San Francisco; good for your joints

San Francisco: famous for hippies, Vertigo, Full House, that Judy Garland song, that Rufus-Wainwright-covering-Judy-Garland song, cable cars, Mrs. Doubtfire and the massive bridge. Basically, it is a legend of a city and I was happy to be immersed in its colourful, liberal-themed waters.

San Francisco seemed to have aspect of city that a twenty-three year old wannabe hipster like me could possibly desire. As I began to know the neighborhoods, I planned out my daily life if I was lucky enough to be an American citizen. It would begin with early morning lectures at Berkeley, scribbling notes about muck racking American literature and ranting about saving the planet over a steaming espresso in a biodegradable cup. After several hours of this and feeling sufficiently ready to take on the real world, I would hope on the subway to the Haight; stoner capital of the city, for some Grade-A grass smoked out of a bong that looked like a post-modern vase (especially after a few hits). This would be followed up by a dazed stroll in the Golden Gate park, where hippies and homeless people lie sprawled in the sunshine, too happy or blazed to care about anything.

When the munchies began to set in, I would take a trolley car down the hill to the Mission district, and gorge myself on a Pacho Villa burrito, savouring every bite and assuring myself one again that this was the food of the gods. And then, feeling fulfilled and ready for some fun, it would be a quick stroll up to the Castro, where the men hold hands and rainbow flags blow in the wind. If you can't find someone to pick up here, you're way too straight.

And that isn't even everything. San Francisco also has City Lights; the bookstore that began the Beat generation and a wet dream for any English major worth his rock salt. Here, I forced myself to buy yet another book (the fifth in a week; I have no idea if slash how I will be able to keep this up) from the 'mmmm yeah I like it' recommendations shelf. The thin, grey eyed man behind the counter said nothing but gave me one of those 'good choice' hand gestures by making his thumb and first finger into a circle and pursing his lips. I nodded. We understood each other.

Unable to resist, I also made a reluctant tourist couple take a photo me grinning manically standing in Jack Kerouac alley with my copy of On the Road. I was amused and really, that is all that counts. Chinatown, also brilliant, spills over a few blocks away. It is always crowded, usually with withered old ladies buying sacks of breadfruit and the odd American husband-and-wife-tourist team, looking decidedly out of their comfort zone and trying to find the way out.

The homeless people of San Francisco are much more entertaining that in Los Angeles. Here, they love you even if you don't give you money, and if you do, they might even reward you for it. I threw a few quarters at a smelly woman in the Mission district and she was so stoked that she jumped up and began a kind of wasted tap dance. The best part was that she wasn't wearing any shoes. Everyone in San Francisco has a favourite homeless person story. My personal favourite

is the man with crazy eyes who we spotted on the subway. He had a boom box above his head which was playing Kid A at full volume and he was yelling the lyrics to everyone in the carriage as they tried politely (terrified) to ignore him. The thing was, the words he were singing didn't make any sense, but were instead some sort of nonsense language he had made up. It took me a while to figure this out though. I guess that's Kid A for you.

Perhaps my favourite part of the city though has to be Dolares park. It is here, on a Friday afternoon, that all the hipsters come to drink red wine and talk politics. You can hear them arguing several blocks away, but by the time the sun sets, everyone has mellowed down and even the anarchists have started playing Frisbee. My favourite part was when a blonde girl stripped down to her bra and knickers and went careening down the hill in a wheelchair (I have no idea where she got the wheelchair from, perhaps some kind paraplegic swapped it with her for a case of wine) . At the bottom of the hill, it hit a bump and she went sprawling onto the grass. For a few seconds, I thought the evening might have been over, but then she stumbled back up, unstrapped her bra and, with a wasted smile on her face, began pushing the wheelchair, topless, back up the hill. No one else seemed particularly impressed or surprised and I even heard some snarky hippy girl remark "She's not as good as that naked mime that was here last week."

People, we have come a long way from Japan. And thank god for that.

More Greyhound adventures

The trip from Vegas to San Fran was a long and painful one, beginning at 3am when the Larry David-lookalike (complete with slacks) sitting next to me began bombarding me with 'fun facts' about California. Please imagine if Larry David was slightly autistic and smiled constantly without looking at you. This was my fifteen hour gambit between states and another example of the freaks that Greyhound has to offer.

Across fifteen hours, I learnt many painful, ridiculous things about California from Autistic Larry (who's name actually was David). After each fact, I would feign interest (with less and less conviction as the trip went on) with a "Oh, really?" to which he would bluntly respond "yes" and then stare out the window, grinning from ear to ear like a happy dog. After this, I would re-attach my ipod and get On the Road back on track and just when I'd gotten to the paragraph where Dean shows up again (or whatever), I'd feel a tap on my shoulder and a small part of me would die inside.

At some stage in California, I realized that this man was clearly insane. He hadn't slept AT ALL for the fifteen hour trip and would break into sporadic coughing fits several times an hour. When we stopped in the middle of nowhere for a lunch break, he ordered a Fish O' Fillet from McDonald's (the only place to get food, as usual). He then proceeded to eat the fish fillet bit but not before licking off all the tartare sauce and spitting it delicately onto the ground. After this, he crumbled the burger bun into little crumbs and putting it into his top pocket for "a wee snack." For the last three hours, my sanity was tested to the brink. Every few minutes I would hear him unzipping his top pocket and pulling out a tiny, rolled up crumb of bread. These he would chew carefully, one by one, with his eyes closed, never letting his smile fade. Then he would zip the pocket up again, carefully, and tell me at length about his favourite state.

Insane Larry: "Did you know that Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge contains the largest winter population of bald eagles in the continental United States?"

"Did you know that Inyo National Forest is home to the bristle cone pine, the oldest living species in America? Did you know that some of the gnarled trees and thought to be over 4,600 years old?"

"Did you know that when I was travelling through San Diego in 1978, I had a seafood buffet for $3.25. I went back six years later and they had the same buffet but it was $5.55. I refused to pay it."

SHUT UP!!!!!!

He got off at San Jose and I managed to rest my poor, fast food filled, sunburn-destroyed body for an hour before we arrived at our destination. I began the long, fruitless search for an internet cafe. To cut a long story short, there are none. The people of San Francisco are so trendy and 'up with it' that it is a city of wi fi. Your humble narrator was, however, unaware of this and so spend a long, painful afternoon walking around the downtown area with my travellers pack destroying my sunburnt shoulders with every step. At some point, I decided that ridicule was better than pain and so began to drag it behind me down the street. This did not prove to be a good idea. A homeless man with no teeth applauded me as I turned onto his corner and tried to give me a high five. I winced with pain and reattached the pack. My eyes watered for hours.

Eventually, a kindly Chinese woman allowed me to use her Internet when I went in to buy a pork bun. Somehow I made it to the gallery opening where I met up with Trey, and slumped into the corner with a plastic cup of wine. Over the next few hours, I would meet at least four people who wanted to (and probably would) save the world. I would drink a lot more and I would come across more crazy people who would scare the shit out of me. Thankfully, most of them were homeless and thus our interactions were short and relatively sweet.

San Francisco, I can feel my heart pulling away already. Damn you and your catchy cliches.

Adventures in the desert

After three days in L.A., I was screaming to leave. To be fair, it has a few treats which the New Zealander in me was somewhat partial to. For one thing, the museums are epic palaces, where the curators chuck a few Picassos in a corner gallery on the fourth floor and smirk as the tourists climb over each other to snap photos of them. My favourite exhibition involved three basketballs floating in a tank of dishwashing liquid. There was no explanation. I considered asking the Chinese woman on gallery duty, but she gave me a weary look as if to say: "Don't even think about it." Still, she surely got the better end of the deal than the woman who had to guard the bottom gallery, which featured a large red lump of copper and nothing else. This piece was labelled 'Untitled'. I walked out in disgust.

The other highpoint of L.A. is the beaches. Santa Monica and Venice are both expanses of golden sand and crystal blue water which can make you fall to your knees after a year in small town Japan. Santa Monica has one of the piers featuring carnival rides and chilli cheese dogs and screaming kids in every direction. I lay on the sand and inadvertently burnt myself to a crisp, making the next week of my trip somewhat or a scarlet nightmare. Venice Beach is much more chilled out; hippies and hipsters rule the roost and medical marijuana shops nestle between tattoo parlours and t-shirt boutiques. There are psychics and and 60 year old men with dreadlocks crowding around ghetto blasters smoking joints the size of whiteboard markers. For ten dollars, you can have your face painted onto a grain of rice or buy a custom made magic wand. I am not kidding. A little further down, marathon men lift babels and do pilates, showing off their killer bods against the palm trees. Once again, the tourist stop and snap photos. The men flex and love it.

Post-Venice, I decided that L.A. was no longer the city for me. San Francisco beckoned and the thought of food that wasn't deep fried or served between two piece of white bread was too tempting to ignore. And then, Greyhound ticket in hand, I had a revelation. Vegas! Why not? San Fran could wait a day and so I hopped on the bus at the other end of the station and off we set into the desert. The woman sitting off me was probably 70 but looked about 150 and spend the first three hours telling me about all the Broadway shows she visited in New York. Her favourite phrase was 'Oh you have to go, you HAVE to go!' in a Jewish voice that haunted me for days to come. Her second favourite phrase was 'Whaaatt?' which she screeched out every time I asked her anything, screwing up her little face and pointed to her hearing aid. After about 10 minutes, I was ready to give up. Unfortunately, she wasn't.

