, came on the long boardwalk that follows the harbor. A group of elementary school students were behind me, and I heard a few little girls commenting on the foreigner that was walking in front of them. I turned around to give them a quick look. "He looked at you!" one of them squealed.

I waited a few more moments before turning around again and playfully saying "I can understand what you're saying, you know." I walked away too quickly to take in their faces, but what I heard was a fit of giggling that would have surely sunk any of the old ships in the harbor.


I'm headed to Hong Kong on Tuesday to meet my dad (!) and won't be back until December (!!), so until then： じゃあまた。

Still can't actually believe this happened...

I have a friend named Zare (short for Cesare). He is 27 and from
Brazil, and he is innately cool in a way that makes me feel
genetically inferior. Come to think of it, certain countries just seem
to have a knack for producing such people. Australia comes to mind,
for example.

In any case, I was at a museum with Zare on Saturday when a young
Japanese woman came up to him and asked if he was the Zare, from TV?
You see, Zare is on TV. He doesn't like to gloat about it, but he is.
Yes, he said. It's me. The woman told him how much she enjoyed his
comments on the show, and asked for a preview of the next show, to
which he obliged. All I could do was shake my head – that would never
happen to me. If only I was Brazilian…

Not 24 hours later, I was biking to my favorite Indian restaurant in
town for dinner, when I get a call from Zare. A hint of urgency
flavors his usual accent, which sounds like his native Portugese (an
intoxicatingly beautiful language to listen to) taking his English
salsa dancing. "David – I'm at the TV studio. We need other gaijin
(foreigners). Can you make it here by 5:30?"

On the trip there, which takes about an hour, I am on and off the
phone with the show's producer, telling me where to go, what taxi to
take, and mentioning multiple times that they'll pay for my cab.
OK!

I take a cab from Tamata station to Keio University, where NHK (the
government-run television station of Japan) has a small studio. The
producer is waiting for me at the front gate, nearly jumping into the
taxi in order to get things moving quicker. "This your friend?" the
driver asks. "Um," I say.

Wearing a worn forest green hoodless sweater, his hair is unkempt, as
if he had been running his fingers through it nervously for hours.
"Have you ever seen the show?"
"Um," I say.
This was not the correct answer.
"Can you write your major study in Japanese?"
"Yes."
"You're American?"
"Yes."
We go up and down a few elevators. Someone hands me a name card with
my name and nationality in Japanese flanked by a mini American flag.
"Put this on."
"OK."

This might be a good time to mention that I have NO idea what kind of
show this is. I am shown to a room full of wrapped sandwiches and a
big board with a messy schedule written on it. Peeking through the
glass doors, I see the studio.

The show is called "Cool Japan."
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtwD9ri_sDA) Hosted by a comedian, a
professor and a very attractive, very non-Japanese looking lady, Cool
Japan brings 50 foreigners into a room along with some Japanese
college students. Each show has a different theme on the topic of
Japan, and videos and speakers are shown and heard, and the foreigners
are asked (In Japanese. Everyone is given a mini radio that has a
simultaneous translation heard through an earphone) whether they think
the given topic is "cool or not cool." Or, in Japanese, "koo-roo o-ru
notto koo-roo?" There are a number of votes throughout the show.

The producer came over and tapped my shoulder. "You're going to be
famous," he whispered.
"Um."
Waiting with a French student who smells of cigarettes to go on set,
I come to the following conclusion: "What the hell am I doing here?"
Before adequate time was given to answer this, I was taken on the set
to sit down next to my French companion, who did nothing to improve
the French stereotype I carry.

This show's topic, apparently, was about college and job-finding. I
found most of the material presented notto koo-roo. Participants are
encouraged to stand up and talk about how whatever is talked about is
different in their country, but as I have a hard enough time
generalizing people in one city, and many other Americans had no
problem lumping all of America into one convenient package, I kept
quiet.
The taping went on for a good while. I still didn't really believe
what was happening. I yawned. Someone said that if you leave something
on a bench in America it will be stolen within 5 minutes. A guy from
Greece talked about Japanese architecture. I looked at the host. No
way she's Japanese. But she speaks perfectly…
After the taping finished and they took my picture (for the
tabloids…?) one of the producers came up to thank me. "You did really
well!"
"But I just sat there and said nothing."
There's no business like it.

Yasukuni, Asakusa, Shimo-Kitazawa. Oh my.

At the controversial Yasukuni Shrine. The shrine houses, according to Shinto practice, all of those who have died in the name of the Emperor (read: Kamikaze pilots, those who organized the Rape of Nanking, Unit 731 and the Comfort women, etc etc). Former Prime Minister Koizumi angered China and Korea by visiting the shrine numerous times. The shrine museum's version of history, especially of World War II, can be most politely described as "creative."








A festival in Asakusa, one of the older, more traditional parts of Tokyo (it was the center of everything back when Tokyo was called Edo), whose theme escapes me.







Shimo-kitazawa is a very "hip" area that survived (for the most part) the rapid development of the rest of the city, by which I mean that its a collection of alleyways with no major roads or tall buildings, and just a few chain stores (There was a Starbucks. I pretended not to see.).

One of the main reasons for my trip there was to find the quintessential Jazzkissa, or Jazz Cafe (kissa is short for kissaten [key-sa-ten], which means coffee shop) in Tokyo. Jazzkissas are places to sit quietly, read a magazine or a light novel, drink sour, slightly overpriced coffee, and listen to jazz records (sometimes CDs, mostly vinyl) for hours and hours. They're all independent places, and they're all about the atmosphere.

Well, for me, this sounded like heaven, so online I went to find out more. By all accounts, the best preserved Jazzkissa, that is, from their heyday in the 60s and 70s, is in Shimo-Kitazawa, a little place tucked away on a side street called Masako. Many others have gone out of business, or presumably become soulless Starbucks.

Masako was as advertised, down to the taste of the drink (I had milk tea, possibly for the last time). The lights were dim, the music soft enough to relax to but loud enough to declare that this particular cafe is about listening and not talking. It might have been Lou Donaldson playing when I walked in, but I wasn't sure.

Forcing myself to finish my milk tea, I finished the Kawabata Yasunari novel I had brought with me and looked at all the old jazz-themed posters on the wall. Two guys with long hair and tight black jeans who had come in with guitar bags smoked cigarettes in the corner, talking quietly. A man, his teacup empty, looked asleep. Ella Fitzgerald's voice filled the room with soul, lingered for a moment, and evaporated. Someone coughed, and I got up to pay the bill.





Masako