Upon getting to Vegas, I was accosted by the bus driver. He told me his name was Jim and that he wondered if I could tell him about New Zealand over dinner. His shout. I was somewhat speechless but being adventurous and on a budget, I accepted. I guess in retrospect this might have been a mistake; he did look slightly like a serial killer (dyed blonde hair, semi-pot belly and large glasses), but he did have a soothing narration voice.

Before dinner, Jim wanted to show me something on the top story of of his hotel. It was at this point that I had my first moment of freak out, slipping a Biro into my pocket and wiping the sweat off my forehead and trying not to think about 'it rubs the lotion on its skin.' It turned out that Jim, a tour guide first and foremost, simply wanted to show me a view of the Vegas skyline at sunset. It was sweet, really. I took a couple of snaps and tried to make my stomach rumble on cue. We had an awkward slash enjoyable meal at the oldest casino in Vegas, in which the waitress asked if we were father and son. I ordered a country fried steak which involves a piece of crumbed meat covered in white sauce. Jim had the triple cheese burger and asked me about The Lord of the Rings in between bites. He told me has was a republican and made a semi-racist remark about Obama. I ordered dessert.

After Jim waved me off on the downtown bus, I had nine hours to explore before getting back on the Greyhound. Vegas lay spread out before me, like some kind of hooker with her knickers down. What I love about it is how if you take away the fancy (ridiculous) casino outer cases, the whole place is the same. In every building, people sit around blackjack tables in their cargo pants, nervously drumming their fingers on the table with one hand and sucking down a cigarette with the other. There are ATMs in the casinos, usually proceeded by lines of people with their credit cards out. There is bound to be more people looking sad than happy and there is always one person quietly sobbing by the door. You can even get your food delivered to your slot machine so you don't have to stop your losing streak to nourish your body with french fries.

There are limos everywhere in Vegas. They seem to be full of twenty-something boys on stag nights. They spill out onto the main street, yelling about strippers and 'winning big.' No one is very impressed. Every now and then, a truly glamorous couple can be spotting; a silver haired gentlemen in a tuxedo steering his diamond studded wife through the throng of rabble outside Cesar's Palace. They have clearly seen too many Rat Pack movies and will spend their next vacation in the Bahamas.

Inside all the big casinos lie the shows. Video screens show you what campy delights you are missing out on as you trek from one dire room to another. Cher's up there, somehow still belting out 'If I could turn back time' amidst a shower of glitter and screaming fans. At the Bellagio, you can see Bill Cosby, back from the entertainment dead with another wacky stand up show about 'those darned kids.' Worse still is Better Midler. Her concert, 'The Showgirl must go on," Is the sensation of Vegas, and you can't turn your head without seeing it flashing around somewhere. In the show, Bette (Sixty-three), runs around in her bra and knickers, dancing with a pink feather boa as a bunch of men in G-strings chase her with a massive butterfly net. The song she is singing is called "Big knockers."

By 3am, I was ready to leave Vegas forever. People were up way past their bedtime and all the 'all you can eat seafood' buffets were closed. As I boarded the bus, A tiny man with a grey beard danced almost perfectly to Creedance's 'Bad Moon Rising.' I watched him from the window and once again snapped my camera. Vegas was lucky to have him; he was about the only real thing I'd seen all night.

Living the dream (or the song at least)

America.

The song "American Boy" by Estelle is destined to be the (somewhat cliched) soundtrack of the next ten weeks. Amid the tourist spots, Greyhound buses and endless slices of pizza, I try to find a 5.7 boy that's just my type; preferably Jewish, gorgeous and a social smoker. I've kept eyes open but as of yet he has alluded me. Still there have been variants of the American hero so far, B-Grade versions though they may be.

In L.A., exhausted from the lack of sleep on my twelve hour flight, I met a boy named Dwight on the train out to Hollywood Boulevard. He was a skinny guy with a lazy eye and appeared to be gay despite having just come from church. Terrified of the homeless man that sat rocking back and fourth behind me, I clung to Dwight like a life raft. I made pathetic 'wow America' remarks and made my eyes go as wide as possible and it seemed to work. He helped me find a hostel on Hollywood Blvd., a hideous place where a fat woman in sweat pants took my US $25 and took me to a tiny sweat bunk bed room, which smelled like vomit (which made sense after I looked at the floor in the bathroom). At the end of the corridor sat a black dwarf on a stool. He appeared to hate everyone.

Dwight, getting more confident by the minute, took me to a Mexican restaurant down the street and watched as I ravenously ate the smallest taco I'd ever seen. The conversation began to lull as he talked about Jesus and his lazy eye jumped around excitedly. He also slipped into the conversation that he lived in a Gay & Lesbian Co-op with three other roommates, but that he had only slept with one of them. With each sentence, I recoiled slightly, eventually making some excuse about jet lag and stumbling back to the hostel.

Hollywood Blvd. is filled with homeless people and tourists and it is hard to know which are the more repellent. The poor (literally) homeless people push trolleys down the sidewalk, desperately grabbing at empty bottles from the recycle bin and snarling at people who are waiting, terrified, for the lights to change. The quieter one sits sedated on the pavement, holding out a cup for change that never gets filled or even used. Some of them have tiny, malnourished cats that roam the three feet of sidewalk their string leash will allow them. These cats are an attempt to cull the tourists into sympathy donations, but it doesn't seem to work. Often, the cats are even more nose wrinkling than their owners. I almost stood on one of the cats as I ambled down the Boulevard. It's owner yelled at me through his mouth of broken teeth and I apologised and dropped a small america coin into his coca cola cup. He smiled at me in graitude and then spat forcefully onto the pavement.

The tourists appear in clumps; large women from the Midwest and sweaty men with Loafers herding a bunch of screaming kids towards the Disney museum. Hundreds of them stand outside the Chinese theatre, posing for photos with Jack Sparrow and the cast of Looney Toons; all of whom have disturbingly thick Mexican accents. The only food that is available on the Hollywood strip is fast food; an endless parade of pizza, burgers and chili cheese dogs. No one wants anything else. Men who know the score seduce the tourist with maps of celebrity cribs, and they head off in open top buses, their necks craned like meerkats.

The most bizarre spot on the Blvd. was Michael Jackson's Hollywood star. Two months after his demise, a gaggle of tourists could be seen stroking it and snapping teary photos. One even got down on the filthy pavement and curled herself around it like a cat. She was crying quietly and the rest of the tour stood round awkwardly, unsure of how such a crisis should be resolved.

Later on, Dwight turned up at the hostel, wondering if I wanted to take a stroll down the strip to see his favourite church. I politely declined and told him I would catch up with him tomorrow. He nodded hopefully and trundled away. It occured to me that he might have been one of the dullest people I have ever met. He was an American boy alright, but no one would ever sing a song about him.

I curled up in my bunk bed and tried to sleep. The two French boys in the bunk over proceeded to get drunk and walk around in their underwear, drowning themselves in cologne. Somewhere amid this, I drifted off, waking to sunshine and the sound of car horns. L.A. was still there, big and beautiful in a sleazy kind of way. I was in America. Finally.

Fuck Yeah.

Ms. Benes moves West

Wellington.

Winter in the capital and the sun shines bright. In the past two weeks, I have soaked up vitamin D than my entire year of glacial Hokkaido. As I write this, I wear sunglasses to shelter my eyes from the much appreciated glare and stop every few minutes to eat a piece of camembert with my eyes closed. To my right sits the converted plastic cuisine I brought back from the Far East, shimmering on the coffee table amongst my mother’s trendy ornaments. 

They are the only things in plain sight that I have to remind me of Japan and that suits me just fine. 

I have settled back into the Western World with disturbing ease. Over the last two weeks, I have  formulated the answer to the inevitable ‘How was Japan’ question—asked politely by friends and parents friends who don’t care but pretend to—down to a sharp, three sentence response. “Oh yes, it was great” I begin, my eyes wearily lighting up. I follow up the probing questions with an intoxicated roll of the eyes and something like: “I don’t even know how to describe Japan, its such a whack place!”  At this point, my voice develops a warning tone, fending off follow up questions with a tight smile. If pushed, I have a few anecdotes up my sleeve (‘Black Obama’, Run crippled boy run, Fat Teacher on Ice) and I must admit, the gaping faces of disbelief do please me somewhat. But after this, it all closes down rather firmly with concluding crap about ‘good life experience’ and some serious nodding. In and out in three minutes and no mention of those soggy Suntory marathons.

Aside from these asides, my world has become flooded by the pleasures that the East could not provide. Blue vein and olives; merlot and Shortland Street; driving and sunbathing; gay people, bagels, beaches, skinny jeans and Malaysian restaurants. The ocean is not obscured by wartime blockades, and is in fact a place to be enjoyed, even in the so called winter. There is no J-Pop to be heard and even the dub music sounds sweet by comparison. Cliché after cliché and I’m sure you’ve heard them all before. I am even tempted to quote our gay ally Judy Garland and say that there is no place like home, but that would suggest a sense of tackiness that Bombay & Elaine does not encourage. Let’s just say that I feel like I have finally broken up with a boyfriend that I always hated, and the wave of relief is awesome. 

I have begun dating a boy five years my junior; a bright wee design student with the kind of perfect cheekbones and big brown eyes that I spent hours dreaming about in my Gummo town. I laugh off the ‘cradle snatcher’ jokes and walk down the street with him arm in arm. Homosexuality is relatively acceptable here, at least on Cuba Street. We smoke cigarettes as we walk and try to avoid the pigeons.  Gutter birds they may be, but after a year of crows, I could almost kiss their gnarled little feet. We throw our cigarette buts on the street and don’t get arrested. 

The design student took me for a night out at The Ivy; the new (and only) gay bar in the city. The first floor is a garden bar where balding men in sports jackets sip vodka tonics in the corners, their pinkie fingers raised at 90° angles so that even the most intoxicated patrons get the message. They make half hearted fuck eyes as the young boys in tight jeans who bounce around at the bar and wisely ignore them. The tight jeans bounce back upstairs, drinks in hand to the dance floor. 

The top floor is a spectacularly sweaty meat market with young bucks embracing in every direction. In the centre, a wasted girl grinds away blissfully surrounded by a circle of adoring males. From time to time, one or another will peel off to try their luck with a lonely looking solo dancer, usually returning to their queen bee and trying to hide their bruised ego. The speakers blared out Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys, which I took to be some kind of 90s themed novelty night. Later, the design boy told me that this was in fact the only music that they ever played at The Ivy. He told me of a now legendary blonde jock who would break into a mad interpretative dance every time ‘Mambo No 5’ came on (which was disturbingly often).  

The middle aged men don’t venture up to this level. Their shiny domes are cruelly illuminated under the wandering spotlights. They know that eventually their time will come, usually in the shape of a teary 22 year old, dejected after failing to find tenderness from the sweaty throng a floor above. A few drinks and a firm hand around the shoulder and the two will leave together, under the disgusted eyes of the bouncer. 

Gay bars aside, Wellington is of course, no more than a stopping point between journeys. As the days go by, the novelty fades somewhat and my feet begin to itch with the promise of travel and adventure. New Zealand is a beautiful place but a tiny one. In two weeks, I will be sipping Budweiser in the Californian sun. I can almost taste the Twinkies now. 

In Urakawa, things go on as usual. Sato Sensei cancels his weekend away with his increasingly estranged fiancé when his volley ball team wins their tournament. The music tyrant schedules overtime for his terrorized brass band as the school’s opening ceremony approaches. Yukki sheds a tear and practises her phrasal verbs.  And though she feels like she’s in a play, she is anyway. Or a blog at least. 

It may not resonate in my ears and in my eyes with a McCartney- refrain, but it’s there somewhere, nestled between various organs like an appendix. I guess that counts for something. 

Insert Lionel Ritchie lyrics here

Perhaps the dinner was a wrong move. Poor Yukki, already besotted with the town’s suspiciously flamboyant Westerner, almost used up the entire supply of Skype smiley faces when I accepted her invitation to dine with the family. And why not, I thought. After a year of making the same five meals over and over again, your humble narrator would have crawled across a muddy field to get a home cooked meal. Also, with the days of my contract running out, I have become suddenly desperate to cram in as many ‘Japanese experiences’ as is wholly possible. And of course, there was the underlying flattery that after eleven and a half months in Royston Vasey, someone finally thinks that I am worthy of a dinner invitation.

What can I say, dear readers; I was touched.

I was picked up at the train station by a hyperventilating Yukki and her aunt ‘Honey’ who was by far the coolest person in the entire town. She had blonde spikey hair and a chin piercing and elaborates tattoos swirling down both her arms. She wore a T-shirt with picture of a skull and crossbones and underneath, the words ‘CREAM SODA.’ She drove a pimped out four wheel drive with gothic satin cushions in the back seat and those flat screen-TVs-in-the-seats that don’t exist outside the world of music videos and the world of people who make music videos.
As I hoisted myself in, she stubbed her cigarette in gothic skull ashtray on the dashboard and heartily shook my hand. Her grip was ridiculously strong. I winced but managed to turn it into a crooked little smile. Yukki giggled.

The rest of the family turned out to be much more status quo and after meeting Grandmother, Sister and two cousins, the seven of us sat down for the much anticipated dinner. The feast in question was nabe; a traditional Hokkaido dish of meat, vegetables and tofu that are cooked in a pot of boiling stock in the centre of the table. The whole thing would be far more delicious if each item didn’t have to be dipped in raw egg before eating it.

Half way through, possibly realizing that my meagre scraps of Japanese vocabulary had been used up, I foolishly got out my camera to take a few quick snaps of the sumptuous food. This caused a commotion as Yukki squealed and whipped out her bejewelled cellphone. For the next twenty minutes, the meal was forgotten as the entire family began an elaborate photo shoot which involved four cameras, sixteen different combinations of people and more peace signs than San Francisco in the 60’s. Aunt 'Honey' did the metallica sign. I loved every moment of it.

After dinner, Yukki took me of a tour of her house. She introduced me to her three cats and her collection of handmade dolls. She showed me her bedroom and wouldn’t let anyone else come in. I sat awkwardly in the corner wearing a pair of panda earmuffs as Yuki yelled at her sister in Japanese through the crack in the door. I showed her YouTube videos of M.I.A. and Justice and she freaked out. I guess there’s not much call for Srilankan rappers in rural Japan.

As I left, Yukki slipped me a small present, telling me to open it when I got home. After I had bowed and thanked everyone and made it back to my apartment, I opened it to discover a sparkly letter ‘Y’ dangling on a silver chain.

Yesterday was my last day at Yukki’s school. As usual, she accosted me on the train and proudly showed me that addition of ‘D.A.N.C.E.’ on her iPod nano. I smiled and nodded and pretended to be very tired. She didn’t buy it. The crunch came in third period; the last ever class and an emotional occasion even for me. In the final ten minutes, I was presented with a leaving card with messages from the entire English class, all of which were in Japanese. The exception was Yukki’s, which read in shaky English; ‘I was so happy until now.’

As the bell rang and the students began to shuffle off the gym, Yukki who had been looking ashen face for the whole hour suddenly burst into tears. She started sobbing and had to be led away down the corridor by her best friend; a tall plain looking girl with glasses who was clearly the Monica to her Rachel. Unfortunately, this was the only exit and so the English teacher and I had to follow them all the way back, keeping a good ten feet behind like a funeral procession.

We had almost made it when a group of sweaty, post-basketball Jocks burst in from the gym. At the sight of a crying girl, they started pointing and laughing and Yukki gave a high pitched wail and was veered off to the side by Monica. She disappeared down the hall but I could still hear her sobbing for a good few minutes.

At least she has Justice. That song could brighten up the Apocalypse.

Yet another Brick in the wall

With four weeks to go, I can’t help but wonder if Bombay & Elaine will survive outside of fair Japan. The odd music rant aside, B & E has developed a distinctly Asian flavour; sticky with soy sauce and steeped in the scent of cherry blossoms. How will he fare in the Western world, amidst the clatter of pronged cutlery? People say it takes a while to adapt to a new culture, especially at a young age. The poor thing is hardly walking.

My hope is that B & E will evolve as he grows, adopting to his surroundings and making new acquaintances wherever the windy world of the web takes him.

To put it in hipster’s terms, B & E is like The Wire. It relocates and picks up in a new sector as the seasons pass. The theme song changes and yet remains the same. You miss the towers but you get the docks; you keep watching it.

(I realise the audacity of comparing my humble word journal with what might well be the greatest television show of all-time, but it’s serves merely as a change to drop another pop culture reference into my already jam packed cyber-basket. Pathetic I know, but I’ve always wanted to be one of the cool kids.)

In short, it prevails.

At present, the staffroom is all a flutter for the school festival next weekend. Twenty foot long banners line most the corridors. Students cluster around them, furiously applying brush strokes to dizzying murals of trees, flowers and smiling suns. In one of these murals, someone had painted me; a little white smiley face with Harry Potter glasses the words ‘I love kiwi!!’ written above in green capitals. I was touched.

Sobs echoed down the first floor this afternoon amid the heartbreaking sound of ripping paper. Somewhere within the vast expanse of painted landscape, a teacher had spotted two stick figures (one with pigtails, one without) locking acrylic lips, while a stream of tiny love hearts rose up between them. He then proceeded to give the terrified 15 year old girls a rousing lecture about family values and the presence of small children at a family event before deeming their mural ‘unsuitable’ for the festival and tearing it up.

The girls appeared at the staffroom an hour later, still in tears and begging for forgiveness. Eventually after a long silence, he relented and allowed them to attend the festival as long as they stayed afterwards to help clean up. They accepted, teary but grateful.

The teacher in question is one of the school’s totalitarians. He has slicked back hair and watery blue eyes and suffers from intense headaches. He conducts the school band and can hear a flat note over a row of perfectly tuned violins. His practises last four hours a day and he has been known to knock it up to six for special occasions. He can be heard screaming at the brass section the whole week before they play ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ for the school graduation ceremony. To be fair, their performance was perfect.

If his head starts aching in the middle of a practise, he doesn’t stop but instead continues conducting the instruments in front of him. The more he conducts, the worse it gets and it is then that his temper really begins to rage. My students have told me that they dread the days when the vein on his forehead starts to throb. He begins to single out terrified students with his baton and scream insults at them, telling them they have no talent as they play their required solo over and over again with trembling fingers. Once, after a particularly trying five hours of ‘Some Enchanted Evening,’ he stormed out of the music room in a rage and slammed the door. The band members were too scared to move and sat petrified in their seats until he came slinking back fifteen minutes later, reeking of cigarettes.

To get an idea of how unhinged this man is, we must turn back our stopwatches to the night of last year’s school dance. The moon is full and a line of smartly dressed boys and girls in shimmery dresses snakes politely around the gymnasium. Teachers stand by the door, checking tickets and reiterating the ‘no kissing’ rule. One of these is the Music Tyrant.

Things appear to be moving smoothly. Inside the gym, the boys and girls blush and whisper to each other and some even begin to dance awkwardly under the steely supervision of the vice principal. There is a big bowl of red punch; the students are allowed to help themselves to one paper cup’s worth. Doling this out is Fat Cake Bitch; another teacher who I will flesh out at a later date. For now, imagine the mother of that friend you had in primary school who grudgingly let you play at her house after school but scowled the whole time.

Suddenly, there is a commotion at the door. The swaying couples turn around, using the opportunity to put their little arms tentatively around each other as the chaperones rush to the entrance. Cake Bitch is already there, waving her ladle.

One of the third year girls had turned up with highlights in her hair. They look sweet, if a little Blossom-esque. She clutches her tiny handbag, terrified, as the Music Tyrant towers over her, yelling and pointing with his big finger. Eventually resigned to her fate and tears ruining her carefully applied mascara, she is ushered into a corner. the Music Tyrant pulls out roll of brown paper and wraps it around her neck, her hair splayed out over the top. And then, like something out of Carrie, out comes the can of black spray paint.

There were no more school dances after that. The girl was allowed to attend the rest of the dance but her dress was covered in black stains and her hair hung limp and dead. She smelt like a fumigated house. Her confidence, I would assume, was somewhat ruffled. On Monday, her hair was back to its natural black, the same as every other student in the school.

I sometimes have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not living in a Roald Dahl book. But then I look around and realise that none of the kids are ever going to break the rules and slip a newt in their teacher’s water jug. They’d probably be deported.

And it’s not The Wire either. You can empathise with the bad guys on that.


Next week, Cake Bitch.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Sato

Mr M.’s replacement, Sato Sensei, represents for me the stereotypical put-upon Japanese male. In the four months since his arrival, we have up struck up the closest thing I have to a real Japanese friendship. He’s a nice guy; friendly and soft spoken with a perfectly pressed suit and his hair gelled into an awkward fringe. The system has not yet beaten him down, but I predict that it is only a matter of time. Also me to spin for you the traumatsing tale of the everyman from Japan.

Sato Sensei didn’t want to teach in my small town. He is in fact from Sapporo; the largest city and, by my reckoning, the only bearable place in Hokkaido (the second largest, Asahikawa, is a sprawling ugly wasteland of a place with the coldest temperature in Japan). He worked hard during his school years and went straight to teachers college. Here, he was unable to partake in the (semi) boisterous life of the Japanese student as he lived with his parents who forebode his from drinking even at age 21. Post-graduation, Sato not-yet-Sensei asked to stay in Sapporo with his family and friends. More fool him. As with all teachers in Japan, choosing a teaching location in not allowed. Ever. You can make requests, sure, but you won’t get them. Instead, our protagonist was shunted to a small town, a sobering five hours drive from everything he ever knew.

(Readers may, at this point, as why Sato Sensei was not in favour of a more exciting placement than Hokkaido’s frozen terrain. Apparently, a Hokkaido teaching degree does not translate the other islands of Japan. If a teacher has a sudden urge for the bright lights of Tokyo, he must spend another two years completing a diploma which permits him to teach outside of Hokkaido. This makes no sense given that the teaching curriculum is exactly the same throughout Japan. For a country so obsessed with ‘Black’ Obama, change is disturbingly low on the list of priorities.)

And so, unable to travel afar and unable to stay put, Sato Sensei was placed in a non-descript small town which I believe was famous for growing turnips. Here he stayed for two years, coached the basketball club, making a few teaching buddies and finally began to feel like he was part of the turnip-themed community. Then, as with all teachers, he was relocated to ANOTHER Gummo-esque town three hours north. This one was bigger but colder and here he coached the archery club because he had to. Still, things started looking up when he began courting the school’s demure, tracksuit wearing P.E. teacher. She was the only female teacher not married and they had romantic dates at the town’s local yakiniku bar and held hands under the desk at the teachers’ meeting. He even sang her a shaky version of The Carpenters’ ‘Close to you’ at the end of year karaoke party, after which the other male teachers slapped him on the back and told him that he was now ‘a real man.’

A year went blissfully by and the happy couple got engaged. This was not altogether unexpected. Japanese teachers nearly always marry other Japanese teachers, for the simple reason that most of them never have the chance to meet anyone else. This is especially true in deathly small towns, where men and women never go to the same pub.

Unfortunately, this declaration of love meant nothing to the Hokkaido School Board. Being the Iago in our Shakespearean tragedy, the Board completely ignored the pleading requests for the two to continue their journeys through life side by side. Instead, the new engaged couple was split up and placed six hours apart at opposite ends of the island. There were tears and the exchanging of personalized coffee mugs and then they parted ways; she for a town of 12,000 to the north and he for a small town in the south known primarily for its seaweed.

It is here where your humble narrator came across the poor fellow, two desks down from his own and struggling to unpack a box of tattered English textbooks. He gave me a weary smile and after we began to converse in fractured English, I could see that this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Upon his arrival, Sato Sensei was instructed to coach the tennis club, which involved standing huddled in a corner of the freezing tennis courts for four hours every afternoon from Monday to Saturday. If there is a tournament on Sundays, he has to organize rides for all the team members; weekend plans be damned. As a result, he is only able to undertake the six hour journey to visit his fiancé about once a month. He told me this on one of our cigarette breaks (which happen often, him being addicted and me being bored), showing me a tiny photo of the women in question and telling me in a sad, tiny voice that he might only spend ten nights with her in one year. He told me that he hated tennis and tears welled up in his eyes. I felt a lump in my throat and took another long drag of my Lucky Strike. It’s times like this that smoking is not only acceptable but pretty goddamn mandatory.

Sato Sensei is stuck here for at least three years and from there is it wherever the Hokkaido School Board chooses. He stares wistfully at my travel plans, knowing that he will probably never get a chance to see the wide world. Teachers in Japan get maybe one week’s break after club activities are all set and done and these are mostly spent visiting their parents or their parents’ graves. Some do attempt to fit overseas travel into their limited vacation time like Mochi Sensei; the teacher at my school who flew to Europe for a three day 'holiday of a lifetime' in between softball tournaments.

Sato Sensei hopes to one day settle down with his tracksuit-covered beloved and raise a family. Still, on the likelihood of this, he is unsure. The Hokkaido Board is no more accommodating to a married couple than an engaged one. It may be ten years before the two can be together again.

And yet, I have saved the most heartbreaking part of the story for last. Sad and lonely, a stranger in town no one would ever want to call home, Sato Sensei decided to get himself a pet. A cat, a dog, a hamster...anything so long as it would be glad to see him when he returned after his six hours of teaching and four hours of tennis. Upon finding this out, the Hokkaido School Board contacted him and informed him that pets were not allowed in the house he was required to live in. Not even a goldfish.

In five weeks, I will leave my small town forever and breathe a sigh of long anticipated relief. I hope Sato Sensei will be ok. I have promised to send him a postcard from the magical world of America and may even attempt a Skype conversation at some point. As I write this, he is frantically trying to prepare his fifth lesson for the day, his brows furrowed with concentration. Sometimes when I walk past him, I give him an affectionate pat on the back. He turns round, startled and confused, and smiles weakly.

Does he dare disturb the universe?

Exploring the Novelty Pash

Yukki told me last week that she is planning to follow me to New Zealand when I leave. I would have been more amused if I was sure she was joking. I told her it was six weeks and she shook her head and said “Shocking ....oh, shocking! Shocking!” She has also begun the passive aggressive threats of a clingy girlfriend during our Skype conversations. The number of crying faces in one message has reached double digits. Last night, I accidently got drunk on sake and danced around my apartment playing ‘Little Bird’ by Annie Lennox on repeat while cooking dinner. On learning this, mainly through the little dancing black man symbol available on Skype, Yukki sent me a beating love heart and this video delight, accompanied by the phrase: “Please...it dances!!!”




I danced alright.

Cryptic messages are perhaps the best part about being adrift in the sea of Japanese speakers. The boy in the tattered grunge jeans whom I ‘novelty pashed’ in Odori Park last week has begun getting in touch. At first, his messages were all in hiragana. When we exchanged numbers, he asked me if “Japanese message ok?” and, being drunk and not really caring, I nodded which was a blatant lie. I can’t read any Japanese at all, except for the kanji for ‘male’ and ‘female’ and useful food things like ‘ramen.’ It’s really all you need.

I ignored the first three kanji messages he sent me and as they continued and the number of exclamation marks grew, I sighed and emailed back a message entirely in English and a kissing face. I think this offended him as he sent me a reply which read: “If it is a kiss it does even times too many” and a picture of what looked like an exloding mushroom cloud. It didn’t seem like a good sign.
However, an hour later, I received another cryptic message. “Do you have wanting do something ???” Confused more than anything else, I chucked him a reply about being in Sapporo for the weekend.

There was no way I could make sense of any of this. Japanese boys are notoriously cautious about treading in the gay pool. The manly baseball players hold hands as they walk to school. The straight ones carry handbags and paint their nails. And this boy, dressed like a Pearl Jam groupie complete with Timberlands, had told us that despite the five second pash we shared, he liked girls. I had tried my best to sway him, blowing my cigarette smoke out in a seductive stream while he awkwardly coughed and grudgingly complimenting his Timberlands. I even told him (through Moraya, my fellow ALT and the only one who could speak bridge the language gap) in a bout of drunken desperation that I back in New Zealand, I was the crown prince and that I had my own castle. His eyes widened but then Moraya, bored with playing the amenable translator, added that my last girlfriend in New Zealand had been a sheep.

And so, were these messages more in the direction on a ‘whats up homie’ or a booty call? Did I even care? Even after being stranded for almost a year in a sexual desert, I just couldn’t see him in the box marked ‘option.’ His teeth were just too wretched to be taken seriously. And yet I kept replying. He kept offering me quotes from The Silence of the Lambs: “If it is a kiss, it does a lot.” “One knows a thing that some should sometimes quiet.” And my personal favourite, which I assume was some attempt at a dinner invitation: “The meal also puts the feedbag on.”

I have come to the conclusion that there is a lot more to the ‘novelty pash’ than people realize. It is the desire to lock lips with someone which, although awkward, embarrassing and frequently regrettable, will leave you with a good story to tell. The ‘novelty pash’ can be ethnic based, religious based, or height based. It can include puppeteers, celebrities, people who look like celebrities, people who work at your local cafe, people you secretly hate, goths, drag queens, break-dancers and angry feminists. You may be repulsed and disgusted, but you force yourself on just so that you can come stumbling into your flat at 3am and scream: “Oh my god I just hooked up with that guy from the library whose head looks like a mop!”

The trouble comes when you try and move your novelty pash to the next level. All too often people attempt to move into onto a ‘novelty date’ stage so as to keep the novelty value alive. Sadly this never works, as the novelty factor dies almost instantly. I believe I have fallen into the novelty pash trap with Mr. Pearl Jam. I have to be strong and tell him that I cannot put my feedbag on and accompany him to dinner. I should really just tick off the ‘straight Asian boy who speaks no English’ box on my pash list and move onto something else.

Sexually confused rabbi perhaps?

We thank you for your co-operation

There are two supermarkets in my town. One, the local (Baby Co-op), is the size of mid-level Four Square and a minute’s walk from my apartment. The other (Mamma Co-op) is exactly the same but four times the size and, with my inability to acquire a Japanese driver’s license, a frustrating hour’s walk away. Sometimes, on those long Polanski-esque weekends of solitude, I arm myself with my walking stick and a packet of camels and brave the three kilometre trek there; a distance which seems much longer on the way back, with a bag of groceries dangling from each arm.

Mama Co-op is somewhat overwhelming. Supermarket staff stands in every corner handing out free samples on toothpicks and yelling in high pitched Japanese. Mothers cram their trolleys full of frozen chickens. There is an entire refrigerated section devoted purely to tofu. There is a whole aisle just for soy sauce. I am not joking.

Throughout all this, the store’s theme tune plays at a dangerously high volume. Mama Co-Op plays the same 30 second jingle over and over again through every speaker in the store. It cannot be brought to justice through words, but if you see me in person and buy me a stiff drink, I might sing it for you. The lyrics go something like this:

“Ju bye, ju bye...who wants a ju bye?”

Then, after an elaborate synthesiser chord, it resumes:

“Nana bye, nana bye...who wants a Nana bye?”

The lyrics in question are sung in a baby voice, either by a small child or a playschool-themed female performance artist. This is followed by a jolly man with a belly laugh who thunders out "hey, juuuuu bye" and what I assume is the Japanese for “Our shop is the best! We have many things you can buy! Look at all our soy sauce!” It ends with a double drum kick and, all things considered, makes for a pretty good little ditty. The trouble is that two seconds after the concluding drum kick, the whole thing starts all over again, baby voice and all.

After walking an hour to get to the magical land of red onions and other things not available at Baby Co-op, I am determined to take my sweet time about it. I like a casual stroll through the produce section, a wander down soy sauce lane and a chance to sift through the store’s array of elaborate bento boxes. And so, after a thirty six minute shopping excursion, my ears have delivered me the ‘ju bye’ jingle SEVENTY TWO times. By this time, my fingers have begun gripping the edge of the trolley and the left side of my face has developed a nervous twitch. I try to smile at the cashier but it comes out as more of a leer and I think about how this nice girl’s ‘ju bye’ intake must be in the thousands and I die a little inside. It is at this point that I remember why I bought the camels.

Baby Co-op provides a much more soothing auditory experience. The preference here is for mainstream pop hits played out on analog synth. Sometimes these are matter of fact clichés that you’d hear in any elevator worth its salt: ‘Super Trooper,’ ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Strangers in the Night’ set the bar and you’d think things would stay there. Not so.

Amid these tired classics, Baby co-op offers a selection of hip tracks that should never be played through the guise of easy listening. The first time I heard ‘Bullet with Butterfly wings’ muzak-style, I thought that I’d hit the jackpot. But over the next ten months, I was also privileged to hear the likes of ‘Enter Sandman’, ‘You Outta Know’, ‘The Real Slim Shady’ ‘Love will tear us apart’, ‘Don’t cha’ and ‘Killing in the name of’ all beautifully presented through the medium of the moog. My personal favourite is still the bizarre inclusion of a funked up version of the theme from Jaws. As I remember, I was standing by the fish section when it played and I snickered and tossed a tray of salmon fillets into my basket.

For the 8.45pm to 9.00pm every night, Baby Co-op switches to ‘closing music.’ Put simply, this consists of fifteen minutes of ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ It both soothes me and confuses me as I gather my basket of snacks for the evening ahead: What the hell do they do at New Years? Do the staff play it during Baby Co-op's closing time on New Year’s Eve and then, at midnight, drunkenly embrace and sing along to the ‘ju bye’ jingle? Perhaps they get a couple of self-assured party goers to act out the baby voice part and the jolly man part. Perhaps there is a ‘ju bye’ drinking game. I imagine it would involve a bottle of tequila and a loss of will to live.

The twitch is back. Camel me up, baby.

Forgive me for prattling away and making everything all oogy.

I have my very own number one fan. I ever have it in writing: “I am a fan of Telford!” In some respects, she reminds me a little of Kathy Bates in Misery, except psychically, where she is the complete opposite.

It all started last year. Over a casual bowl of ramen, my neighbouring ALT mentioned that he had a student who had seen me out and about and had apparently fallen into crush mode. I slurped my ramen and laughed. Crushes. Surely a mandatory part of any teaching job. He told me her name and I nodded and then forgot it, as I forget everyone’s name in this country.
Later (a number of weeks if I remember correctly), a drunken Friday night and my neighbour persuaded me to send the said student an ‘I love you’ text from his phone. He told me it would make her freak out ‘in a good way.’ I shrugged and OKed it and he sent the message off and we got kept drinking and soon moved onto more mature topics like camping and rim jobs.

Months passed. Seasons changed. The White house got a little blacker and Susan Boyle made hundreds of hard working music students take to the bottle. The school year ended and a new one began, ushering in a tide of tiny, tidy, immaculately dressed fifteen year olds, with epic fringes and novelty charms dangling from every piece of stationary. I was at my monthly visit to the high school one town over, when I heard a high pitched squeal from the back of the classroom. I ignored it and continued dictating the list of sports-themed verbs.

The second the class ended, a pair of feet pattered up to the front of the classroom. I turned around and looked down. In front of me was the tiniest girl I had ever seen. She had huge eyes and ridiculously long hair that was done up in pigtails and made her look ever shorter. She started babbling at me in Japanese, her eyes getting wider and wider as it became clear I had no idea who she was or what she was talking to. She suddenly thrust her Hello Kitty-themed cellphone at me and said ‘I lub you I lub you I lub you!’ and tried to find the said message with shaky hands. I clicked.

It is at this point where the phrase ‘just nod and smile’ really comes into its own. I nodded and smiled. She squealed and hopped around and covered her mouth with her hands. I have never used the word swoon before, but I think she fulfilled the definition. She actually swayed from one side to the other like she might tip over, but somehow managed to stay vertical. Eventually, I managed to pry myself away and head to staffroom, as she followed my down the corridor waving manically and screaming out ‘kawaii’ (The Japanese favourite word meaning 'cute') as I secured myself inside.

A week later, she added me on skype. I accepted her because I had no idea what her name was and that ‘Yukki’ must have been the name of someone eligible fellow I met in my one and only gay night in Sapporo. This happens a lot; the forgetting names, not the eligible gay Skype buddies. As a result, our first conversation was a terrifying experience as I tried to figure out who the hell I was talking to through my fractured Japanese. It didn’t help that the profile picture was an anime warrior holding a gleaming sword.

I finally figured who was on the other end when Yukki asked when I was coming back to ‘the school.’ I told her I would be there in three weeks which brought on a tirade of giggling smiley faces and the phrase: “OK!!!!!!The enjoyment!!!!”

Throughout the next few weeks, I found out many things about Yukki as she guilt tripped me into numerous Skype conversations. If I didn’t respond, she would play the ‘sad face’ card which works much better on Skype where the sad face actually cries tears over and over again. I discovered that her hobbies were ‘movie watching & music appreciation’ and her favourite food was chocolate with twelve exclamation marks. I told her I liked running and she suggested in capital letters that we run together. I grimaced and told her ‘lol’ but she sent back the confused face that meant she didn’t understand so I gave up and just said ‘NO.’

She approached me on the train on Tuesday and handed me a cellophane bag filled with chocolate treats. I walked to school with her and her friends (who were instructed to stay several steps behind us) and she told me that I was ‘very very very cool’ and that I had beautiful eyes. The friends giggled and I blushed. I let it slip that I was leaving the land of Japan the next month and Yukki stopped dead. She looked up at me and shook her head. Her eyes filled with tears and she yelled at me: “No! No! You stay here! Stay in Japan. New Zealand no! I lub you!” I told her I would think about it.

Eventually she cheered up and asked if we could still talk on Skype if I went back home. ‘Sure’ I said and I meant it. She’s sweet and really means no harm to anyone. Plus, she’s tiny so if she ever tried any Kathy Bates shit, I could blatantly take her.

"I'm disturbed, I'm depressed, I'm inadequate, I've got it all!"

Working at a meaningless job is a like having motor neurons disease.


When you arrive, you are a normal, functioning human being, dressed immaculately and carrying a packed lunch. You greet everyone in the office (as best you can through the language barrier) with a beaming smile and hand out small treats to your co-workers. You make daily plans for what you aim to accomplish and include highlighted windows to learn the language so as to better find out the office gossip.


As the days press on, you begin to realize that all those lesson planning seminars you sat through were a waste of hours. Your schedule is to help teach two classes a week, and this involves standing behind the teacher and reading a list of selected verbs out of a textbook. On a good day, you will be able to engage in impromptu conversation with your students; on a bad day, you will sit quietly at your desk for eight hours. Bliss, you say. Try it for a year.


And so, things start to shut down. That immaculate suit which you made sure you had dry cleaned once a week is left crumpled on your bedroom floor. You think about hanging up your jacket and decided it against it. On a good morning, you will wipe off the chalky patches with a damp cloth. Usually, you just shrug. The shirts, which you used to iron with a Bree Van de Kamp-efficiency, are now stuffed into a draw and pulled out one crumpled mess at a time. One day, you forget to wear a tie. As with the shirt and the chalk patches, no one says anything. From then on, you go open collar.


Your shaving ritual collapses. You drag a razor across your chin once a week and spend the next five days letting the stubble grow longer and uglier. Instead of getting up an hour before school to shine yourself up in front on the mirror, you roll out of bed with twenty minutes to spare and arrive at school late, your hair hanging limp and sodden from the shower you just jumped in and out of. Some days, you wake up even later and don’t even bother with the shower. You flick the sleep out of your eye and attempt to subtlety pat down your cowlicks with a salivated hand, Bristol Palin style.


Your appearance is not the only thing that disintegrates. After weeks of having your chipper ‘is there anything for me to do today’ plea responded to with the solemn shake of the head, your work ethic finally dies on the respirator. You give up studying Japanese, and suddenly find you can’t concentrate on anything. You spend hours staring at the computer screen, clicking on links on Wikipedia and pouncing on anyone fool enough to sign into Gmail chat. Soon, even this doesn’t satisfy. You find your attention span has completely disappeared. Replying to emails is too much hard work. So is reading books. Sometimes you make yourself a cup of coffee just to see how many sips it takes to drink it.


Your morale destroyed, you also give up caring what anyone thinks of you. You give up the fake polite smiles when you realize no one has talked to you in days. You start turning up late, leaving early, taking naps on your desk. You play your ipod too loud and silently bop along to ‘Raspberry Beret.’


Throughout all this, no one says anything. And you realize, if your existence is a joke to them, then you might as well treat it like one. And now that your spirit is broken, the delightfully awful question arises: just how far can you push these people?


You begin watching TV shows on your laptop, starting with a half hour during lunch and eventually you are having Weeds marathons twice a week. You laugh at the jokes; even the ones that you don’t think are funny. You SLURP your coffee. You yawn loudly. On the morning they have an important meeting about swine flu, you cough and blow your nose loudly and specifically buy pork for lunch. It’s almost fun.


Ten months on, the fresh faced idealist has been replaced with a lazy, sloppy, bitter, nervous wreck of a person, who doesn’t even have enough discipline to wash out his coffee mug before using it to make tea. His functions have all shut down. He traipses the two minute walk from his house to his school at 7.59am and returns the opposite way at 4.01pm. He realizes that everyone in the office despises him but he no longer cares. He no longer cares about making a difference because no one allows him to do any real teaching. This is what happens when you are given a job that could be done by a nine year old. You start acting like one.


In an ironic, blog-themed twist, I have turned into George Constanza. God help us all.

Next time, use your fingers

Yet another faux par on my part. My, how they do add up.

Our scene is set at lunchtime, or at least the when I choose to eat it. The hour between eleven and midday and hunger pains in my belly from the lack of breakfast I should have filled it with four hours earlier.

Breakfast in Japan is a rather dreary prospect at the best of times. With the lack of any kind of bread that isn’t sliced and bleached to within an inch of its life, and two kinds of cereal flakes, both of which taste like cardboard chips, the only real option is the Japanese version of rice, miso soup and natto. Call me westerner but the thought of rice as the start to my just doesn’t gel, especially when it is frequently the staple of the day’s other two meals. And natto, a revolting product made of fermented soy beans is possibly the most revolting substance ever to pass my lips. The beans are held together with sticky strands that remind me of seamen but smell like chemicals. I one discovered a packet of the stuff I’d left at the back of the fridge for several months and on opening it, it looked and smelt exactly the same. All of the good ALTs persevered with it until it gelled with their taste buds. I gave up after a week. It makes me oddly nostalgic for brunches and boyfriends.

And so lunchtime arrives early and greedily. On this day of blunders, I had homemade udon bento box in front of me, A cup of black, hideous coffee sat steaming to one side and a Frasier episode sat ready and waiting on my laptop (I am pretty sure that watching sitcoms at work is overtly frowned upon, but now that my work week consists of a single of hour of teaching over five days, I have given up trying to look busy. I have no idea what I am expected to do for the other 39 hours...sit in composed silence perhaps?). Suddenly I realized that I was sans chopsticks. A wave of panic rushed over me; the coffee, the noodles, Daphne...was the highlight of my dismal day to be cruelly taken from me?

Suddenly, I spied the container of chopsticks on my supervisor’s desk. They were the disposable kind, the kind that we westerners tap on the edge of the table before we break them in the hope that they will split evenly (this does NOT work). Please consider the following points before you judge me on my decision:

1) There were at least sixty pairs of chopsticks in the container.

2) These chopsticks can be bought in bulk for a few yen at any supermarket in Japan and are available for free at every convenience store in the country.

3) In all the months I have watched my supervisor eat his lunch, he has never once snapped apart a pair of these disposables. He instead employs a trendy black pair which matches the lunchbox set that his wife fills with delicious Japanese treats.

4) There was no one in the staffroom.

5) Daphne.

And so, I reached across and eased out a pair of the dratted things and, breathing a sigh of relief, settled down with udon and the Crane boys.

The next day, I could tell something was up. My supervisor hadn’t spoken to me since I arrived at 8am, but then this wasn’t particularly unusual (When I got back from my trip to Tokyo, no one spoke to me for two days. Apparently they are all just really busy). It was only when I snuck a peek at his desk that I saw the pathetic jig was up.

Each pair of chopsticks in the container had been accounted for. The closest pair had a tiny ‘1’ written on the left hand chopstick in black vivid and a tiny ‘2’ on the right hand one; the next pair had ‘3’ and ‘4’ and so on. The numbers reached into three digits; rather impressive given that this called for six numerals crammed together on a single pair of chopsticks. It may well be the most extraordinary example of passive aggression I have ever witnessed. Even the great Gareth Keenan would have trouble keeping up.

Today, I bit the bullet and offered my supervisor a pair of the same disposable chopsticks, apologizing for my actions and telling him it wouldn’t happen again. He gave me a tight smile and went back to his report without saying a word. I have a feeling this could drag on for the rest of my tenure.

And people wonder why I hate my job.

Buddhist shrines & puppet freakshows

Twelve days around Japan and a large chunk of token Japanese tourism can now be satisfactory crossed off. Tokyo’s futuristic architecture and acid trip teenagers have been sought out, drooled over and snapped with a digital lens. We strolled dreamily through the most beautiful gardens in Japan (located in the captivating city of Kanazawa; my first choice for my teaching placement), stood captivated beneath the breadth and beauty of a snow covered Mt. Fuji and sipping green tea in a traditional Geisha district. We even sat front row at a sumo wrestling tournament, watching hour after hour of morbidly obese men in G-strings try and wrestle each other to the ground. I’m sure there is a lot of tradition in it, but most of the westerners around us spend the whole time whispering things like “Oh my god look how fat that one is!”


The highlight of the trip was a trip to the local town of Takayama, famous for its traditional Japanese craft shops and locals wares. We stayed in a Buddhist shrine run by a bald American called Woody. He wore massive baggy jeans and stunk of cigarettes (later on, we saw him smoking in the temple). He claimed to have lived in Japan for eleven years and had run the Buddhist hostel for five. He told us he was a ‘Buddhist apprentice’ in a voice that made it clear that we would never understand his inner Zen.


The shrine itself was a rundown affair; the hot water was turned on for approximately four hours a day and the floors creaked. It appeared that Woody was the only person who lived in the temple; he informed us that the head monk was in Tokyo for a conference (??) and there were no other monks to be seen. The temple itself was off to the side, in a dusty room with the lights off and the curtains closed. Woody informed us that we could use the room for our own private meditations if we wished. We did not wish.


The walls to our room were actually made of paper, and as a result we could hear Woody’s swishing baggy jeans from the other end of the corridor. He spent most of the time in his office, smoking and watching his flat screen TV. He told us he meditated a lot, but I would have guessed something else.


The markets at Takayama consisted mainly of precious things and pickled vegetables. My hopes for a Japanese Scarborough fair faded away in a medley of wooden dolls and small gherkins on toothpicks. Dispersed throughout these delights were variants on the town mascot; a hideous, faceless rag doll thing, reminiscent of Tubbs off The League of Gentlemen.



In typical Japanese style, it was available in every colour and variant from key rings to jelly moulds. I freaked out and had to go out onto the street to escape from it. Still, it is not much better than Sapporo’s mascot, which is a small bald green man with a bulging erection.


We finally managed to find the museum Shi-shi Kaikan; a supposed must see in Takayama for having over 500 lion masks on display. Inside, we instead found ourselves at a bizarre puppet show, in which magnetised emperors hacked each other to death with samurai swords. A small child ran around the stage and showed the audience how all the tricks were done; the whole thing was in Japanese so I had no idea what was going on. The highlight came at the end, when another emperor changed from a human to a lion and fought a duel with a meddlesome pumpkin. I managed to record it through spasms of laughter.







Back at the shrine, Woody told us that there was no hot water for a shower because he forgot to turn it on, he muttered some half-assed apology and walked away scratching his ear.

I stole an umbrella when we left.

Those crazy kids

Being an ALT in Japan is about as close as I will ever get to being Zac Efron.

I assume it is different teaching in a big city, but in a small League of Gentlemen township like mine, the white man really does walk alone, mainly because there are no other white men within a radius of 50 kilometres to walk with him. For many of these young, country schoolgirls, the only westerns they have seen have been separated from them by a TV screen and several time zones. Even these avenues are limited. There is a movie theatre in my town but it is one of those rickety Cinema Paradiso things without the charm. It sits slumped down a backstreet with peeling paint and posters of films features Japanese boys who look like they have had way too much Ecstasy (but ironically will probably never touch the stuff) and girls with pigtails wearing Alice in Wonderland dresses. The cinema has shown three English films in the last nine months; Atonement, P.S. I love you (Hilary Swank doing a romantic comedy about a treasure hunt from her dead boyfriend played by the lead Spartan off 300) and Mamma Mia, which arrives next week, a year after its western release.

The next ‘real’ movie theatre is in Sapporo, several hours drive away. Apparently movie going in Japan isn’t quite the lark it is back home; a fellow ALT went to see Burn After Reading and found that he was the only one who laughed the whole movie while the rest of the audience sat in complete silence. This is rather impressive slash mortifying if you have seen Burn After Reading, which IS hilarious and would surely a laugh from the drabbest individual when Brad Pitt calls John Malkovich a ‘dickwad.’ Also, Japanese people don’t get up and leave when the movie finishes but sit stonily until all the credits have rolled. Then they leave quietly, in an orderly fashion, not speaking until they are well outside the theatre. Even then, I doubt there is much in the way of banter.

Anyway, back to Efron. My arrival in the country prompted a Mexican wave of Japanese wonderment from the girls in my Local town. My two former ALTs were both girls and as far as I could tell, this was the first time most of these schoolgirls had set eyes on a Western male outside of a Harry Potter movie. For months, my route around the school could be traced by the sound of screams, giggles and sharp intakes of breath. Girls would cower into whispering groups in corners, waving to me and then shrieking with delight when I waved back.

Months went by and things didn’t end. I would be spotted by two girls in the local supermarket who would proceed to peek at me from behind the minimal produce section. The next day, I would be informed dryly from one of the teachers that someone in his class had seen my buying a bag of eggplants and now everyone wanted to know if this was true. The first question I was asked in a new class was “Do you have a girlfriend” to which I would smile secretly and shake my head. The group of girls who had plucked up the courage to ask this would then become hysterical and, after another few minutes of feverish whispering, usually follow it up with the slightly more awkward “what kind of Japanese girls do you like?” For this, I would stare out at the eager classroom of 15 year olds use my favourite Japanese word: Himitsu (Secret). This didn’t do much to calm them down.

Believe me, this is not a subtle attempt to blow my own trumpet. I could have rubbed myself raw with a cheese grater and pulled out a row of teeth and I don’t imagine the reaction would be any different. And I tried to feign off the fawning in any way possible; food stains on my shirt, unwashed hair, deep sighs whenever I was waved to in the corridors. For I while I even adopted a limp, but this only resulted in sympathetic glances and kindly smiles from the girls and at the end of the week, a ‘get better’ anime pencil charm turned up on my desk in the staffroom.

Good grief, they were persistent. Once, I received an email from a fifteen year old student from one town over. She insisted we could be ‘good friends’ if we met up sometime (wink face). I have no idea who she was or how she got my email address. She sent me a follow up email a week later when I didn’t reply, which was empty except for a sad face and the phrase ‘I cry now.’ Another girl accosted me in a classroom during cleaning time and showed me a tiny purple condom nestled in her Hello Kitty wallet. I smiled nervously and vowed to stay as far away from her as possible.

I hope that when I leave, my successor will be a women; kind, maternal, preferably late thirties and hair in a bun. There has been enough excitement in Local town for the next few years; Zac Efron has no place trying to steal the preciousl things of the shop. Heck, she could even get a cat.

Cleanup time

My supervisor, possibly realizing that my school day malaise is largely the result of having absolutely nothing to do, has given me the task of aiding with the daily classroom cleaning of him form class. Every day, from 3pm to 3.30pm, I am summoned to assist class 1A to cleanse their home room on the third floor. This is a school-wide ritual, something I assume was established to slice janitors from the school budget (although there are two little old men in overalls who are part of the staff and whom I often see fixing broken chairs and carting rubbish to the incinerator).

Upon arrival at the said room, the class (42 students in a tightly squeezed desk grid, girls on the left side of the room, boys on the right) bows politely and begins to divvy up the tasks at hand. In the corner of the classroom (and in every classroom in the school) is a cleaning cupboard, stuffed with mops, buckets and squirty things galore. On the classroom wall is a task sheet, made by some administrator with no life in which the class divided up into different ‘task groups’ on a daily basis; window washing one week, mopping the next.

The chart is so confusing that usually Mr. X gives up and lets his students decide on what tasks they want by way of ‘Jung Ken;’ the Japanese version of ‘Rock, paper, scissors.’ The difference is that ‘Jung Ken’ is played in massive groups of ten-twenty people, in which everyone stand in a circle and yells “Jung ken....ho!” and displays their paper/scissors/rock hand manifestation. Of course, this doesn’t work so well with more than two players, and the general rule is that there can be no result unless there is one rock and nineteen pieces of paper. As you can imagine, this can take hours, and I have to stand in the corner and grit my teeth as the students yell out “Jung Ken...ho!” over and over again, completely unperturbed by the fact that they could be trapped in their ridiculous circle for the rest of their afternoon.

Once the tasks are allocated, the cleaning can being in earnest. And I mean that. The cleaning is carried out with the precision of a nuclear bomb scare; the desks are suddenly stacked at the front of the room and a team of moppers begin to sweep across the floor with eyebrows furrowed. A group of girls grab the squirty stuff and begin to deal with the windows; carefully scrutinizing every corner for the fingerprints of some foolish third grader during lunchtime. Another team is put on dust monitoring. They work their way around the room in a chain, checking every sliver of surface for particles and also attacking everything with the squirty stuff. There is a two page print on how to dust off the blackboard. I attempted this seemingly simply task on the first day and had the handout shoved at me by six horrified girls. Apparently the key is to start with vertical strokes and move on to horizontal after that. Good to know.

Because this mission is carried out on a daily basis, the whole cleaning thing becomes redundant. The girls squirt cleaner onto windows which are already spotless. The boys with the mops are unable to find anything to mop up. The dusters haven’t given the dust enough time to settle from their particle scouring 24 hours prior. The inside/outside shoes distinction already takes care of most of it. To be fair, I have never seen a cleaner school in my life, especially compared to my debris-infused high school in the Hutt Valley.

Talking of trash, last night I was fool enough to watch John Waters’ Pink Flamingos. It was a film that made me miss my group of Gummo-adoring friends, as scene after scene of celluloid offensiveness went reeling by me. Especially of note were the heinous Marbles couple (the wife looks like a hideous B-Grade Tilda Swinton) who keep pregnant girls chained up in their basement and sell the babies to lesbian couples. They also give each other orgasms by sucking ravenously on each other’s toes. Across town, the obese drag queen Divine lives in a trailer and puts a steak between her thighs to warm it up for dinner. Her similarly obese, brain damaged mother sits in a play pen and is obsessed with eggs and her son, Crackers, likes to have sex with the chickens. It is a fucking offensive movie and I loved every minute of it. If only cleaning could be this Divine.

Death by horse

The Rhinestone Cowboy has lived up to his name. An awkward conversation with him in the lunchroom led to the revelation that his arrival at the high school had seen him promoted to the head of the equestrian club. No surprise really I though, given that he has the petite frame and hardened calves of a jockey. However, it turned out that the poor kid was no jockey and had in fact never ridden a horse before in his life. He even admitted that he had a slight trepidation towards the beasts in question, hence the lack of equine skills.

Despite this, and the fact that he had coached basketball for the last three years, it was the horse club where he was placed. No question. The rule for Japanese high schools is that a new teacher must teach the club their predecessor taught, regardless of preference, ability or logic. My supervisor spends four hours a day coaching volleyball, even though he had never played it before in his life. At his last school, he conducted the school band and ran the music department.

Unfortunately, upon his arrival in our Gummo town he was informed that the musical department staff was already allocated, and so he was to coach the girls volleyball. Every day at 3pm, he heaves a mighty sigh and puts on his neon red bib. If a western actor had to play him at this precise moment, it would be Alan Rickman.

The whole situation reminds me of that scene in that Family Guy episode ‘Da Boom’ where the Griffins establish a new town after the world blows up. Every time a new person comes to the town, Peter makes them pick a job out of the ‘job hat’ so that a qualified doctor is given the role of village idiot and the dentist in a horse. In this society, that wouldn’t surprise me anymore.

Also, there are no sip top bottles in Japan. Why? No matter how many convenience stores and supermarkets I traipse through, I am cursed to settle for the runner’s worst enemy; the screw cap. As a result, Japanese treadmilling is a much more perilous experience than back in the west. Trying to get that damn cap unscrewed and then rescrewed takes both hands while your legs are whirling takes skills verging on amateur acrobatics. Oh, how I mourn the humble pump bottle.

Out there on the ice

The new English teacher has arrived. He is 23 and looks like he is sixteen. When I met him, he was wearing a baby blue tie with diamantes on it (or rhinestones for you Americans). If this was New Zealand, he would be deemed suitable effeminate to have the homosexual checked and double checked by any curious onlooker. But this is Japan and it’s hopeless trying to tell the gays from the straights in a culture where the macho baseball captains hold hands in class and sit casually on each other’s laps. I once spent an entire evening drinking sake and flirting with the Japanese boy next to me at a salsa bar. After a good hour of (by Western standards) rather forward under-the-table signals, I attempted to seal the seemingly done deal and he told me that he actually only liked girls. What a fucking crock.


Seen from this context, my hopes for the Rhinestone Cowboy are slimmer than his tiny Japanese hips. Perhaps I will have to settle for a buddy to drink sake with; it will be nice to have someone in the town who speaks English and is under 45. The Seinfeld thing was always wishful thinking anyway (the Japanese are a nation of Friends worshippers; argh). And of course, he is a far superior crush to the grey haired Moltisanti. Perhaps a better comparison is that of Twin Peaks’ James Hurley; generating a level of allure that is not quite Seth Cohen-obsession worthy, but definitely a few steps up the ladder and has crush-crossover potential to the outside world.


Two excellent Japanese anecdotes then. The first was the discovery that none of the female
teachers at our high school wear high heels. Ever. Curiouser and curioser I thought and questioned my female English co-teacher about this over a cup of instant coffee. The principal has outlawed the said items for the reason that ‘in an emergency, they cannot run fast.’ I guess this makes sense in a Japanese kind of way, but it does ignore the fact that Japanese women in heels can move faster than steroid- infused athletes. As one of my ALT friends put it: “If Japan ever wanted to win any Olympic sprinting race, they just need to have a woman in heels in the line up and put a man with an empty beer glass at the finish line.” This may sound sexist, but trust me, it is incredibly accurate.


I also suggested that in the unlikely event of an emergency, a woman in heels could simply TAKE HER SHOES OFF. I imagine that shoes would be the most likely cause of death in any Japanese emergency, because the indoor/outdoor footwear code still applies. Even in our semi-terrifying earthquake drill last year, the teachers found time to lay out an enormous, elaborate mat between the front entrance and the tennis court so that as they escaped certain death, their shoes remained unsullied. The same lack of logic became apparent at last week’s moving ceremonies; movers would attempted to change from outside to inside shoes even while struggling under the weight of a half ton fridge-freezer. Surprisingly, there were no broken backs.


The second story comes courtesy of another ALT but desperately needs to be mentioned. At another Hokkaido high school, a rather portly female teacher fell over on the ice and broke her leg. The principal called an emergency meeting of all staff and informed them that the newly incapacitated educator had in fact slipped over because she was too fat. He ranted about how irresponsible the teacher was (I believe the phrase ‘how dare she’ was used repeatedly) and instructed that everyone in the school go on an immediate diet to prevent the same thing happening again. This is, perhaps, the perfect example of ‘adding insult to injury’.


I have slipped over on the ice at least five times this winter (not counting a lot of very close calls) and I cannot imagine anyone making it through a Hokkaido winter without doing the same. The island becomes an ice rink for four months and you are constantly one slip away from a broken collarbone. I have taken to shuffling my feet along the ground penguin-style and have shacked up an impressive collection of bruises. People stop drinking altogether because it’s too dangerous to walk home from the pub. Every car in the island has to change its tyres.


All this is my attempt to try and explain how ridiculous and offensive the above anecdote is, but to be honest, it does a pretty good job of that by itself. I can only imagine the poor woman waking up in the hospital to find a get well card and a bunch of celery.


As I type this, I am starting out the window and can see the buds growing on the trees that have been bare for the last four months. The season is finally changing. I cannot wait to see what perplexing anecdotes The Spring has to offer.

LOCAL!!!!

A new phenomenon has appeared on the rural Japanese horizon.

At present, our high school is in a blissful and short lived period of nonchalance. We are in limbo between school years, between the frantic period of drunken ‘end of year’ enkais and drunken ‘beginning of year’ enkais. I can arrive at school between eight and nine and am free from my despised shackles of suit and tie.

Last week, we had the traditional ‘musical desks’ day, as the teachers who leave clear their workstations and everyone moves to a different desk in the immense staff room. I am one of the lucky ones; I have been upgraded from a desk facing the back wall to one right in front of the windows. I now have a view of the local co op, baseball field and a side view of the hospital. It is bliss to watch the crows swooping and screaming, to see tiny old people creeping to and from the co op; so old that their backs are bent into Quasimodo hunchbacks and they stare permanently at the pavement.

My grey haired Moltisanti crush is leaving, but my hopes are high that the new 23 year old English teacher will be a more than satisfactory replacement. I envisage a young, studious man with good teeth and a killer smile who is fumbling with his forbidden attraction to the better sex. I will take him under my Caucasian wing and teach him the ways of the western world, starting with Seinfeld and we will argue about the greatest character (I will say Elaine; he, of course, will choose Kramer) and then move on to even more uncharted waters. At school, we will blush as we pass each other in the corridor and meet for a secretly romantic lunch of sushi and green tea, using the guise of ‘man to man bonding.’ I will teach him the meaning of ‘clandestine’ and he will laugh and pretend that he that already knew it. It will become his favourite word and he will use it every day, but never quite get the pronunciation right. He will try to teach me more Japanese, but I will tell him I am only be interested in learning the dirty words. He will oblige.

Mr M. is also leaving. He had an English teachers’ lunch for him last Friday, which was a sombre and slightly awkward affair as we toiled over bowls of bland pasta at the town’s mediocre Italian restaurant. I had learnt before lunch that all the other English teachers despise Mr M., and one of them flew into rage and yelled “He is a fool man. He is not a real man. He is joke face.” I was semi speechless and murmured something in agreement. When we returned to school, I informed Mr M. that he had spaghetti sauce on his shirt. He looked down, horrified, and carefully replied:

“I am sorry. Mmmmmmmm......I will now go and cream myself.”

I will miss him inexplicably.

This too-ing and fro-ing of teachers lead to the phenomenon I spoke of; moving day. It turns out that all the teachers must partake in the arrival and departure of all their peers; we have a schedule booked solid throughout the week. First off was the principal; a man with a perfect comb over and steely eyes who has always terrified me, but looked a lot less intimidating in a backwards cap and an anorak tucked into his khaki trousers. The entire teaching staff (a good thirty odd people including the receptionist, the janitor and the school nurse) got amongst it and formed a human chain from the house to moving van, passing along boxes and bubble wrapped armchairs with Amish-worthy precision. Two dozen school students also turned up, for no reason other than that they wanted to help. All the while, the principal’s obedient wife went round bowing and thanking everyone. When we were finished the principal gave us another formal thank you and gave us of as a can of beer and a small bottle of green tea.

This went on all day. Another teacher’s moving session was so emotional that a group of his students started crying. Another one had a bunch of his ex-pupils drive two hours to our town specially to lend a hand with the move. Someone gave a speech and took a photo for the town paper. A small child tried to climb onto the moving van and was pulled off, crying, by his mother. My supervisor explained that the child was sad because the only toy shop in the town had closed down so he wanted to move to Sapporo with the teachers where the toys were. No such luck.

I am expecting another full day of moving ceremonies tomorrow and my only regret is that I cannot take photos to document the bizarre ritual. Unfortunately, my camera is out of action since it fell of a piece of interactive artwork at the top of an Osakan skyscraper. So far, I have ended up with five cans of beer and a lot of green tea. The new crush arrives tomorrow afternoon. I will be sure to shave and wear a tight T-shirt and stand close to the moving truck to keep my eyes peeled for framed photos of Mariah Carey and boxes marked ‘HOT PANTS.’